THE STORY – Paris, July 14, 1937. Gerda Taro spends her final day before returning to the Spanish front with Robert Capa and the friends with whom she fled Nazi Germany. As past and present intertwine, the key moments of her life resurface: her political activism in Leipzig, her years in exile in Paris, her encounter with Capa, her discovery of photography and her growing determination to use her Leica as a tool of resistance and freedom. A portrait of the first female photojournalist to die on the battlefield, a woman who embodied a time when everything still seemed possible.
THE CAST – Emilia Schüle, Aaron Altaras, Luna Wedler, Lucas Englander, Thomas Schubert, Sebastian Schneider, Idan Weiss, Lia von Blarer, Hans-Christian Hegewald, Jeremy Mockridge & Joel Basman
THE TEAM – Alina Marazzi (Director/Writer) & Valia Santella (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 119 Minutes
Most of us have heard of Robert Capa, right? And when we picture the war photographer, we probably recall a handsome American man in army fatigues, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette. So it might come as a surprise to learn that Robert Capa was actually a Hungarian Jew namned Endre Friedmann. Robert Capa was a pseudonym drummed up by him and his partner – both professional and romantic – Gerda Pohorylle (a German Jew who later took the name Taro). While Robert Capa has become a household name, Gerda Taro remains very much in his shadow, which is something of a travesty. Italo-Swiss director Alina Marazzi aims to rectify the situation.
Loosely based on the novel by Helena Janesczek, Marazzi’s German-language “The Girl with the Leica” is the story of Taro, who died on the frontline during the Spanish Civil War – the first female photojournalist to do so. The film opens in Paris on Bastille Day 1937, with Taro (Emilia Schüle) jauntily swaggering along the Seine on her way to her studio, where her and Capa’s assistants are prepping the latest batch of images. But before we even get to the opening scene, Marazzi showers us with myriad images taken by the talented photographer. In a voiceover, Taro states that heroes should be portrayed as “young and beautiful” and that is certainly the case here. Schüle is definitely a beauty and she plays Taro as a woman aware of her allure and unapologetically voracious – for men, for dancing, for life, but also for the fight against fascism. After fleeing Nazi Germany to Paris, she and her fellow émigrés continue to do what they can to aid the anti-fascist cause. This leads her to Capa (played with dishevelled charm by Aaron Altaras), to the Leica camera, and to her destiny as a photo reporter in Spain.
The film flits through time and place as Taro’s tale unfolds, going from Paris in 1937 back to Leipzig in 1932 and then to Spain, with the audience travelling back and forth between these three places. There is also a brief moment when the time-travelling takes us much further forward – certainly further than Taro or any of her companions could have actually experienced – as Taro walks through the streets of Paris, coming across a group of protesters in flared jeans. Perhaps they have been placed there to remind the viewer of other struggles throughout history. There is much in Taro’s story that resonates today – Europe succumbing to fascism, young idealists facing seemingly insurmountable odds, and the average worker suffering the consequences of decisions made by the rich and powerful. She managed to live a life packed full of adventure, travel and romance in her 26 years on Earth.
Marazzi also interweaves the film with archive footage: shots of thousands on the streets of Paris supporting the Spanish Republicans, people dancing the night away in the Weimar Republic, and so on. The director also uses film clips to support her own character’s story. Unfortunately, the archival footage is far more arresting than the action itself. This is partly due to the screenplay, which has characters espousing about the Leica camera and the magic of photography, or Bertolt Brecht making an appearance at a Parisian club. There is an awful lot of dancing, and too much of Taro wryly flirting with a variety of suitors, often using her wiles to appease or obtain, to the extent that she comes across not so much entrancing as pretty unpleasant, despite Schüle’s engaging performance. There are plenty of sympathetic supporting roles, none of them bad performances, but each character is portrayed as just a little bland and perhaps a little too in thrall to the lead character. This sells these real characters short, for they led lives almost as remarkable as Taro’s.
Marazzi has made a career out of women’s stories, whether taking on the extremely personal in “For One More Hour with You,” which tells the story of Marazzi’s mother’s suicide via her grandfather’s film footage and the director reading extracts from her mother’s diary and clinical notes, or the extremely political in “Vogliamo anche le rose,” which details the birth of the feminist movement in 1970s Italy. As a subject, Taro makes a perfect fit for this director. Unfortunately, despite such a luminous protagonist who lived in a truly incredible period of history, the film is just a little too dull, making you check your watch to see how much longer there is to go. One feels this fascinating woman would never have had you doing so, unless it was to discover in amazement that hours had flown by. She deserves a film more daring and more dazzling because if there’s one thing Taro wasn’t, it was boring. If you don’t know her work, seek it out.
