MÄRCHENFANTASIE IN DER BERLINER GEGENWART: CHRISTIAN PETZOLDS FILMADAPTION UNDINE (2020)

Abstract

Christian Petzold’s drama Undine, a Franco-German co-production released in 2020, transfers the romantic myth of the scorned nymph into present Berlin. This is the first part of a trilogy planned by Petzold on figures of German Romanticism, which will intend to bring the so-called elemental spirits closer to our reality. The result is a poetic film fairy tale, in which the main characters move between two worlds: not only underwater and on land, but also between reality and fantasy, between the present and the past. Petzold shows that the myth of Undine is ahistorical and doomed to be repeated endlessly. His adaptation, however, deviates decisively from the literary models and thus not only reveals a determined reshaping of the myth, but also blurs through its peculiar aesthetics, grounded in the foundations of the Berlin School, the fine line between reality and fantasy.

Keywords

• undine
• myth
• berlin
• petzold
• water
• berlin school