On Watching a German Film, "The Nasty Girl"

I recently subscribed to Hulu Plus, an inexpensive streaming video service that features a lot of foreign "art" films.  It is a collection of some of the best movies ever made from around the world.  If you dislike subtitles forget it.  If you're not "artsy" a lot of them might be a waste of time.  Despite a pretty good education and a fairly liberal outlook towards such things, I still don't particularly enjoy Fellini or Bergman.  But, in the middle of the "high art" and soft core pore porn (sometimes indistinguishable) there are some wonderful, thought provoking movies.  This movie is one of them.

The Nasty Girl (1990) aka Das schreckliche Mädche, is a film about a very bright Catholic schoolgirl in Bavaria who decides to take a look a what life was like in her town during Hitler's rule. The deeper she gets into it, the more sinister her friends and neighbors become.  I won't spoil the plot by telling you more.  Just take my word for it, this movie is worth watching subtitles and all.  Stay with it.  The lessons learned about the true depravity of human nature are profound. 

I would warn you that there is one completely gratuitous full frontal nude scene near the end of the movie that serves no purpose to the plot whatsoever other than earn the movie a full "R" rating in American theaters and avoid the kiss of death "G" rating here.  I see it as a German joke on us, sticking  a scene that makes no sense at all in an odd place in the film showing something that most Germans have often seen at the pool or beach but nevertheless sends the American movie raters on red alert.

There is a lot of deft, dark, dry German humor in the movie.  You just have to hang on to enjoy it.  This movie would be so dark that it might be intolerable without it.  And that would be a good way to describe the movie, doggedly hanging on to decency and truth and Christian values in the middle of a culture just like ours where decency and kindness are a thin veneer at best and crowd is always just a few political steps away from the jackboots and concentration camps.  

The full movie is available free on YouTube.  I have embedded it below.  Enjoy.