
Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg review – rockn’roll ‘muse’ in the spotlight
Peter Bradshaw
Anita Pallenberg endured many things, including the condescension of being labelled “muse” to the Rolling Stones. She became the girlfriend of Brian Jones who abused her, married Keith Richards who neglected her and then co-starred in the movie Performance with Mick Jagger, who fell unrequitedly in love with her. Now this documentary tells Pallenberg’s strange, sad, melodramatic story, with Scarlett Johansson voicing Pallenberg’s memories from her unpublished autobiography entitled Black Magic, discovered in manuscript after her death in 2017.
Born to a wealthy, cultured German family in Rome, Pallenberg did a bit of modelling and was then discovered by director Volker Schlöndorff. After she played a few minor movie roles, including opposite Jane Fonda in Bar...