Volker Schlöndorff

Coup de grâce

Coup de grâce

Latvia, 1919: the end of the Russian Civil War. An aristocratic young woman (brilliantly played by Margarethe von Trotta) becomes involved with a sexually repressed Prussian soldier. When she is rejected by her love, the young woman is sent into a downward spiral of psychosexual depression, promiscuity, and revolutionary collaboration. A startling tale of heartbreak and violence set against the backdrop of bloody revolution, Volker Schlöndorff's Coup de grâce is a powerful film that explores the interrelation of private passion and political commitment.

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Film Info

  • Germany
  • 1976
  • 98 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.66:1
  • French, German
  • Spine #192

Special Features

  • Interview with director Volker Schlöndorff and screenwriter/star Margarethe von Trotta
  • New and improved English subtitle translation

    New cover by Eric Skillman

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • Interview with director Volker Schlöndorff and screenwriter/star Margarethe von Trotta
  • New and improved English subtitle translation

    New cover by Eric Skillman
Coup de grâce
Cast
Margarethe von Trotta
Sophie von Reval
Matthias Habich
Erich von Lhomond
Mathieu Carrière
Volkmar von Plessen
Rüdiger Kirschstein
Konrad von Reval
Valeska Gert
Aunt Praskovia
Marc Eyraud
Dr. Paul Rugen
Frederik von Zichy
Franz von Aland
Credits
Director
Volker Schlöndorff
Executive producer
Eberhard Junkersdorf
Cinematography
Igor Luther
Editing
Jane Sperr
Music
Stanley Myers
Sound
Gerhard Birkholz
Production design
Jurgen Kiebach
Screenplay
Jutta Brückner
Screenplay
Geneviève Dormann
Screenplay
Margarethe von Trotta
From the novel by
Marguerite Yourcenar

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Volker Schlöndorff

Director

Volker Schlöndorff
Volker Schlöndorff

Though he would find himself at the forefront of his native nation’s radical New German Cinema movement, Volker Schlöndorff got his training in France. Apprenticed to such trailblazers as Alain Resnais (Schlöndorff served as second assistant director on Last Year at Marienbad), Jean-Pierre Melville (assistant director on Leon Morin, Priest and Le doulos), Louis Malle (assistant director on The Fire Within), he became fascinated by the possibilities of filmmaking as a political tool early in his career. His 1966 debut, Young Törless, based on Robert Musil’s acclaimed novel, was not only the first of his many literary adaptations, it was also something of a New German Cinema call to arms, a political allegory about Germany’s social history set in a boys’ boarding school at the turn of twentieth century. More stinging commentaries on the state of Germany-then-and-now followed in the seventies: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (codirected with Margarethe von Trotta, Schlöndorff’s wife at the time), Coup de grâce, and his grandest success, the Oscar- and Palme d’or–winning The Tin Drum, a brilliant adaptation of Günter Grass’s metaphorical novel about the horrors of World War II. Schlöndorff has gone on to teach film and literature and continues to make films in Germany and elsewhere.

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