Die Nacht (1985)

Directed by

Hans-Jürgen Syberberg

Genre

documentary

Country

Germany

Runtime

6h

Rating

8.3 of 10 from 3 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A single actress delivers a six hour monologue drawn from a wide range of classic texts. The film is meant to be experienced like an art installation where viewers can come and go freely.

meditativeslowcerebralintimatecontemplativetheatricaldensemonotonousatmospheric

What happens

Die Nacht ("The night") is a 1985 West German installation film directed by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg. It consists of a six hours long monologue performed by Edith Clever, who reads texts by Syberberg and many different authors, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich von Kleist, Plato, Friedrich Hölderlin, Novalis, Friedrich Nietzsche, Eduard Mörike, Richard Wagner, William Shakespeare, Martin Heidegger, Samuel Beckett and chief Seattle. The film was screened out of competition at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. Die Nacht has primarily been shown as an exhibition at art galleries, where viewers have been welcome to come and go as they please. Syberberg has said: "The gesamtkunstwerk I formerly strove for, now [with Edith Clever] became a theater of the world within one person ... where film and theater came together for me. The film on the stage, and the theater in the film." The film won the Deutscher Filmpreis for Best Direction and Best Actress. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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