Underplayed Gems

The Power of Emotion (1983)

The Power of Emotion poster
Original title
Die Macht der Gefühle
Directed by
Alexander Kluge
Genre
drama film, crime film
Country
Germany
Runtime
1h 55m
Rated
16
Rating
4.8 of 10 from 4 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like this

How it feels

This film mixes documentary and fiction to study how cinema organizes emotions. It includes stories like a woman on trial for killing her husband and an interview with an opera singer.

fragmentedcerebralnon-linearexperimentalmeditativeobservationaldetachedthought-provoking

What happens

The Power of Emotion (German: Die Macht der Gefühle) is a 1983 West German essay film written and directed by Alexander Kluge. It was entered into the main competition at the 40th Venice International Film Festival. The film uses a mixture of documentary, fictionalized narrative and archive footage to explore the ways in which cinema can express emotion. Like Germany in Autumn (1978) The Power of Emotion draws on multiple short narratives or documentary sequences, including the trial of a woman who has shot her husband to death, an interview with an opera singer, the state funeral of Heinz-Herbert Karry, sequences from Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen, a time lapse of the Frankfurt skyline and a story of fugitive diamond thieves. "The film Die Macht der Gefühle is not about feelings," Kluge wrote, "but rather their organization: how they can be organized by chance, through outside factors, murder, destiny; how they are organized, how they encounter the fortune they are seeking." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.