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DEGREE OF MURDER
Despite its film noir trappings, director
Volker Schlondorff’s dispassionate
thriller transcends its sub genre to become
a more broad-based study of alienation
and angst in West Germany during the 1960s.
Clearly a product of its times, the film
stars erstwhile sex symbol Anita Pallenberg
(Performance) as Marie, who shoots her
ex-lover (Werner Enke) when he comes to
her apartment and attempts to rape her.
Afterward, she pays two strangers to dispose
of the body, becoming their lover in the
process. Although there is a good deal
of passion on display, both criminal and
carnal, Schlondoff presents his characters
as lacking even the most rudimentary emotional
involvement with their actions. This is
by design, and represents the so-called
“German cinema of alienation”
at its most bemusing. Brian Jones, who
was dating Pallenberg at the time, makes
a brief appearance in the film as well
as writing and performing the bouncy,
psychedelic score just months before his
untimely death. It is the only recording
he ever made as an ex- Rolling Stone.
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