We are chilled when we hear Swinton say “Arbeit Macht Frei” or “Work Makes You Free” as seen above on the gates at Auschwitz and Dachau Concentration Camps. Ella decides that she will impersonate her dead husband by cutting her hair, changing her appearance and wearing his clothes and also continue working in his employment as a crane operator.  His gravestone is altered to give her name and she becomes him. At first she pretends that she has had an accident falling down stairs and winds bandages round her head until her work colleagues get used to Max’s new face. 

She wears red Y fronts, has bare legs with a string vest and big men’s working boots.  On her face and body is dried white paint, her hair is straw coloured and her teeth discoloured. Bunny Christie’s set (she was the designer in 1987) is a white box with an old fashioned television and a white fridge.  She is a working class woman in the Weimar Republic and adopts an Estuary English accent.