# Veronica Voss
**Veronika Voss** (German: *Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss*) is a 1982 West German black-and-white drama directed by [Rainer Werner Fassbinder](https://www.edgepedia.org/rainer-werner-fassbinder), about a faded Ufa film star in Munich in 1955 who falls under the control of a physician who keeps her supplied with morphine in order to exploit her[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/593-veronika-voss) • [2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/veronika_voss). It was Fassbinder's penultimate feature and the second installment of his BRD trilogy on postwar [West Germany](https://www.edgepedia.org/west-germany), and it won the [Golden Bear](https://www.edgepedia.org/golden-bear) at the 1982 Berlin International Film Festival, the only Golden Bear of his career, accepted roughly four months before his death[3](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/veronika-voss/) • [4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1512444/veronika-voss).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | *Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss* ("the longing of Veronika Voss")[5](https://www.filmportal.de/film/die-sehnsucht-der-veronika-voss_23a3a9d3edf14beca0ac3c3927a1fab6) |
| Director / year | Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany, 1982; his penultimate film[3](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/veronika-voss/) |
| Basis | Freely modeled on the life of Ufa star Sybille Schmitz (1909–1955)[6](https://www.dieterwunderlich.de/Fassbinder_Veronika_Voss.htm) |
| Lead cast | Rosel Zech (Veronika Voss), Hilmar Thate (Robert Krohn), Annemarie Düringer (Dr. Marianne Katz), Cornelia Froboess (Henriette)[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/593-veronika-voss) |
| Format | 104 minutes, black and white, 35mm, German language[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/593-veronika-voss) |
| Award | Golden Bear, 1982 Berlin International Film Festival[3](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/veronika-voss/) |
| Premiere | 18 February 1982, Berlinale; German theatrical release followed the same month[5](https://www.filmportal.de/film/die-sehnsucht-der-veronika-voss_23a3a9d3edf14beca0ac3c3927a1fab6) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
In Munich in 1955, sportswriter Robert Krohn (Hilmar Thate) meets a frightened woman at a tram stop in the rain and lends her his umbrella. She is Veronika Voss (Rosel Zech), once a star of the state-run Ufa studio, now unable to find work in the young Federal Republic and addicted to morphine[5](https://www.filmportal.de/film/die-sehnsucht-der-veronika-voss_23a3a9d3edf14beca0ac3c3927a1fab6) • [7](https://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/veronikavoss.html). Krohn begins a liaison with her, driven half by compassion and half by journalistic curiosity, and gradually discovers that she lives as a patient in the practice of Dr. Marianne Katz (Annemarie Düringer), who keeps her dependent on drugs and does the same to other wealthy patients, taking over their property in exchange for the narcotics, protected by a health-office official[5](https://www.filmportal.de/film/die-sehnsucht-der-veronika-voss_23a3a9d3edf14beca0ac3c3927a1fab6).
Krohn's girlfriend Henriette (Cornelia Froboess) joins his investigation and is killed. Veronika's attempt to restart her career with a small part in a film fails. Because her contact with Krohn has made her inconvenient, Katz arranges a farewell party at which Veronika is told she is leaving for Hollywood, then leaves her locked in her room without the morphine she needs; on Easter Sunday she kills herself with sleeping pills. Krohn grasps what has happened but cannot prove it, and returns to his job at the stadium[5](https://www.filmportal.de/film/die-sehnsucht-der-veronika-voss_23a3a9d3edf14beca0ac3c3927a1fab6).
## Basis in the life of Sybille Schmitz
The story is loosely based on Sybille Schmitz, a Ufa star of the 1930s and 1940s who appeared in more than thirty films, including Carl Dreyer's *Vampyr* (1932), and who became addicted to drugs and died by suicide in 1955[6](https://www.dieterwunderlich.de/Fassbinder_Veronika_Voss.htm) • [8](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/veronika-voss-1982). According to Michael Töteberg's production history, Fassbinder first sketched the project in May 1981 under the title *Sybille Schmitz*; he had wanted to cast her in *The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant* (1972) before learning she had died decades earlier[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1512444/veronika-voss).
The real case behind Dr. Katz was Schmitz's physician, Dr. Ursula Moritz, who was charged "with continued offense against the drug law with intent to gain illegal financial advantage" on the suspicion that she drugged her patients to bleed them of money. She was imprisoned for four months on minor charges and never brought to justice for the three patients who died under her care[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1512444/veronika-voss).
The film also reworks the Goebbels question. In Fassbinder's telling, a colleague of Robert's explains that Voss was a favorite of [Joseph Goebbels](https://www.edgepedia.org/joseph-goebbels) and only claimed after the war to have been blacklisted by him[9](https://inayearwith44films.com/2014/08/14/veronika-voss-1982/). Casting the blonde Rosel Zech foreclosed any reading of the heroine's decline as the result of antisemitism, a choice the film's commentator sees as deliberately making the audience's sympathy ambivalent[9](https://inayearwith44films.com/2014/08/14/veronika-voss-1982/).
## The BRD trilogy and its meaning
*Veronika Voss* is the middle film of Fassbinder's BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) trilogy, three female-centered melodramas about West Germany's postwar "economic miracle", alongside *The Marriage of Maria Braun* (1978) and *Lola* (1981). Although it was the last of the three to be shot, its story is set chronologically between the other two, and the film carries the caption "BRD 2 / 1955"[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1512444/veronika-voss) • [10](https://www.deutsches-filmhaus.de/filme_einzeln/f_einzeln/fassbinder/fassbinder_q_s/sehnsucht_der_veronika_voss_die.htm).
Roger Ebert, the longtime film critic of the *Chicago Sun-Times*, read the trilogy's third chapter as being about Germany's lingering fascination with the imagery of the 1930s, its "aesthetic of decadence, domination, perversion, and sinister sexuality", and argued that Fassbinder presents Veronika's drug addiction as the result of her fall rather than its cause, the means by which she continued a doomed quest for eternal youth[8](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/veronika-voss-1982). Other critics note that the film differs from its siblings: unlike the resourceful heroines of *Maria Braun* and *Lola*, Veronika is defined by dependence, and the film's villains profit not from ideology but from greed. The commentator at The Cinematograph reads Dr. Katz's cutting off of an elderly patient's medication after acquiring his house as a continuation, motivated by money rather than antisemitism, of the work of the Holocaust, and describes the film as asking viewers to question optimistic assumptions about the foundations of the postwar republic[11](https://www.the-cinematograph.com/movies/veronika-voss/).
## Style
Fassbinder shot the film in widescreen black and white with cinematographer Xaver Schwarzenberger, deliberately recalling prewar German cinema through expressive shadows and old-fashioned dissolves, and filling the frame with objects: clothes, jewelry, furniture, paintings, and kitsch[6](https://www.dieterwunderlich.de/Fassbinder_Veronika_Voss.htm) • [8](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/veronika-voss-1982). The opening titles glide diagonally across the screen opposite their shadows, and the first scene shows Veronika watching one of her old films in a cinema, with Fassbinder himself seated behind her as an anonymous moviegoer[11](https://www.the-cinematograph.com/movies/veronika-voss/) • [7](https://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/veronikavoss.html).
The film's most discussed visual device is the whiteness of Dr. Katz's world. The film historian [Thomas Elsaesser](https://www.edgepedia.org/thomas-elsaesser), author of *Fassbinder's Germany*, wrote that "Never before has white seemed so menacing, so evil as in the apartment of Dr. Katz, and in the room that will become both prison and grave to Veronika. Not a film noir, then, but a film blanc."[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1512444/veronika-voss) Critics have also traced the film's lineage to [Billy Wilder](https://www.edgepedia.org/billy-wilder)'s *Sunset Boulevard* (1950), another story of an aging star and a younger man, and to German expressionist films such as *The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari*[7](https://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/veronikavoss.html) • [11](https://www.the-cinematograph.com/movies/veronika-voss/).
## Production and reception
The film was produced by Thomas Schühly and others through Laura Film, Tango-Film, Rialto Film, Trio-Film, Maran Film, and Süddeutscher Rundfunk, with music by Peer Raben, production design by Rolf Zehetbauer, and editing by Juliane Lorenz, who later recalled the four-week November 1981 shoot as unusually harmonious and cut the final version three days after the end of filming[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/593-veronika-voss) • [5](https://www.filmportal.de/film/die-sehnsucht-der-veronika-voss_23a3a9d3edf14beca0ac3c3927a1fab6) • [6](https://www.dieterwunderlich.de/Fassbinder_Veronika_Voss.htm). It premiered in competition at the [Berlin International Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/berlin-international-film-festival) on 18 February 1982, passed German censorship at ages 16 and up on 16 February 1982, and received its first German television broadcast on ARD on 16 January 1985[5](https://www.filmportal.de/film/die-sehnsucht-der-veronika-voss_23a3a9d3edf14beca0ac3c3927a1fab6).
Fassbinder died on 10 June 1982 in Munich of a fatal combination of drugs and alcohol, roughly four months after the film's release[8](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/veronika-voss-1982) • [11](https://www.the-cinematograph.com/movies/veronika-voss/). On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a Tomatometer score of 76 percent from 17 critics and an audience score of 79 percent[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/veronika_voss). Ebert gave it four stars and called Fassbinder's visual style "the perfect match for this subject"[8](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/veronika-voss-1982), while the Boston Globe's Michael Blowen called it Fassbinder's best film[2](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/veronika_voss). [The Criterion Collection](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-criterion-collection) released it as spine number 205 and in a BRD Trilogy box set[1](https://www.criterion.com/films/593-veronika-voss).
## References
1. [Veronika Voss, The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/films/593-veronika-voss)
2. [Veronika Voss, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/veronika_voss)
3. [Veronika Voss, Film Society of Lincoln Center](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/veronika-voss/)
4. [Veronika Voss by R. Emmet Sweeney, Turner Classic Movies](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1512444/veronika-voss)
5. [Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, filmportal.de](https://www.filmportal.de/film/die-sehnsucht-der-veronika-voss_23a3a9d3edf14beca0ac3c3927a1fab6)
6. [Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, Dieter Wunderlich](https://www.dieterwunderlich.de/Fassbinder_Veronika_Voss.htm)
7. [Veronika Voss, Neil Young's Film Lounge](https://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/veronikavoss.html)
8. [Veronika Voss movie review & film summary, Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/veronika-voss-1982)
9. [Veronika Voss (1982), In a Year with 44 Films](https://inayearwith44films.com/2014/08/14/veronika-voss-1982/)
10. [Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, Deutsches Filmhaus](https://www.deutsches-filmhaus.de/filme_einzeln/f_einzeln/fassbinder/fassbinder_q_s/sehnsucht_der_veronika_voss_die.htm)
11. [Veronika Voss, The Cinematograph](https://www.the-cinematograph.com/movies/veronika-voss/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1980s › Released 1980 to 1985*
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