The Cat Has Nine Lives

Acclaimed as postwar Germany’s first feminist film, Ula Stoeckl’s The Cat Has Nine Lives disappeared from view shortly after its 1968 premiere when its distributor went bankrupt. Although it laid the groundwork for the flourishing feminist cinema that emerged in West Germany and beyond during the 1970s, Stoeckl’s vibrant film long remained largely unknown. Yet it is as fresh and relevant today as it was when it debuted half a century ago. Revived at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), The Cat Has Nine Lives is now available for the first time on DVD with English subtitles. Posing the question, Women have never had as many possibilities to do what they want as they have today, but do they know what they want?, Stoeckl’s film follows the intertwined stories of five characters to explore the possibilities for and limitations on women’s subjectivity, desire, friendship, work, and artistic expression in a society defined by gender inequality. Restoring this singular film to its rightful place as a German film classic, Hester Baer argues that The Cat Has Nine Lives forms an important aesthetic and theoretical precursor to the unfolding cinefeminism of later decades.