Freak Orlando
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
by Virginia Woolf
- Renée Gundelach
- Sibylle Hubatschek-Rahn
| Freak Orlando | |
|---|---|
 Film poster | |
| Directed by | Ulrike Ottinger |
| Written by | Ulrike Ottinger |
| Based on | Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | Magdalena Montezuma |
| Cinematography | Ulrike Ottinger |
| Edited by | Dörte Völz-Mammarella |
Release date |
|
Running time | 126 minutes |
| Country | West Germany |
| Language | German |
Freak Orlando is a 1981 West German comedy film directed by Ulrike Ottinger and starring Magdalena Montezuma.[1][2][3][4] It is based on Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando: A Biography.
The film is divided into five acts in which the main character Orlando, with different genders and hardly aging himself, experiences various eras from the Baroque period to the present day.
In the first act, Orlando is a nobleman in his twenties at the court of King James I of England; in the second, he is an ambassador to Constantinople on behalf of King James II of England; in the third, Orlando returns to 18th-century England as a woman and marries a naval officer there in the 19th century. In the 20th century, Orlando, now around 40 years old,[clarification needed] leads a life similar to Woolf as an emancipated intellectual and poet.
The film ends with a "Festival of the Ugly", where lame people dance and dwarfs make faces before a jury and accompanied by four dancing Playboy "bunnies". A seemingly bourgeois pharmaceutical salesman is ultimately crowned the winner.
