Der Bomberpilot

In Der Bomberpilot, Schroeter displays a similar disrespect for historical ‘truth’ in his treatment of post Second World War Germany. In this film he tells the stories of three fictional women who had performed in Nazi revues during the war. Rather than attempting an ‘authentic’ recreation of historical post-war Germany, Schroeter uses these three figures to provide the viewer with a sense of the disorder, crisis and repression that beset the German population after the war and resulted, according to Margarete and Thomas Mitscherlich in a popular forgetfulness regarding the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. Schroeter does this by attributing to these women a kind of ‘false’ memory regarding the recent past and through the somewhat ‘faulty’ gestures they perform while recreating their revue show performance. The viewer is lead to question how these three somewhat clumsy individuals could possibly have conformed to the order, discipline and regularity that characterised the products of the Nazi culture industry, and we are by extension also asked to question ‘official’ versions of that history. —sensesofcinema