92 minutos
Oskar Panizza’s The Council of Love (1895) is a blasphemous play set in 1495, during the first recorded outbreak of syphilis, which Panizza satirically presents as the punishment from Satan for sexually active humans. As a result, Panizza was imprisoned for obscenity. Schroeter alternates scenes from the Panizza’s work with a dramatization of his trial, presenting the play as an expressionist spectacle performed by actors wearing exaggerated makeup who gesture and grimace grotesquely. The film thus forms a bridge between Schroeter’s use of tableaux in his early experiments with the political urgency of his 1980s films. On the eve of the AIDS crisis, Schroeter is presciently worried about disease as an excuse for governmental repression and the oppression of sexuality. - Harvard Film Archive
Antonio Salines
Teufel / Dr. Panizza
Magdalena Montezuma
Doppelzeugin
Kurt Raab
Gerichtspräsident
Renzo Rinaldi
Gottvater
Margit Carstensen
Staatsanwältin
Heinrich Giskes
Verteidiger
Agnès Nobecourt
Maria
Roberto Tesconi
Christus
Lauro Versari
Cherubim
Patrizia La Fonte
Selbstmörder-Engel
Guido Polito
2. Engel
Kristina van Eyck
Agrippina
