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In German with English subtitles. This is a VHS transfer. Also known as Bremen Freedom, and by its original German title of Bremer Freiheit: Frau Geesche Gottfried - Ein bürgerliches Trauerspiel.
Fassbinder's stark, minimalist play about true events that happened in Bremen, Germany in 1831: Geesche Gottfried (Margit Carstensen) killed 15 people, among them her mother, her father, her children, two husbands and others in her immediate environs, while her fellow-citizens had considered her a respectable, god-fearing woman. In the end, she was unmasked and beheaded – the last public execution in Bremen. Bremer Freiheit is not a thriller. It is not the intention of the piece to gradually unmask the culprit. Like a ballad, the killings are arranged in a kaleidoscope. The murderer’s motive is of interest in this play, but not how she is convicted. Geesche Gottfried murders because she wants to be free, and because she does not want to be one of the men’s “pets”. “This was not a life, Michael, what mother lived there. In that case, death is a blessing for someone,” says Geesche Gottfried after murdering her own mother.
