The old movies again, in a different way: Christian Petzold shares 8 influences on Miroirs No. 3

During the shoot for Transit (2018), Christian Petzold made his cast and crew watch Mike Nichols’ The Graduate (1967). “They all said to me: ‘Why are we watching this movie with Mrs Robinson and Simon and Garfunkel? It has nothing to do with Transit!’” In turn, the German director explained to his actors that Nichols grew up in Berlin and moved to New York in 1938. “Transit is about people who leave Germany for the USA. At the end of their journey, they might make a movie like The Graduate.”

Petzold, then, is a firm believer that classic cinema can influence the movies of today. So much so, in his latest film, Miroirs No. 3, the main character is named after Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944). In Petzold’s mesmerising drama, Laura (Paula Beer) is the lone survivor of a car crash that sees her temporarily housed by a sympathetic witness, Betty (Barbara Auer), who unnerves her family by wholeheartedly welcoming in a total stranger.

Not for the first time in his illustrious career, Petzold is drawing from auteurs such as Alfred Hitchcock, Yasujiro Ozu, and even himself. Petzold’s Wolfsburg (2003), Yella (2007) and Jerichow (2008) also depict car crash survivors (Wolfsburg has one called Laura), while Ghosts (2005) has a lonely woman trying to slot herself into a grieving family. 

Below, Petzold talks us through the films that influenced the writing and directing of Miroirs No. 3.

Director: Otto Preminger

Petzold: My best friend, Harun Farocki, who died in 2014, said to me, “We don’t have to make new movies. We can do the old movies again, in a different way. For example, you could make Vertigo (1958) but from Kim Novak’s position.”

Paula Beer’s Laura is named after Preminger’s Laura. I wanted to make a movie like Laura but from the point of view of Laura. She comes back, and there’s a policeman who’s fallen in love with her dead image. How can she fall in love with this man who only falls in love with dead women?

In Miroirs, someone falls in love because they think they’ve found their dead daughter. Paula Beer’s Laura wants to be real, not imaginary: her hair in the wind, her body on the bicycle, how she’s eating plum cakes.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Petzold: I saw Rebecca with Barbara Auer, who plays Betty. There’s an interview with Truffaut and Hitchcock. Truffaut says, “Why do we always fear seeing the woman in the castle?” Hitchcock says, “You never see her coming or leaving.” It’s something Hitchcock learned from Murnau. You never see Nosferatu walking. Open the coffin, and he’s just there.

After Betty finds Laura, you don’t see her walking. She’s just there. You can imagine why the original daughter killed herself – it’s because this mother is like a monster.

Director: Claude Sautet

Petzold: In the script for Miroirs, I made the final scene like this Claude Sautet movie. Paula Beer said, “The final scene is wrong.” I don’t like it when actors criticise the script. 99% of movies directed by actors are really bad. Some are great like Wildlife (2018) or The Night of the Hunter (1955), but they only make one in their lifetime. But when we shot it, I knew Paula was right. We had to do the final scene again [months later].

Two men are fighting each other because of Romy Schenider. Therefore, she leaves the village. She comes back after one year, and she’s standing at the fence of this house, and she sees through the window that these guys are happy as friends. They don’t need her anymore. Romy Schneider starts laughing.

I wanted to recreate it, and it was a big mistake. When you see Paula Beer with a black coat and her luggage, standing at the fence and laughing – it’s so ridiculous. I might put it on the DVD as an extra.

Director: David Lynch

Petzold: I realised later: Laura and Betty (Laura Harring plays Rita, Naomi Watts plays Betty) are the two women from Mulholland Dr. It’s also a love affair based on a lie. I’m so infected by David Lynch’s cinema. I thought I named Paula Beer’s Laura after Preminger, but maybe it’s Mulholland Dr. You have the dream of a guilty woman who wants to be the good guy. It’s one of the best movies ever made. 

Director: Christian Petzold

Petzold: I love Howard Hawks, and he remade his own movies. When we made Miroirs, I knew it was echoing Ghosts. Both are to do with a Brothers Grimm fairytale, ‘Das Totenhemdchen’ [‘The Shroud’], about a mother whose grief for her daughter is so deep that she prepares dinner for the two of them each evening. The daughter comes out of the grave, and says, “Mother, you have to stop your tears, because I want to go to heaven.” The mother stops grieving, and the daughter vanishes.

This is a metaphor for both movies. A mother’s grief creates a ghost.

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Petzold: During lockdown in Germany, all cinemas were closed for one year. The Wild Pear Tree was the first film I could see after lockdown. This young writer comes back to this village, and he turns to this young woman. You see they fell in love years ago, but she’s marrying someone else. She asks for a cigarette. The camera goes into the tree, the wind comes in, and it’s one of the best moments in a cinema I’ve ever had. 

Director: Michael Cimino

Petzold: At the end of The Deer Hunter, they sit around a table, drinking coffee and eating eggs. Throughout the whole movie, their song is Frankie Valli’s ‘Can’t Take My Eyes off You’. In Miroirs, we have a porch scene with coffee and eggs, but it’s another Frankie Valli song, ‘The Night’, which I heard for the first time in a Miguel Gomes movie, The Tsugua Diaries (2021).

Director: Yasujiro Ozu

Petzold: My first movies were mainly in cars. It’s something to do with German identity. It’s a fetish. But lately [in Afire (2023) and Miroirs] I’ve become interested in bicycles. With cars, you reach 500 miles a day, but with a bicycle you’re just in the neighbourhood. My desire isn’t to reach Los Angeles. My desire is what’s happening around the corner.

The bike scene from Late Spring has been above me and my wife’s bed for 35 years. The young woman, who never wants to leave her father, and a young man are cycling to the sea. You see wind, the body, their conversation. When you have two people on bikes, you can put the camera in front of them. They’re facing the world. In a car, you put the camera in front, but it’s almost like theatre. With bicycles, it’s never theatre – it’s cinema.

Miroirs No. 3 is in cinemas now and on BFI Player from 18 May.