Carol Murphy talks to director Marc Rothemund about Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, a dramatic recreation of the last week in the life of the German resistance martyr.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Sophie Scholl: Die letzten Tage) tells the story of the last six days of one of the most famous German resistance martyrs; Scholl died at the hands of the Gestapo at the age 21 in February 1943. Sophie, played by Julia Jentsch (The Edukators), and her brother Hans (Fabian Hinrichs) were members of The White Rose - an intellectually-motivated passive resistance organisation. Hans had been a medical aid on the Eastern front, and knew that the war was lost after the battle of Stalingrad in January 1943; their campaign of leafleting universities throughout Germany was aimed at creating an awareness in relation to the human rights violations and war crimes which were taking place on the Eastern Front.

The story begins with the preparation of a leafleting campaign at The University of Munich, leading to the arrest by The Gestapo of brother and sister Scholl. So begins Sophie's interrogation at the Gestapo Headquarters where she lies, fearlessly resists, and intellectually outmanoeuvres Robert Mohr (Alexander Held), her Nazi interrogator.

Based on the actual transcriptions of Scholl's interrogation, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days deals with Sophie's uncommon bravery, integrity and grace - from a 21 year-old listening to the music of Billie Holiday to an idealistic and committed resistance fighter and finally to her struggle with the powers that, within the space of three days, put her on trial and sent her to her execution chamber.

With a string of features, documentaries, and TV movies under his belt, including Love Scenes from Planet Earth (1998) and Just The Two of Us (1999), German director Marc Rothemund took a very personal interest in the story of Sophie Scholl - beginning with a TV documentary. However we started by discussing his work progress.

Carol: How do you cope with the day-to-day worry on a film set that it will all fall apart?

Marc: That's my engine. That keeps me going - not to be afraid, but to doubt whether it is good and whether I can do it and to double check all the possibilities.

That is quite surprising because with directors I am always struck with how sure they are.

That's acting.

Is that just to let others think that they know what they are doing?

No for me it is always a work in progress. Let's say there are two different kinds of director: There is one director who writes his script by himself - he has exactly the images, the angles and everything in his head. He then tells all the crew and the actors how it should look. For me I have a feeling for a scene, then I wait for the proposals from the creative heads of departments and from the actors. I tell them how I imagine it could work, and then we have a first rehearsal. I don't say too much because I don't want to lose the ideas of all the others. I check to see if it fits with the feeling that I had for the scene; then we start 'working in progress', and somehow saying 'gate check' after.

Where does doubt come into the end product, because what you have described is a pretty sure plan of action.

If at the end of the movie I have to be sure that I have thought about all possibilities that I could have used. Peter Ustinov said that somebody who is not doubting is crazy, and I think it is boring if I know exactly how I want it and I run after my imagination. I love the idea of work in progress and something changing and then something developing with people.

So what attracted you to the story of Sophie Scholl?

That she was lying. Everybody knows Sophie Scholl in Germany. It is like a brand name; she is the most famous German.

Did that not put you off approaching her story because it is such marked territory?

No, not at all. That was the thing. No one in Germany knew that she was lying and fighting for her life, and that made her so human.

How was the situation interpreted in Germany if they didn't know she was lying?

They thought they were arrested and were so courageous that they said to the Gestapo 'Kill Me!' but it was totally different. She was fighting for her life. The first interrogation, which in the movie is about ten minutes, was five hours long. To sit in front of a Gestapo Nazi interrogation specialist and to go on lying for five hours
so that in the end he believes her is unbelievable. In the end she had to confess, because her brother forgot a handwritten note, that was in his pocket, which proved that they were involved in this political business. Then she went on lying to try to save the life of their friends by telling the Nazis that it was only her and her brother who were involved. But it is so exciting - how long can she keep lying? Here you have a 21 year-old woman, well educated, a student, who spends three days with a 44 year-old Nazi in one room, who in the end tries to save her life. Over three days with two such different characters - it is such an intense emotional journey.

It says in the production notes that those interrogation transcriptions were only available in the 90s.

They were never published.

How did you get your hands on them?

The easiest of the whole thing was to get these documents, because all Gestapo headquarters destroyed all documents at the end of the war. But these documents were sent to the People's Court in Berlin, and when the Russians came they sent them to Moscow, then to East Germany, where they were checked and hidden. After the reunification they became part of the German archive, and there they were lying for 13 years. No one was ever interested in them; I was really the first. I was calling asking 'Can I see the documents?' 'Yes one Euro.' And it was not only the documents of Sophie Scholl it was also Hans Scholl and all the members. There were documents about the trial, you saw the handwriting… and then I found a 14-page letter of the cellmate. In the three days she spent most of the time in the interrogation room, but the lady she shared a cell with wrote a 14-page letter to the parents to let them know exactly how their daughter spent the three days there. So the timing and motivation of the emotional breakdown of Sophie Scholl in the film are from this letter.

Why did you decide that you wanted to make a feature film rather than a documentary?

First, I made a TV documentary with all the eyewitness interviews, and with many of the unpublished photos that they gave us. Then I did the feature film.

Why?

100% personal interest. I invited two actors, two friends with two cameras, to just read through the interrogation. I wanted to hear and to see actors bringing these original words to life, and I wanted to make the same emotional journey that Sophie Scholl did. I tell you, when I did the first rehearsal on location with the whole crew - 100 people behind the camera and Julia Jentsch and Alexander Held, two of the best German actors, in front of the camera - it was such an intense atmosphere. The whole crew was dumbstruck. It was really living.

Did you not feel that the task was a scary one in relation to your responsibility to representations of history?

Yeah, but this kind of scary helps you to double check all the possibilities.

The way the story is constructed in terms of your use of film language is fairly traditional. Did you ever feel like breaking that language down?

I am not an artist, for me I am a hand worker. It is a very straight story, so I had to find the turning points in her emotional journey. For me the structure was very important. I think I would have lost my responsibility if I had to leave out very important dramaturgical handwork points that you need to tell a story of two hours.

The character of Mohr, the Gestapo interrogator, was portrayed as a product of his time. How did you consider approaching his character?

I never felt sympathy or empathy for him, you know? I don't like this guy - he is a Nazi guy, he is guilty - but the interesting thing is my grandmother, for example, was a Nazi. She also said 'Heil Hitler', but she was a sportswoman; she wanted to take part in the Olympic Games in 1940 and the Nazis sponsored her. She never had to work, she was never curious about where the money came from or the politics of the situation, and she was always shouting 'Heil Hitler'. And this generation, this mass of yes-men, out of their bad conscience, refused to talk to their children and grandchildren. And I love my grandmother - she wasn't a murderer but she said Heil Hitler, and I tell you most of the Germans were not murderers. Lets say we had 50 million Germans, and out of that we had five million murderers - unbelievable amount - But there were still 45 million who were yes men, who were guilty, and who were still saying 'Heil Hitler'.

This Mohr was a little policeman in the countryside; then the Nazi dictatorship came to power and within a few years he was one of the heads of the Gestapo officials. He got a lot of money, and he didn't want to know where the money came from because for him his life got better and better, so why should he be curious? And that was for me very interesting because I wouldn't like to identify with a murderer.

In your film Sophie did break through to Mohr as if he started to doubt.

At least to think - and that was always the idea of the White Rose. They were writing 6 leaflets on a very high level, and their only aim was that they wanted to make the people think. They were calling for passive resistance for human rights.

There are scenes which make religious references in your film, for instance when the interrogator Mohr washed his hands after finishing his interrogation of Sophie.

That is the only symbolic scene; that was the idea of the writer, and I was for a long time thinking will I leave it in or not. I wondered how I should end the scene. I think that when he turns away from her to wash his hands that that was a good way to end such a long interrogation and such an emotional journey. Sophie believed in God, not in an extremist way, but she believed in something that goes on after death and that helped her to decide 'I don't regret, I accept the death, and I won't work with you murderers'. So all the prayers are original Sophie Scholl words. I don't believe in God, but for this movie it was a very exciting adventure, with Julia Jentsch, to say that for the next month we believe in God.

Where does your doubt come in if you have to force yourself to believe in God for month?

Not at all. I was full of joy that I could say I believe in God.

When I was watching the film I didn't know how Sophie was going to be executed.

In Germany nobody knew how they got killed. 70% thought they got hung and 30% shot. So in the movie when you see the guillotine you get a shock. And it is a real guillotine from the Gestapo headquarters. The Nazi's ordered hundreds of guillotines because they wanted to have one for each headquarters, but it is very small so you can transport it.

The music you use at the end of the film is absolutely beautiful. It's Ella Fitzgerald, isn't it? Who was she singing with on that track?

I can't remember. I was listening to hundreds of songs from the 30s and 40s for the music; I chose Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, and this is my frame, let's say. Then I tried to look for composers in Germany, but they were always with their music already commenting on the end. So I went to LA and had a German and an Australian composer who didn't know Sophie Scholl, and I told them that the music had to be on the same level as Sophie Scholl; the music may never know more than Sophie Schroll. In the beginning I had techno music.

Why didn't you use it?

I tried it and it didn't work. Then the poor Bratislava Orchestra had to replace the modern techno instruments, but keep the power of the techno music. I was talking to the cellist going 'more power, faster, faster' like this to transport the state of mind and state of emotion of the people. And in the end some stupid German critic said that it was making her heroic - not at all because, for me, you know, if you go free and upright to the guillotine, to your death, then there was a time before that you accepted the death. It shows her in a trance because it shows that she accepted the death before.

So what is next for you?

A porn comedy.

A porn film? Oh, that's nice.

It's called Pornorama, and it takes place in the 60s in Germany, which was the most conservative society you can imagine. I see documentary films of the 60s, when I was born, and it looks like another planet. It is unbelieveable: There is a bunch of guys who have a great idea to make money…we shoot the first German porn movie, and they see that it is very difficult in this society to shoot a porn movie, but it is even more difficult to shoot a movie and they end up with a completely different film. So I will make a comedy that will make people laugh, but they will also learn about the 60s.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days screens at Dublin's IFI from 2nd December (Club).
Sophie Scholl: Die letzten Tage official website (German language).