The story takes place in West Germany in the 1970s, a time of great public fear caused by the Red Army Faction's terror campaign of bombing and murder. Katharina Blum is seen going home one night with a suspected terrorist after a party, and she is subsequently arrested and interrogated. The police give her some fairly aggressive treatment and the tabloid newspapers smear her name. As you would expect in a left-wing political film, Ms Blum plays the innocent martyr in all of this, an apparently wrongfully accused woman whose rights are abused by both police investigators and the media. The cops and reporters are made to be caricatures of meanness and evil. The film-makers try every manipulative trick in the book to make us sympathize with her, and think ill of her accusers. When she refuses to cooperate in their investigation, she is portrayed as legitimately defending her dignity.
The problem with all of this of course is that to many politically moderate viewers, the woman thoroughly deserved everything that she got! [Some SPOILERS ahead] It is revealed at the end of the film that she did in fact aid and abet the terrorist, and in fact knew where he was hiding. She could easily have avoided all the negative newspaper coverage and police brusqueness by cooperating. Indeed she had a clear moral obligation to do so. That she felt a romantic attraction to the fugitive, is an incredibly selfish reason for her not to help the police. Only in the upside-down moral universe of the lunatic left does the anti-police and anti-media blame game in this film make any sense at all. Katharina Blum has only herself to blame for her loss of honor.
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