THE TRUE STORY OF “THE DEVIL’S BATH”: HOW A LONG-FORGOTTEN SUICIDE-BY-PROXY EPIDEMIC INSPIRED THE TERRIFYING NEW FILM

Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, the Austrian filmmaking duo behind "Goodnight Mommy," explain the shocking real-life inspiration behind their latest movie.

Sometimes, the best scary stories come from our own dark history.

Austrian filmmaking duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala (Goodnight Mommy, The Lodge) found that to be true with their new movie, The Devil’s Bath, which is based on a largely forgotten real-life epidemic of suicide by proxy that plagued German-speaking areas in 17th- and 18th-century Europe. 

The pair discovered the story that would inspire their German-language film while listening to an American podcast. “It was This American Life, [an episode] about loopholes,” Fiala tells Entertainment Weekly, referring to a 2017 installment of the popular pod hosted by Ira Glass. “[UC Davis Professor] Kathy Stuart, the historian, very briefly talked about this loophole in the history of women committing suicide, which was considered the worst crime by religion because you could not confess it. And some women, or many women in Europe, found a way around that, and it was a phenomenon.”

As Professor Stuart explained on the podcast, it was believed at the time that those who died by suicide would be damned to hell. To avoid eternal punishment, a shocking number of people (mostly women) committed horrible crimes — usually murdering children — with the intent of turning themselves in to authorities, who would then sentence them to death. As prisoners, the women would have the opportunity to confess their sins to a priest, who would absolve them of their crimes before their execution. Therefore, those women were able to end their lives while sparing their souls damnation and their families the social stigma of suicide. Children were often chosen as victims because it was believed they would die as innocents and go to heaven without the need for confession. 

In her research, Stuart uncovered about 400 cases of this strange practice between 1580 and 1839 in German-speaking Central Europe. In Vienna alone, there were 95 cases of suicide by proxy between 1668 and 1783. She found the occurrence was common with both protestants and Catholics and resulted in a higher murder rate even compared to modern times. 

“It was strange because this was an American podcast, but the case actually is from Upper Austria, which is a very poor and deserted area,” Franz explains. “It was kind of strange to us to get to know this.”

“We were shocked that we had never heard about it because there are several hundred cases, and it's all over Europe,” Fiala adds. “So, that sparked our interest to contact Kathy and further research the whole thing, and she's a great character and opened up her research to us and let us read all the interrogation protocols of those women. That was the emotional starting point of the whole story.”

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The Devil’s Bath follows a woman named Agnes who struggles to fit in with her new community after moving with her husband to his neighboring village. While the film and character are works of fiction, Agnes is based on a real person, Eva Lizlfellnerin, an Upper Austrian peasant who lived from 1736–1762. “We were first surprised about the phenomenon and then touched by the personal story of this woman — it's mainly one case the script is based on,” explains Fiala. “But the more we researched it, the more we also found connections to our days, so to speak.”

The filmmakers call discovering that connection to modern times the “last component” of the story that made it worthy of a feature. “You would never only want to make a film about the past,” says Fiala. “We feel it always also needs to [say] something about our daily life now. And this woman the film is based on, she was a perfectionist, and she just couldn't fulfill everything that society asked of her. She always thought she was not good enough and she was the one to blame in a way. That's something that I think many people and many women in modern days still [feel].”

“The theme of depression was very important to us from the beginning as we wanted to get this right to portray this kind of mental illness,” notes Franz.

“Even though we don't know much about that time, we felt that people were still human beings back then as they are now,” adds Fiala. “They also had hopes and dreams and fears. That was important to make it relatable. The rules of the world back then were rather weird and not relatable, so I think the emotions of the people, at least, should be relatable for audiences to engage with the story.”

One of their creative collaborators — their composer — found the story so relatable that she also became the film's star actress. Better recognized by her stage name, Soap&Skin, Anja Plaschg is a well-known Austrian singer whose music videos boast upwards of 34 million views on YouTube. Fans of her work, Franz and Fiala reached out to her to compose the music for The Devil’s Bath. 

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“We sent her the script, and she wrote us a letter back, and we were blown away by how much she related to the story and to the character,” recalls Franz. “So we said, ‘Okay, let's do an audition.' She had never done an audition before. It was just the three of us and we instantly could see her charisma, but at that point, we were not sure. She's not a trained actress and she had to do so many different things if she would be able to do [the role]. But once we started shooting, she was so fast in learning and she did everything. She was a gift of God because she did things normal actresses would never do.”

Among the unusual things Plaschg did for the role was to spend several days living in the sparse stone house her character calls home. “She moved into that house,” Fiala reveals. “She was actually cooking there. And this really helps more than you would think because it is really her cooking [in the film]." Still, the filmmaker admits, “It was very hard. Also super, super, super cold.”

Other tactics the filmmakers used to enhance the film's authenticity included filming in chronological order (so that the actors "can really grow" with their characters) and having the cast live in their period clothing. "We felt they were realistic, but once the actors and actresses put them on in the first dress rehearsal, it totally looked like costumes," says Fiala of the outfits. "The whole thing looked totally fake and we were kind of desperate and didn't understand why. Then they started wearing them, and the longer they wore the costumes, the more natural they looked in those costumes."

"They got used to them even when in the supermarket, not being aware that they had their costumes on," adds Franz. "They were like, 'Why are people staring at us?'"

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For the filmmakers, telling Agnes’ story was also an opportunity to shine a light on those often overlooked in history. ”We don't know anything about women and poor people from that time because history had never been interested in them,” explains Fiala. “It's just royalty and nobility and maybe some artists. Nobody was interested in those [other] people, but they did give very detailed accounts of their daily lives, their fears and hopes and dreams, and that was very, very touching to us."

Incredibly, the film seems to have touched living relatives of Eva Lizlfellnerin, the woman the movie is based on. Just a few weeks before this interview, Franz and Fiala were speaking to audience members after a script lecture for the film when two women approached them. "They were very, very, very shy, and they basically just looked to the stairs and mumbled something, and I had a really hard time understanding what they wanted from me," recalls Fiala. "Then I found out they wanted to ask if they could read the interrogation protocols that the film is based on, and I asked why. And she said 'because we're related to the woman that film is based on.'"

"Their grandfather had done research by himself, so they knew the name," adds Franz. "When they read about the movie, they were totally blown away that there is a film basically based on their ancestor. And they showed up."

The Devil's Bath is streaming now on Shudder.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.

2024-06-28T16:56:12Z dg43tfdfdgfd