LILIAN - The Color of Freedom

Motion picture • Drama
Dietrich von Oppeln (49) 06761-9678680

A young beautiful Mulatto, bar dancer and classy fancy Lady from San Francisco falls in love with a homeless but talented Jazz Pianist, whose lover she kills after a breach of fidelity. She is going to be hanged as the last woman in San Quentin in 1937.

The story takes place in San Francisco during the time of the “Great Depression” between 1934 and 1937. This is also a time of the flourishing Jazz of Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. The main Protagonist LILIAN DA SYLVA is a dancer in the well-known Jazz Bar Blue Saloon, where she is famous for her striptease shadow play dances behind a linen cloth. She is also a noble prostitute for wealthy upper-class customers such as the Governor of California and the Mayor of San Francisco. She loves the Golden Gate Bridge and watches the construction with excitement. The construction workers are her friends.

Because she has suffered bad experiences as a mixed breed, she always carries a dagger with her which she straps to her thigh. Generally, she despises men and has no boyfriend or lover, until the day the home- and jobless Jazz Pianist FRED KRAMER shows up. She falls in love with him because in her eyes he is so different than other men and extraordinarily talented in playing the piano, especially while accompanying her dances. She takes him into her apartment, buys him a white Grand Piano and helps him network with her connections. Soon, he becomes a well-known pianist and sells his first compositions. She gets pregnant from him.

At the same time, she meets the Governor, who was an incognito visitor in the Blue Saloon. He orders her services. When she comes to his house, he is unable to sleep with her. Impressed by her beauty and the grace of her body, he makes nude art photographs of her. She visits him several times and an odd kind of love begins between them, a love between artists. But she stays faithful to Fred, while he is starting to look at other women. When she nails him on this, he appeases her with a new composition which he dedicates to her and to their love. He promises fidelity.

One day as she approaches her apartment, she hears the tunes of “her music” that he had dedicated to her. When she enters the apartment, a white woman lies naked on the Grand Piano and mocks the mulatto Lilian telling her that she is a loser: “This place is taken.” Furious, Lilian jumps on the piano and cuts the throat of the woman. Then she flings her knife at Fred who tries to escape and hurts him badly. Next day she gets arrested and thrown into the San Quentin prison. After a short trial, she is sentenced to death.

Lilian's mother begs the Governor for mercy. She reveals that Lilian is his daughter from a rape 27 years ago. Also petitions of mercy by Fred are of no use. She is going to be executed the same year and month when the Golden Gate Bridge is opened (May 1937). And a miracle happens.

A movie with Jazz of the 1930’s.

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