An examination of Berlin Alexanderplatz going on Here.
I had heard that Herr R. was Spengler's film many years ago.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
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Jean-Luc Garbo
- Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 5:55 am
- Contact:
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thethirdman
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 8:26 pm
Jane Shattuc provides a few numbers in the appendix of Television Tabloid and Tears: Fassbinder and Popular Culture.Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:Does anyone know much government aid RWF got for his films? I don't think he's a hypocrite for taking it, but it's a subject I'm looking into now.
Katzelmacher
State Award: 250,000 DM Film Cost: 80,000 DM
Warum läuft Herr R. amok
State Award: 250,000 DM Film Cost: 135,000 DM
Der Händler der vier Jahreszeiten
State Award: 450,000 DM Film Cost: 178,000 DM
Effi Briest
State Award: 260,000 DM Film Cost: 750,000 DM
Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant
State Award: 200,000 DM Film Cost: 325,000 DM
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Jean-Luc Garbo
- Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 5:55 am
- Contact:
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zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 11:24 pm
1973
Ali:Fear Eats the Soul
This is a landmark Fassbinder film, if only in terms of its reception, and I've always enjoyed it, but it doesn't yield a lot more on a fourth viewing than I got on a first. Partly, that's a factor of the film's powerful thematic clarity. It's the first film that really embodies Fassbinder's 'schematic' narrative structures (I wish I could think of a less loaded term for this): those films that have a kind of scientific experimental logic to them, as in, let us now see how Community X responds to Aberration Y, like Fox and his Friends, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, Fear of Fear. Fassbinder's thesis in this film is nuanced, even ambiguous (e.g. the various possible explanations for what motivates the changes in heart of those around Emmi and Ali in the final act), but it's presented in an extremely direct and lucid way.
El Hedi Ben Salem and Brigitte Mira are similarly straightforward, two of the most open leads in any of his films, their stiffness a part of the characters (Ali's language difficulties and Emmi's formality) rather than an alienation effect. It's also expressive - for instance, Ali's stiff bow when he meets Emmi's family speaks volumes of their implied social relationship, and Ali's response to it. Ali necessarily remains somewhat unknowable - he's trapped and alienated in every context in which we see him - but our efforts to imagine his outlook on a given situation (rather than conventionally 'empathise'), as when Emmi shows off his muscles to her workmates, is an important part of the intellectual work we need to do to get the most out of the film.
Despite the film's surface us-against-them dynamic (as in Katzelmacher, gossip and racism are society's motors), Fassbinder keeps the central relationship complex through pointed details. Emmi's refusal to cook couscous crystallises the power disparity between them, and her nostalgia for an implicitly Fascist 'old Germany' adds a nasty historical edge to the film's exposure of Germany's (and Emmi's) ingrained racism. And yet, this is a film that does offer a glimmer of hope that 'love can conquer all' - Emmi and Ali remain together: love may be possible without complete understanding; happiness is not always fun. For me, this is embodied in a matched pair of wonderfully counter-intuitive camera moves in the garden restaurant scene. When Emmi breaks down under the relentless societal pressure, the camera moves in on the moment, but it moves in on Ali, not Emmi; then, when Ali comforts her, we have an opposite move in on Emmi. It's a great example of how Fassbinder at his best can sublimate the emotion of a moment into his mise en scene, so that we're swept up in the characters' emotion while still distanced from it.
Jurgen Jurges is the cinematographer here, his first completed film with Fassbinder (some of Fontane Effi Briest may have come first), and he's got the elegant moves of Michael Ballhaus down, particularly the gliding tracks in. The similarity of camera movement strongly suggests that this opulent style of camerawork had long been Fassbinder's preference, at least back to its first appearance in Whity, and the relevant constraint was the technical capacity of his DoP. Thus the rapid evolution in Lohmann's work over those first few years may not be so much a development of his ideas about the camera as a catching up with Fassbinder's ideas.
Martha
The first thing that pops into my mind whenever I think about this film is that ultimate Fassbinder shot when Margit Carstensen and Karl Bohm first enter one another's gravitational field, and the camera spins around them as they freeze and turn and continue moving forward all at once. It's a movement that speaks of entrapment and intoxication, even though the characters show no sign of mutual acknowledgement, and it will be a half-hour or so before their fates are intertwined. Camera movement in the film is crucial, but it tends to fulfil an editorial rather than narrative role. Movement is not motivated by the need to follow action, for example; it's more likely to provide punctuation (a short, quick track in on a character standing in for Fassbinder's raised eyebrow, say, or a swift lateral jerk of the camera registering Martha's surprise at one of the many outrages perpetrated against her).
The shot is a beautiful embodiment of the film's tone and themes, but there's more to the film than fancy cinematography. For one thing, for much of its length Martha is extremely funny, the blackest comedy imaginable, with Margit taking her 'distilled hysteria' persona to outrageous extremes. On these terms it's much more successful than Fassbinder's later and shriller Satan's Brew. The film's ultimate power, however, derives from the way in which the humour gradually bleeds out of the film, and we're left with a domestic horror film. Marriage = patriarchal power, and in Fassbinder's world power is always there to be abused. Bohm is perfectly cast, taking his already chilly Peeping Tom character and amputating everything redeemable from it.
When I first saw this film, during its 90s rediscovery, I saw Martha as being much more complicit in her victimhood: a closet masochist finally getting her secret fulfilment in the gruesome denouement. This time around I'm not so sure: her passivity in the nightmare relationship is much less clear-cut than I thought, and might well be deer-in-the-headlights terror. What was darkly comical in the first half (e.g. torture through tanning neglect), is much more troubling and plausible in the second. A very nasty and efficient film, once again showing how Fassbinder can get his audience engaged with emotions and ideas without relying on simplistic audience identification.
Ali:Fear Eats the Soul
This is a landmark Fassbinder film, if only in terms of its reception, and I've always enjoyed it, but it doesn't yield a lot more on a fourth viewing than I got on a first. Partly, that's a factor of the film's powerful thematic clarity. It's the first film that really embodies Fassbinder's 'schematic' narrative structures (I wish I could think of a less loaded term for this): those films that have a kind of scientific experimental logic to them, as in, let us now see how Community X responds to Aberration Y, like Fox and his Friends, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, Fear of Fear. Fassbinder's thesis in this film is nuanced, even ambiguous (e.g. the various possible explanations for what motivates the changes in heart of those around Emmi and Ali in the final act), but it's presented in an extremely direct and lucid way.
El Hedi Ben Salem and Brigitte Mira are similarly straightforward, two of the most open leads in any of his films, their stiffness a part of the characters (Ali's language difficulties and Emmi's formality) rather than an alienation effect. It's also expressive - for instance, Ali's stiff bow when he meets Emmi's family speaks volumes of their implied social relationship, and Ali's response to it. Ali necessarily remains somewhat unknowable - he's trapped and alienated in every context in which we see him - but our efforts to imagine his outlook on a given situation (rather than conventionally 'empathise'), as when Emmi shows off his muscles to her workmates, is an important part of the intellectual work we need to do to get the most out of the film.
Despite the film's surface us-against-them dynamic (as in Katzelmacher, gossip and racism are society's motors), Fassbinder keeps the central relationship complex through pointed details. Emmi's refusal to cook couscous crystallises the power disparity between them, and her nostalgia for an implicitly Fascist 'old Germany' adds a nasty historical edge to the film's exposure of Germany's (and Emmi's) ingrained racism. And yet, this is a film that does offer a glimmer of hope that 'love can conquer all' - Emmi and Ali remain together: love may be possible without complete understanding; happiness is not always fun. For me, this is embodied in a matched pair of wonderfully counter-intuitive camera moves in the garden restaurant scene. When Emmi breaks down under the relentless societal pressure, the camera moves in on the moment, but it moves in on Ali, not Emmi; then, when Ali comforts her, we have an opposite move in on Emmi. It's a great example of how Fassbinder at his best can sublimate the emotion of a moment into his mise en scene, so that we're swept up in the characters' emotion while still distanced from it.
Jurgen Jurges is the cinematographer here, his first completed film with Fassbinder (some of Fontane Effi Briest may have come first), and he's got the elegant moves of Michael Ballhaus down, particularly the gliding tracks in. The similarity of camera movement strongly suggests that this opulent style of camerawork had long been Fassbinder's preference, at least back to its first appearance in Whity, and the relevant constraint was the technical capacity of his DoP. Thus the rapid evolution in Lohmann's work over those first few years may not be so much a development of his ideas about the camera as a catching up with Fassbinder's ideas.
Martha
The first thing that pops into my mind whenever I think about this film is that ultimate Fassbinder shot when Margit Carstensen and Karl Bohm first enter one another's gravitational field, and the camera spins around them as they freeze and turn and continue moving forward all at once. It's a movement that speaks of entrapment and intoxication, even though the characters show no sign of mutual acknowledgement, and it will be a half-hour or so before their fates are intertwined. Camera movement in the film is crucial, but it tends to fulfil an editorial rather than narrative role. Movement is not motivated by the need to follow action, for example; it's more likely to provide punctuation (a short, quick track in on a character standing in for Fassbinder's raised eyebrow, say, or a swift lateral jerk of the camera registering Martha's surprise at one of the many outrages perpetrated against her).
The shot is a beautiful embodiment of the film's tone and themes, but there's more to the film than fancy cinematography. For one thing, for much of its length Martha is extremely funny, the blackest comedy imaginable, with Margit taking her 'distilled hysteria' persona to outrageous extremes. On these terms it's much more successful than Fassbinder's later and shriller Satan's Brew. The film's ultimate power, however, derives from the way in which the humour gradually bleeds out of the film, and we're left with a domestic horror film. Marriage = patriarchal power, and in Fassbinder's world power is always there to be abused. Bohm is perfectly cast, taking his already chilly Peeping Tom character and amputating everything redeemable from it.
When I first saw this film, during its 90s rediscovery, I saw Martha as being much more complicit in her victimhood: a closet masochist finally getting her secret fulfilment in the gruesome denouement. This time around I'm not so sure: her passivity in the nightmare relationship is much less clear-cut than I thought, and might well be deer-in-the-headlights terror. What was darkly comical in the first half (e.g. torture through tanning neglect), is much more troubling and plausible in the second. A very nasty and efficient film, once again showing how Fassbinder can get his audience engaged with emotions and ideas without relying on simplistic audience identification.
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David Ehrenstein
- Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2005 12:30 am
Well Fassbinder loved to play it both ways. Being a sadist he identified with masochists.
Salem was of course one of Fassbinder's great loves. The problem was he was a murderous psychotic thug. He hung himself in prison where he was serving time for murder. (Querelle is dedicated to his memory) Fox and his Friends is plainly about Armin Meir -- with Fassbinder playing Armin and Peter Chatel a very spiffed-up version of RWF.
Amin was also a suicide. He and RWF play themselves in his utra-honest segment of Germany in Autumn.
Fassbinder was a great filmmaker but a truly terrible human being.
Salem was of course one of Fassbinder's great loves. The problem was he was a murderous psychotic thug. He hung himself in prison where he was serving time for murder. (Querelle is dedicated to his memory) Fox and his Friends is plainly about Armin Meir -- with Fassbinder playing Armin and Peter Chatel a very spiffed-up version of RWF.
Amin was also a suicide. He and RWF play themselves in his utra-honest segment of Germany in Autumn.
Fassbinder was a great filmmaker but a truly terrible human being.
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denti alligator
- Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 1:36 am
- Location: "born in heaven, raised in hell"
zedz wrote:Catfucker
I don't think any English-language distributor has ever bothered to translate the title of Fassbinder's second feature
I think you're both wrong.zedz wrote:Ah, I was misinformed by the MoMA catalogue. This title would have sold many more tickets than the other two combined.sidehacker wrote:Katzelmacher is actually cockmaster as in many people would like Hanna Schygulla to master their cocks.
"Macher" is simply "he who does/makes" (from "machen"= to do/make, etc.)
"Katzel" is not cat (that's "Katze"), and it's not (so far I know) cock either.
I did some looking and found that "Katzel" is not really a German word, though "Katzelmacher" is, and it means:
an Italian
Basically: it's an abusive slang word for any foreign worker.
I quote the German Wahrig dictionary:
"(abwertend) Italiener [zu ital. cazza, Pl. cazze "Tiegel", da die eingewanderten ital. Handwerker frueher haeufig Geschirrhersteller waren]"
"Katzel" thus comes from the Italian for pot or pan (cazza; plural=cazze), so that "Katzelmacher" is "he who makes pots and pans," since, according to Wahrig, Italian immigrants in Germany had often been makers of dishes/crockery.
Maybe some native speakers can chime in and confirm/elaborate.
Just for fun: "catfucker" would be "Katzenficker" and "cockmaster" would be "Schwanzmeister."
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NABOB OF NOWHERE
- Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2005 4:30 pm
- Location: Brandywine River
Just for fun? Just for Fun????denti alligator wrote:Just for fun: "catfucker" would be "Katzenficker" and "cockmaster" would be "Schwanzmeister."
Have you ever tried to fuck a cat? It's the hardest thing in the world,believe me! To quote Tom Waits. It's harder than Chinese algebra.
And if it's not a word already, I 'd like to claim' Pimmelherrscher' as a contender for Cockmaster. I like to think it has the right S&M undertones
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accatone
- Joined: Thu May 04, 2006 12:04 pm
A good friend of mine wrote his examina about KATZELMACHER - and yes i can confirm what Denti said - as far as it was not too easy to find out the origin of this slang and we often talked about it…i am German native speaker too … however you can't literally translate the word Katzel / Denti said it all…i am out.denti alligator wrote:zedz wrote:Catfucker
I don't think any English-language distributor has ever bothered to translate the title of Fassbinder's second featureI think you're both wrong.zedz wrote:Ah, I was misinformed by the MoMA catalogue. This title would have sold many more tickets than the other two combined.sidehacker wrote:Katzelmacher is actually cockmaster as in many people would like Hanna Schygulla to master their cocks.
"Macher" is simply "he who does/makes" (from "machen"= to do/make, etc.)
"Katzel" is not cat (that's "Katze"), and it's not (so far I know) cock either.
I did some looking and found that "Katzel" is not really a German word, though "Katzelmacher" is, and it means:
an Italian
Basically: it's an abusive slang word for any foreign worker.
I quote the German Wahrig dictionary:
"(abwertend) Italiener [zu ital. cazza, Pl. cazze "Tiegel", da die eingewanderten ital. Handwerker frueher haeufig Geschirrhersteller waren]"
"Katzel" thus comes from the Italian for pot or pan (cazza; plural=cazze), so that "Katzelmacher" is "he who makes pots and pans," since, according to Wahrig, Italian immigrants in Germany had often been makers of dishes/crockery.
Maybe some native speakers can chime in and confirm/elaborate.
Just for fun: "catfucker" would be "Katzenficker" and "cockmaster" would be "Schwanzmeister."
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zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 11:24 pm
1974
Fontane Effi Briest
A very great film, in my opinion, both classical and radical – one of Fassbinder’s greatest achievements. Here he develops his own unique approach to adaptation, starting with the title, which puts the author’s name first and runs on for a paragraph: Fontane - Effi Briest oder: Viele, die eine Ahnung haben von ihren Möglichkeiten und Bedürfnissen und dennoch das herrschende System in ihrem Kopf akzeptieren durch ihre Taten und es somit festigen und durchaus bestätigen / Fontane Effi Briest, or: Many People Who Are Aware of Their Own Capabilities and Needs Just Acquiesce to the Prevailing System in Their Thoughts and Deeds, Thereby Confirm and Reinforce It. The film is full of narration adapted from Fontane’s novel, sometimes at odds with the scenes it accompanies, so we cannot just consider the text as an adjunct to the image. Sometimes the narration anticipates a scene that follows, sometimes it describes a scene that isn’t depicted in the film, sometimes it provides layers of information beneath the film’s surface (e.g. Gieshubler’s love for Effi).
Everything in the film is delicately held in quotation marks, but not in the modern-day sense of cheap irony, rather in a distanced and objective manner. The foregrounded ‘literariness’, cool performances and formalised visuals create an emotional distance from the material, which is inherently tragic and potentially tear-jerking, and Fassbinder plays against the material with consistent brilliance, undercutting every potential emotional high point in different ways.
The initial proposal by von Innstetten is depicted, but rather than being enacted, its dialogue is narrated. Effi’s wedding and Annie's birth and infancy are elided entirely. Von Innstetten’s decision to challenge Crampas to a duel is evocatively interspersed with dissolves to the train that carries him to the site, thus taking us out of the dramatic moment, underlining the inevitability of the decision, and removing the conventional dramatic tension of the duel scene (the moment von Innstetten makes his decision, we see the duel, in long shot, and it’s over in a flash). The most potentially emotional scene in the film – Effi’s near encounter with Annie on a streetcar – is sublimated, on two levels, into a painting. And Fassbinder deals with the story’s most sentimental detail in a wonderfully ingenious manner which only he could have come up with.
Visually, the film is ravishing, one of Fassbinder’s most beautiful and elegant works, shot, not by Ballhaus (who you'd expect to associate with this lavishness), but by two different cinematographers, at different times, in perfect sync with one another: Lohmann (never better) and Jurgen Jurges (who ended up with Haneke). Every shot is exquisitely and precisely composed, in a Gertrud / Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach way, where the mise en scene is more expressive than the text, and remains exquisite and precise even when the camera moves, as it does constantly, if subtly. Mirrors are used throughout to create frames within frames and to complicate spatial relationships between characters (there’s a wonderful long shot of Effi addressing her husband in a doorway of their house, with a side-view of her face perfectly framed in mirrored miniature on the far right of the frame). Many of the film’s cuts are replaced by dissolves or – Fassbinder’s signature move for this film – fades to white. The Wellspring transfer is very good, but on the big screen in a good print this film has a dazzling luminosity.
Fontane Effi Briest was, a title announces, Tango Film Number Three (i.e. the intended follow-up to Petra von Kant), but it was not completed for another two years. In the meantime, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Martha, at least, seem to have grown out of key ideas explored in the film: society as a sinister mechanism that mobilises to exclude transgressors, and bourgeois marriage as sado-masochistic playground, respectively.
Fontane Effi Briest
A very great film, in my opinion, both classical and radical – one of Fassbinder’s greatest achievements. Here he develops his own unique approach to adaptation, starting with the title, which puts the author’s name first and runs on for a paragraph: Fontane - Effi Briest oder: Viele, die eine Ahnung haben von ihren Möglichkeiten und Bedürfnissen und dennoch das herrschende System in ihrem Kopf akzeptieren durch ihre Taten und es somit festigen und durchaus bestätigen / Fontane Effi Briest, or: Many People Who Are Aware of Their Own Capabilities and Needs Just Acquiesce to the Prevailing System in Their Thoughts and Deeds, Thereby Confirm and Reinforce It. The film is full of narration adapted from Fontane’s novel, sometimes at odds with the scenes it accompanies, so we cannot just consider the text as an adjunct to the image. Sometimes the narration anticipates a scene that follows, sometimes it describes a scene that isn’t depicted in the film, sometimes it provides layers of information beneath the film’s surface (e.g. Gieshubler’s love for Effi).
Everything in the film is delicately held in quotation marks, but not in the modern-day sense of cheap irony, rather in a distanced and objective manner. The foregrounded ‘literariness’, cool performances and formalised visuals create an emotional distance from the material, which is inherently tragic and potentially tear-jerking, and Fassbinder plays against the material with consistent brilliance, undercutting every potential emotional high point in different ways.
The initial proposal by von Innstetten is depicted, but rather than being enacted, its dialogue is narrated. Effi’s wedding and Annie's birth and infancy are elided entirely. Von Innstetten’s decision to challenge Crampas to a duel is evocatively interspersed with dissolves to the train that carries him to the site, thus taking us out of the dramatic moment, underlining the inevitability of the decision, and removing the conventional dramatic tension of the duel scene (the moment von Innstetten makes his decision, we see the duel, in long shot, and it’s over in a flash). The most potentially emotional scene in the film – Effi’s near encounter with Annie on a streetcar – is sublimated, on two levels, into a painting. And Fassbinder deals with the story’s most sentimental detail in a wonderfully ingenious manner which only he could have come up with.
Spoiler
The detail is Effi’s dog Rollo pining away on her grave at the end, and Fassbinder dodges the sentimentality of this by making Rollo invisible: he’s a significant narrative presence, but he never appears in the film
Fontane Effi Briest was, a title announces, Tango Film Number Three (i.e. the intended follow-up to Petra von Kant), but it was not completed for another two years. In the meantime, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Martha, at least, seem to have grown out of key ideas explored in the film: society as a sinister mechanism that mobilises to exclude transgressors, and bourgeois marriage as sado-masochistic playground, respectively.
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HelenLawson
- Joined: Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:20 pm
- Location: San Francisco
Hence, why I found this film so dull and unengaging. I respect Fassbinder's technique and find just about everything he does gripping and brilliant, but Effi Briest just leaves me cold.zedz wrote:The foregrounded ‘literariness’, cool performances and formalised visuals create an emotional distance from the material, which is inherently tragic and potentially tear-jerking, and Fassbinder plays against the material with consistent brilliance, undercutting every potential emotional high point in different ways.
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bollibasher
- Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2007 2:38 pm
I know general consensus here is that Querelle is dreadful, but as a rebel fan of it I'd like to point out to anyone interested that the London BFI Southbank is screening it as part of their Jeanne Moreau season 
Sun 29 Jun 18:30 NFT1
Mon 30 Jun 18:30 NFT2
Sun 29 Jun 18:30 NFT1
Mon 30 Jun 18:30 NFT2
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blindside8zao
- Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2005 8:31 pm
- Location: Greensboro, NC
Fassbinder is a good film-maker to 'race through' as an introduction, imo. I didn't really become as awestruck by him until I watched some 6 or 7 of his films through the course of a week because of that Wellspring sale. His films all together present a striking universe of it's own unique style. Of course, revisiting all these films slowly and on their own terms is also a must.james wrote:So is it the fact that I'm trying to watch every Criterion rather dumb, or how I'm "racing" through them? I still want to watch all of them, and that's really all I mean with the project, as I never intended to watch too many, even though I wanted to try and watch as much as I could over summer break.
I still have most of the films in that Ozu Eclipse set left and I need to pick up on them in the next few days while I have the time.
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Jack Phillips
- Joined: Mon Jun 25, 2007 6:33 am
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jojo
- Joined: Thu Jun 05, 2008 5:47 pm
I enjoy late Fassbinder more than early. I still think his early stuff is overly stagey for my tastes, but I will gladly sing the praises of his later work. And I will say there is also a fairly significant change in style and attitude halfway into his short (but prolific) career that informed his later work.blindside8zao wrote:Fassbinder is a good film-maker to 'race through' as an introduction, imo. I didn't really become as awestruck by him until I watched some 6 or 7 of his films through the course of a week because of that Wellspring sale. His films all together present a striking universe of it's own unique style. Of course, revisiting all these films slowly and on their own terms is also a must.
I still have most of the films in that Ozu Eclipse set left and I need to pick up on them in the next few days while I have the time.
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blindside8zao
- Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2005 8:31 pm
- Location: Greensboro, NC
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zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 11:24 pm
Fox and His Friends
Well, my systematic trawl through Fassbinder’s oeuvre got derailed, but I’ll try to get back on track.
This is a key film from his middle ‘diagrammatic exploration of social issues’ period. It’s mysteriously number Tangofilm 5½ - an allusion to some unfulfilled or partial intervening project, or a nod to Fellini’s similarly self-referential 8½?
Fassbinder himself takes the title role of duped proletarian, but, notwithstanding the adoption of talismanic name Franz Biberkopf, I suspect that he sees more of himself in the roles of the manipulators who prey on Fox. Certainly what I know of his biography suggests this is the more appropriate identification, and I don’t think RWF had a particularly romanticised view of himself. He doesn’t have a particularly romanticised view of Fox either, for that matter. He’s no naïve victim, but opportunistic, arrogant and pushy. It’s simply that, in Fassbinder’s universe, the working class are hopelessly outclassed by the bourgeoisie when it comes to venality. It’s a powerful, queasy portrait of exploitation, and Fox earns our sympathy simply by being so pathetically overpowered and outmanoeuvred. This is a strategy that Lars von Trier would later pursue, though I don’t think he does so with anything like the same effectiveness.
The film is also Fassbinder’s first to be located firmly within the gay male world. It’s a drastically unflattering portrait of that milieu, but I don’t see it necessarily as a specific comment on it. It’s not ‘about’ gay relationships as much as it is about class relationships. Fox’s boyfriend is in league with his (straight, respectable) parents against Fox, and their disapproval of Fox is not directed as his, or their son’s, sexual orientation, but at his class origins and lack of refinement, and they see their immoral haul as fitting payment for the outrage of having to put up with such an indignity.
This is not to say that the depiction of a gay lifestyle is unimportant, particularly at a time when such depictions were rare as hen’s teeth. Can you name another relatively mainstream 1970s film that has a male / male kiss in its opening scene? Those details are absolutely intrinsic to the detail of the story, but they’re marginal to the main engine of the plot. The most important role the gay element plays in terms of that main plot is that the nature of the exploitative relationship leaves Fox with no social safety net: without trust, there’s no real basis to the relationship, and it’s the unofficial, outsider nature of that relationship that allows him to be so royally fucked over. Not that Fassbinder was dewy-eyed over the institution of marriage: look no further than Martha for corroboration. From this distance, it actually looks much more bold and forward-looking that at this time Fassbinder made a film that wasn’t about ‘gay issues’ but simply took its characters’ sexual orientation for granted.
Formally, Fox and His Friends builds on the lavish, arch style of foregoing films such as Petra von Kant and Martha, with overwhelming, overdetermined décor (mirrors galore, including a devilishly difficult negotiation of multiple reflections in a mud spa), careful colour coding (blue being of particular significance), and elegant camera movement (particularly tracking away behind objects) impeccably executed by Michael Ballhaus.
Well, my systematic trawl through Fassbinder’s oeuvre got derailed, but I’ll try to get back on track.
This is a key film from his middle ‘diagrammatic exploration of social issues’ period. It’s mysteriously number Tangofilm 5½ - an allusion to some unfulfilled or partial intervening project, or a nod to Fellini’s similarly self-referential 8½?
Fassbinder himself takes the title role of duped proletarian, but, notwithstanding the adoption of talismanic name Franz Biberkopf, I suspect that he sees more of himself in the roles of the manipulators who prey on Fox. Certainly what I know of his biography suggests this is the more appropriate identification, and I don’t think RWF had a particularly romanticised view of himself. He doesn’t have a particularly romanticised view of Fox either, for that matter. He’s no naïve victim, but opportunistic, arrogant and pushy. It’s simply that, in Fassbinder’s universe, the working class are hopelessly outclassed by the bourgeoisie when it comes to venality. It’s a powerful, queasy portrait of exploitation, and Fox earns our sympathy simply by being so pathetically overpowered and outmanoeuvred. This is a strategy that Lars von Trier would later pursue, though I don’t think he does so with anything like the same effectiveness.
The film is also Fassbinder’s first to be located firmly within the gay male world. It’s a drastically unflattering portrait of that milieu, but I don’t see it necessarily as a specific comment on it. It’s not ‘about’ gay relationships as much as it is about class relationships. Fox’s boyfriend is in league with his (straight, respectable) parents against Fox, and their disapproval of Fox is not directed as his, or their son’s, sexual orientation, but at his class origins and lack of refinement, and they see their immoral haul as fitting payment for the outrage of having to put up with such an indignity.
This is not to say that the depiction of a gay lifestyle is unimportant, particularly at a time when such depictions were rare as hen’s teeth. Can you name another relatively mainstream 1970s film that has a male / male kiss in its opening scene? Those details are absolutely intrinsic to the detail of the story, but they’re marginal to the main engine of the plot. The most important role the gay element plays in terms of that main plot is that the nature of the exploitative relationship leaves Fox with no social safety net: without trust, there’s no real basis to the relationship, and it’s the unofficial, outsider nature of that relationship that allows him to be so royally fucked over. Not that Fassbinder was dewy-eyed over the institution of marriage: look no further than Martha for corroboration. From this distance, it actually looks much more bold and forward-looking that at this time Fassbinder made a film that wasn’t about ‘gay issues’ but simply took its characters’ sexual orientation for granted.
Formally, Fox and His Friends builds on the lavish, arch style of foregoing films such as Petra von Kant and Martha, with overwhelming, overdetermined décor (mirrors galore, including a devilishly difficult negotiation of multiple reflections in a mud spa), careful colour coding (blue being of particular significance), and elegant camera movement (particularly tracking away behind objects) impeccably executed by Michael Ballhaus.
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David Ehrenstein
- Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2005 12:30 am
Properly translated, the film's orginal title Faustrecht dei Freiheit is Might Makes Right. I do wish it had been released under that title in English-speaking countries.
You're quite right that Fassbinder was far more like Peter Chatel's character in real life and he knew it. Fox is in fact based on his long-tome lover Amin Meir -- who can be seen playing himself alongside Fassbidner as himself in the opening episode of Germany in Autumn.
You're quite right that Fassbinder was far more like Peter Chatel's character in real life and he knew it. Fox is in fact based on his long-tome lover Amin Meir -- who can be seen playing himself alongside Fassbidner as himself in the opening episode of Germany in Autumn.
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shirobamba
- Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2005 5:23 pm
- Location: Germany
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GringoTex
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:57 am
And that's not a proper translation because "The Rule of Force of Freedom" means nothing in English.shirobamba wrote:With all due respect: "Faustrecht der Freiheit" translates literally as "The Rule of Force of Freedom".David Ehrenstein wrote:Properly translated, the film's orginal title Faustrecht dei Freiheit is Might Makes Right. I do wish it had been released under that title in English-speaking countries.
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accatone
- Joined: Thu May 04, 2006 12:04 pm
"Das Faustrecht" is an outdated rights/law rule that can be translated as the "right of the strong" - kind of "surival of the fittest". (Faust is german for FIST - so FIST-RIGHT - a "powerfull right"). DAS FAUSTRECHT DER FREIHEIT says that freedom has (or better IS) an immanent (a priori if you want) power/right! (damn. at first i thought translating this would be super easy because in German its clear… but now i think no one will understand my explanation…uurgh)
edit: actually i think Davids MIGHT IS RIGHT is quite good because it matches the powerful meaning of FAUSTRECHT.
edit: actually i think Davids MIGHT IS RIGHT is quite good because it matches the powerful meaning of FAUSTRECHT.
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colinr0380
- Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:30 pm
- Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK
I recently got a chance to see part of World On A Wire, the first 90 minute episode of the series. Even though it was only a section of the larger work I'm glad I saw the Hollywood version of the same material in The Thirteenth Floor first to prepare myself!
I particularly liked the way that the first part of Fassbinder's film plays a lot like a murder mystery set in a hi-tech computer firm, as the creator of a simulated world, Henry Vollmer, dies in suspicious circumstances, with the science-fiction premise only revealed as the cliffhanger for this part. There are a few electronic whines to underscore significant moments and a blackout the main character Fred Stiller suffers that begin to set up for the reveal that the real world is just as much of a simulation as the world within his own computer. I was rather surprised at how explicitly they spelled everything out in the final scene, considering that according to the running time listed on the imdb there were still two hours to come! Compared to the later film World On A Wire sort of deemphasises the period settings of the simulated world (it sort of looks thirties-ish but at the same time the first entry into the world is a sequence of driving a contemporary truck along bland, blank streets filled with grey tower blocks) while making the 'real' world feel extremely disjointed and bizarre. The bar/lounge/swimming pool and the nightclub with a dancefloor full of buff muscle men and topless women particularly stand out!
World On A Wire also adds a beautiful and busty secretary for our lead character who simply turns up out of nowhere to replace his usual secretary at the beginning of the film. There is the suggestion that Gloria has been placed there to spy on by the head of his company now that Stiller has taken responsibility for the computer simulaton project, partly because she used to have an intimate relationship with the boss! However, the constant observation she keeps of Stiller would perhaps be developed in the next part when it becomes more apparent that there is a further world beyond this and Gloria could perhaps be later revealed to be an overseer from there.
There were quite a few interesting touches such as Gloria's reflective 'crystal ball' on her desk which frames Stiller a number of times while she looks on with her observational/blank look underscored by an electronic hum! Another great (and funny!) staging is a discussion between Stiller and his boss where they are both casually spinning around in their swivel chairs in opposite directions. As the doors to the office are opened they both stop their spins perfectly composed in front of them to greet the new arrival!
It was also a pleasant surprise to discover that the nicely put together end credit sequence was set to Albatross by the Shadows!
I particularly liked the way that the first part of Fassbinder's film plays a lot like a murder mystery set in a hi-tech computer firm, as the creator of a simulated world, Henry Vollmer, dies in suspicious circumstances, with the science-fiction premise only revealed as the cliffhanger for this part. There are a few electronic whines to underscore significant moments and a blackout the main character Fred Stiller suffers that begin to set up for the reveal that the real world is just as much of a simulation as the world within his own computer. I was rather surprised at how explicitly they spelled everything out in the final scene, considering that according to the running time listed on the imdb there were still two hours to come! Compared to the later film World On A Wire sort of deemphasises the period settings of the simulated world (it sort of looks thirties-ish but at the same time the first entry into the world is a sequence of driving a contemporary truck along bland, blank streets filled with grey tower blocks) while making the 'real' world feel extremely disjointed and bizarre. The bar/lounge/swimming pool and the nightclub with a dancefloor full of buff muscle men and topless women particularly stand out!
World On A Wire also adds a beautiful and busty secretary for our lead character who simply turns up out of nowhere to replace his usual secretary at the beginning of the film. There is the suggestion that Gloria has been placed there to spy on by the head of his company now that Stiller has taken responsibility for the computer simulaton project, partly because she used to have an intimate relationship with the boss! However, the constant observation she keeps of Stiller would perhaps be developed in the next part when it becomes more apparent that there is a further world beyond this and Gloria could perhaps be later revealed to be an overseer from there.
There were quite a few interesting touches such as Gloria's reflective 'crystal ball' on her desk which frames Stiller a number of times while she looks on with her observational/blank look underscored by an electronic hum! Another great (and funny!) staging is a discussion between Stiller and his boss where they are both casually spinning around in their swivel chairs in opposite directions. As the doors to the office are opened they both stop their spins perfectly composed in front of them to greet the new arrival!
It was also a pleasant surprise to discover that the nicely put together end credit sequence was set to Albatross by the Shadows!
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colinr0380
- Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 8:30 pm
- Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK
Re: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Having still not begun my in depth exploration into Fassbinder yet I thought I would add some thoughts on the film I have seen! I thought it was interesting that Pioneers In Ingolstadt began in a seemingly conventional way, sympathetic to house maid Berta's relationship with a lowly soldier, or 'pioneer' in Karl. Their union seems almost a parody of courtship rituals, especially with Karl's almost drugged recitation of "Ber....ta", also seeming as if he is trying to remember her name as much as savouring the sound of it. It initially seems a touching portrayal of star crossed lovers but soon the line between naivite and full blown delusion becomes apparent as Karl's history of women in every town and his part in multiple pregnancies sours the dream.zedz wrote:Pioneers in Ingolstadt
I see this adaptation, the last film Fassbinder made before the post-Sirk Merchant of Four Seasons, as the last Antiteater film. Although his early work is far more diverse than it's normally given credit for, this film does see the end of some common elements, such as static, frontal, 'theatrical' staging (the way Fassbinder blocks the climactic beating in this film seems rather weak after the more 'filmic' showdown that concluded The American Soldier, and the scene in which Pioneers pace around the car in which Karl and Berta are having a conversation seems straight from the stage), Gunther-croaked theme songs, and impassive or 'Brechtian' performance.
Performances are a real issue with the film for me, as there's an unproductive rift that has by this time developed between the 'old-Fassbinder' distanced, uninflected (or else declamatory) stiffness of several of the actors (such as Carla Aulaulu and Rudolf Brem) and the equally stylised but more slyly modulated 'new-Fassbinder' emotional irony that Hanna Schygulla, Harry Baer and Irm Herrmann have developed with their director. Klaus Lowitsch, in his first Fassbinder film, manages to slip into that latter mode beautifully. Hanna needs all the irony she can get for the role of Alma, who's supposed to be sexually naive. This arch but nuanced performance mode would dominate future films, with rare exceptions like Brigitte Mira, who seems to me boldly without irony in Ali.
The film employs some of the simple, rigorously formalised camera movements Fassbinder would soon abandon (in favour of much more elaborate, rigorously formalised movements, it's true), as in the back-and-forth tracking during a conversation, but even in a largely familiar mode, he's still moving tentatively into new territory. The scenes set in and around the bridge, which are shot on location and are montage- rather than dialogue-driven, aren't really like anything else in his cinema up to this point, capturing real activity rather than dramatic action.
Overall, the self-selected constraints of Fassbinder's early style seem like real limitations for the first time, and the film itself is a stylistic step back from the likes of Beware of a Holy Whore. At the end of his second year of feature filmmaking, Fassbinder had had what many other filmmakers would count as a full career: time for some reinvention.
I liked the way that the film shifted the audience sympathies from that pair in order to present a more positive perspective towards Alma, who sleeps with any man and eventually moves to bluntly but charmingly requesting money in return for her services. She however is not under any illusions about her liaisons but seems much more practical in her relationships. I was left weighing up the contrast of Alma up front attitude, and expectation of nothing more from her partners than sex with any longer lasting memento of the act (a 'piccolo recordo' in the words of Gloria Perkins from L'Avventura perhaps!) being a cash payment against Berta's nervous and withdrawn performance which eventually is touched by Karl almost in spite of him as she falls in love and begins to rebel against her employer and the expectations that she will be sexually available for her master's son, Fabian. She is seduced by the seeming security of romantic love into finding the courage to rebel and yet also seemingly at the same time to willingly ignore the knowledge right in front of her, and even spelt out to her in no uncertain terms by Karl at the beginning of their relationship, of the short term nature of their affair.
She isn't a slut as Alma is seen as (I love the long circular tracking shot around the inn that comes after some of Alma's former friends have said that Alma is 'ruining the good reputation of the girls of the town', which in no uncertain terms shows that there is a lot of other raunchy behaviour going on, just couched in more acceptable, or less obviously monetised forms!) but Berta's virginity counts against her. It is telling that the final sequence culminates in her desperate attempts to keep the relationship with Karl going by giving up her virginity to him in some bushes in the park.
She is then immediately abandoned by Karl, yet I do not exactly feel anger towards him for this as he always told her he was not sticking around. I feel more annoyed at Berta for deluding herself into thinking this act would change anything - that her virginity would be seen by another as an important sacrifice that would cement a bond. Instead she is left another girl in another town (maybe destined to be another pregnancy left in Karl's wake), and with her virginity gone she has lost the one thing that set her apart from all the other women. She's just another girl who had a fling with a soldier, seen as nothing more romantic than that to other people's eyes, and it is telling that in the final shot of her lying there on the ground sobbing she is casually approached by another soldier as if to suggest that she will be destined for a series of similar liaisons with men now. Though Karl in a crude way was the 'pioneer' in a way no other man will be for her.
Alma by contrast manages to shape the beginnings of a real relationship by the end of the film through sleeping with Fabian after his continued rejections from Berta (ironically intercut with Berta's loss of virginity and taking place in the same park!), acknowledging that it is not romance but that security provides its own consolations. I thought the film beautifully managed to shift our sympathies in favour of these characters and away from ideas pursued by Berta of romantic love, which only leads to delusion and devastation.
While Karl doesn't encourage Berta's romantic outlook he is part of the other strand of the film that undermines the glamour of soldiering. From the rather mundane tasks of building a bridge and finding a girl to spend time with that can be seen as boring and not exactly the true idea of what a soldier does, but still allowing a certain honour and charm (not to mention cache among the ladies!), the film exposes the soldiers more and more to being not worthy of the uniform. From drunken sex to The Sergeant putting his men through punishment exercises there seems to be a demystification of the soldier, an image which the men themselves are well aware of not being able to match up to, as shown by Karl and fellow pioneer Max's conversation during their walk:
Then comes the interesting scene where Fabian drives Berta to the front of the barracks to show off his ownership of his new car, and of Berta, to the soldiers she is infatuated with. This results in the wonderful shot of Berta and Karl talking next to the car while Max and his mates circle the car sizing it up almost mockingly in one direction while Fabian circles in the opposite direction against them, pushing them away from the car when they get too close or start fiddling around too much! The soldiers may be young and virile while Fabian still under his father's roof and childishly wanting to show off to the other guys but Fabian seems to be the one assured a future while the soldiers are not guaranteed any security.Max: The uniform attracts them..and the experience. God knows what they think we can do for them [...] That's the only thing you have as a soldier: the women. Otherwise we'd be the dumb ones and the civilians the smart-asses. We're still the dumb ones, but we make up for it with the women
The degrading of the soldierly image reaches its climax with the prolonged beating of Fabian by Max and his friends, as if they are taking their anger out on a representative of the town that they are stationed in and not really a part of for any length of time - anger that they've not been able to release through fighting an enemy.
Interestingly this brutal punishment of Fabian results in him being discovered lying in the road by Alma and the beginning of their relationship. This perhaps underlines Alma's separatness from the rest of the town and also her level-headedness in matters of sex and finding a partner: while all the other women are trying to find a soldier to love, or at most trying to net The Sergeant, Alma has moved on by that stage to finding a man destined for some stature in the town and who will provide her with that security that a soldier never could given their rootless nature and potentially dangerous occupation.