AND YET LIFE WAS BEAUTIFUL - A PORTRAIT OF HILDEGARD KNEF

"And yet life was beautiful..." is a portrait of an extraordinary woman that counts amongst the few international stars that Germany brought forward in the last century. Ms Knef even stands for 3 careers of international renown: acting star of the "rubble" cinema of the post war era, successful singer that made chansons socially acceptable in Germany and last but not least an Author of international bestsellers.

Hildegard Knef was always underestimated in her own country, but she broke taboos at a time when emancipation wasn't an issue. She was a woman that did not want to be put into draws or be subordinate; that is why the German public loved and hated her at the same time – she was an unloved star. It is just this contradiction – something unredeemed and yet free – that makes Ms Knef's charisma and that allows her person to evade any mythification.

Birgit Schulz shows Ms Knef's life in a sensitive and many–layered way; breathtaking changes between success and defeat, the immense "rage for survival", as she called it herself, is revealed.

A film by ARTE, 2000
60 min. documentary

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