With “Miss Marx”, the Italian Susanna Nicchiarelli, 46, focuses on the fate of Eleanor Marx, the daughter of the author of Capital, who committed suicide at the age of 43.
Who knows Miss Marx? Five years after her biopic of Nico, the singer of the Velvet Underground, Susanna Nicchiarelli looks at another tragic fate, that of the youngest daughter of Karl Marx. More than 80 years separate the two women, but a thin thread connects them, the curse of the muse, or, let’s say, of the heiress. What path to choose, what wake to trace, when the statue of the father is so overwhelming?
Eleanor Marx devoted her life to extending Karl’s political and philosophical legacy by translating, among other things, Das Kapital in English, she was also an ardent feminist. The film follows her in her struggles, demonstrations by British suffragettes, visits to factories and atrocious visions of ordinary misery, in the England of the industrial revolution.
He is also close to the private woman, because Eleanor Marx was the companion of Edward Aveling, Marxist sympathizer and notorious swindler, who precipitated her into a nightmare of debts and infidelities. This is what Susanna Nicchiarelli intends to film, the hiatus between public face and private life, spirit of revolt and domestic submission. It’s a great ambition, driven by the neo-punk rock of the Downtown Boys.
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