Verhoeven, Michael, dir. The Nasty Girl (Das schreckliche Mädchen)

This film depicts a fictionalised version of historian Anna Rosmus’ research into her hometown’s Nazi past. As research for a school essay contest about ‘my town during the Third Reich,’ Sonja Wegmus uncovers news articles that suggest that the small town of Pfilzing was not the beacon of resistance she had always believed it to be. She discovers a news article detailing a dispute about underwear between two Pfilzinger citizens and a Jewish merchant, but the language used in the article is highly anti-semitic and accuses the merchant of using occult tactics to deceive the buyers. Alerted, Sonja continues her research and finds more material that suggests the population’s explicit collaboration in the persecution and extermination of Jews. Even though she misses the contest’s deadline, she continues to investigate her town’s history during her studies at university, while continually being discouraged from doing so by everyone around her. When prominent town figures catch wind of what she is doing, they try to prevent Sonja from accessing the most incriminating archival material. After several years of legal battle and ever-increasing social exclusion (which ends in a violent attack on her life), Sonja finally gains access to the official documents that confirm her suspicions: Pfilzing was deeply involved and compliant in the exclusion and murder of its Jewish citizens. After this information is now brought out into the open by the essay-turned-book Sonja has written on ‘my town during the Third Reich,’ the town suddenly turns and welcomes her back with open arms as their very own heroine of truth. However, Sonja sees through this attempt at pacification and rejects the honour, which ends the film on a bitter note.

The film is a satirical comedy, using humour to address the issues surrounding Germany’s Nazi past. It employs overt staging and breaking of the fourth wall to highlight the performativity and increasing absurdity of the town’s desperate attempt to keep its secrets in the past. For example, the scenes in the archive take place on a theatre stage in front of a screen on which the background is projected, which emphasises the fabricated and rehearsed manner through which Sonja is kept out of the archive. The town’s landmarks are often substituted by the same screen-projection method, which makes the background literally interchangeable: such scenes could have been shot in any German town. Furthermore, in addition to Sonja’s voice-over and scenes in which she addresses the audience explicitly, the townspeople who are accused of collaboration are also given the chance to directly address the viewer. This gives the sense that they are being interrogated by the viewer, and their attempts at covering up their involvement seem even more unconvincing and pathetic when directly addressed to the audience.

David Levin argues that in addition to the film’s satirical discussion of Germany’s acknowledgement of its own past, it also raises questions about resistance. As the film ends with Sonja rejecting the town’s statue of her, “the sentimentalizing and reifying effects of commemorating resistance are themselves subject to resistance” (92). Levin describes Sonja’s outburst at the unveiling of the statue “an indictment of what we might term the culture-of-resistance industry: an indictment, that is, of the institutionalizing and de-radicalizing commemoration of resistance” (92).

The film was received well, both in Germany and internationally. It was nominated for a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, where Michael Verhoeven won a Silver Bear for Best Director. Abroad, the film won a BAFTA for Best Foreign Film and was nominated for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe in the same category. However, as Anna Rosmus herself writes, the citizens of Passau (the real Pfilzing) did not look kindly upon Verhoeven’s decision to turn Rosmus’ story into a film (115). Rather, there were attempts to ban the film from Passau (which did not succeed) but one of the people who obstructed Rosmus’ research in the archive was promoted to a position in the city council and attempted to ban the movie poster from the town. However, even Passau’s cinema showed the movie in the end, though many town officials turned to more clandestine methods to watch it. In addition, Rosmus notes that if anything, the events of the film were toned down rather than exaggerated from the events in real life, contrary to what many people assume: Verhoeven felt that it was unbelievable that someone would persevere after experiencing the extensive threats to the extent that Rosmus had in real life (118).

Levin, David. “Are We Victims Yet? Resistance and Community in ‘The White Rose,’ ‘Five Last Days,’ and ‘The Nasty Girl.’ Germanic Review 73, no. 1 (1998): 86-100.

Rosmus, Anna. “From Reality to Fiction: Anna Rosmus as the ‘Nasty Girl’.” Religion and the Arts 4, no. 1 (2000): 113-143.

Author of this entry: Lotte van den Eertwegh

Verhoeven, Michael, dir. The Nasty Girl (Das schreckliche Mädchen). Filmverlag der Autoren, Sentana Filmproduktion, ZDF, 1990.