THE LATE GERMAN DIRECTOR’S “BRD TRILOGY” SCREENS IN A SPECIAL RETROSPECTIVE
THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN ***
DIRECTED BY Rainer Werner Fassbinder
STARRING Hanna Schygulla, Ivan Desny, Gisela Uhlen
West Germany 1979 120 mins.
VERONIKA VOSS ****
DIRECTED BY Rainer Werner Fassbinder
STARRING Rosel Zech, Hilmar Thate, Annemarie Duringer
West Germany 1982 104 mins.
LOLA ****
DIRECTED BY Rainer Werner Fassbinder
STARRING Barbara Sukowa, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Mario Adorf
West Germany 1981 115 mins.
All films in German with English subtitles.
Why this? Because I haven’t seen Indiana Jones (yet) and everything else at the multiplex is pretty average (actually, no: Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium has a beguiling streak of goofiness – but we can’t devote a column to a whimsical kidpic, however sweetly goofy). Because I’m sick and tired of attitudes like the guy I overheard at my local video club, explaining why he likes video clubs: “Because you can also find old movies there – like from last year, or the year before!”. Because festivals are the lifeblood of the local movie scene, and it’s time we acknowledged that. Because we’re on the brink of summer, and summer in Cyprus means a more reflective, laid-back kind of filmgoing, tied in with commercial cinemas giving way to open-air events like the Summer Marathon, watching classics under the stars. Because they’re trying to replace that with the brain-dead, blockbuster-heavy summer model imported from America, and someone has to fight that.
Mostly, though, it’s the festivals. Oh, those festivals! How can I consistently ignore them? How can I fill this page with commercial muck, week in and week out, when the real action is elsewhere – when I had what can only be described as a Religious Experience a week ago, watching Stop Making Sense in the Rock Music Festival at the Cine Studio? (That festival continues for another week with Pink Floyd: The Wall, though the real highlights – notably the faux-Dylan movie I’m Not There – are over in my opinion.) Granted, festival films aren’t for everyone – especially Stop Making Sense, a Talking Heads concert which is surely a little bit baffling for non-Talking Heads fans. Granted, people don’t want to miss Indiana Jones – neither do I; it sounds great – and can’t be expected to spend every waking hour watching movies. Granted also, many of these films are unfortunately projected on DVD. That goes for next week’s avant-garde offerings in the annual ‘Images and Views of Alternative Cinema’, and also goes – I’m almost sure – for the Fassbinder Retrospective, organised by the Goethe Zentrum in Nicosia. No specific details have been supplied, but the films are being shown at the Weaving Mill which (as far as I know) has no facilities for film projection.
It’s a shame, because Fassbinder’s visuals – with their lurid colours and often oppressive lighting – can look muddy at the best of times. Still, DVD projection isn’t a good enough reason to miss this Retrospective, screening the so-called “BRD Trilogy” in three instalments – The Marriage of Maria Braun tomorrow, followed by Veronika Voss and Lola on successive Thursdays (all screenings in German with English subtitles). The final day (Thursday, June 5) is quite an event, starting with a lecture by special guest Juliane Lorenz on “Working With R.W. Fassbinder” – Ms. Lorenz being not just the President of the R.W. Fassbinder Foundation, but also the director’s collaborator (she edited all three of these films) and companion in the last few years of his life. Her lecture will be followed by a reception organised by the German Embassy, followed by the film itself – which might be anti-climactic except that Lola is the most astonishing of the trilogy, using the template of The Blue Angel for a scathing satire on political corruption during Germany’s “economic miracle” of the 1950s, all done in eye-popping colours.
Who was Fassbinder? The arthouse director as rock star, a man whose films are inextricably linked with his extraordinary life: just over a decade of unprecedented creativity – 40 films in 13 years, rushing from one to another – followed by his death from a drug overdose at the age of 36. “We have lost our greasy wild boar,” remarked Werner Herzog, evoking much of what Fassbinder’s cinema stood for: animal energy, a feel for sleaze and transgression, something stubborn and belligerent – though also perceptive, and often tender. Despite his public persona – loutish, unkempt, leather-jacketed – he seldom went in for shock tactics, or outrageousness for its own sake.
The “BRD Trilogy” isn’t really a trilogy. The films tell different stories, though details recur from one to the other. A minor character called “Grandpa Berger” in Maria Braun also appears fleetingly in Lola. All three films mention football, the final scenes of Maria Braun played to the sound of a radio commentator going into raptures as Germany win the 1954 World Cup. (All three also feature rather embarrassing cameos by Gunther Kauffmann, Fassbinder’s longtime friend and former lover.) Above all, they deal in different ways with Germany’s post-war reconstruction – the “economic miracle” that was also a kind of national amnesia.
Near the start of Maria Braun, set in the immediate aftermath of WW2 – everything rationed, Germans reduced to a barter economy – Chancellor Adenauer can be heard on the radio, vowing that Germany will never again be involved in war. Near the end of the film, 9 years later, Adenauer is again on the radio, this time talking of German re-armament – a return to normality, as if the war had never happened. Maria Braun opens with a photo of Hitler and ends with a photo of Helmut Schmidt, the Chancellor in 1979, when the film was made – not equating the two, but drawing a line of succession. From this, says Fassbinder, to this. Don’t forget where we came from, he tells his fellow Germans.
Denial and hypocrisy also inform Veronika and Lola – the former set in 1955 (just after Maria Braun), the latter in 1957. Veronika Voss, a former movie star living in decayed grandeur like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, was a Nazi but now denies it; she’s a morphine addict in the grip of a sinister doctor, whose other victims also include an elderly Jewish couple of Treblinka survivors. By the time of Lola, business is booming: reconstruction of war-torn German cities is in full swing, and no-one can stand in its way. The film’s sharpest joke is that its civil-servant hero only does the right thing – going after dodgy deals and corrupt building contractors – when he’s insane with jealousy over the titular whore, and soon goes back to ‘business as usual’ once he’s allowed to be her loving-but-cuckolded husband.
Are these political films? Not really. Those familiar with Fassbinder will have seen Maria Braun – his biggest hit, and most famous work – though it’s easily the most conventional of the three; I prefer Veronika Voss, an Expressionist fantasy in gleaming black-and-white, and especially Lola, with Barbara Sukowa as the snub-nosed temptress and Armin Mueller-Stahl as the pompous, duty-bound victim (endearingly fond of bad jokes and kissing ladies’ hands). Those who’ve never seen a film by the late German wunderkind may not know what to expect. Are they ‘slow’? ‘Heavy’? ‘Arty’? To be fair, I suppose they are – but not in the way people fear, the pretentious way of mouthpiece characters exchanging weighty dialogue about Big Ideas. Fassbinder’s work is imbued with feeling, even as Maria Braun – crafty war-widow turned corporate rich-bitch – coolly opines that the 50s are “not a good time for feelings”. Human cruelty, manipulation, the everyday sadomasochism of rocky relationships: these are the ingredients of a Fassbinder movie. And when all else fails, you can always look at the pictures: Lola and Veronika are as dazzling as any MTV music-video.
“Light and shadow: these are the secrets of the cinema,” explains Veronika Voss to her sports-journalist lover, as the sinister doctor prepares her next shot of morphine and old American hits – notably Dean Martin’s “Memories Are Made of This” – simmer on the soundtrack. She’s right: it all comes down to light and shadow, whether we’re talking Indiana Jones or a moody 80s masterpiece. Nothing against the multiplex, but it’s kind of absurd how punters will go watch Ashton Kutcher in a heartbeat but need to be physically dragged to something like the Fassbinder Retro; we need to stop apologising for daring to look beyond the mainstream. Why this? Because it was there.
NEW DVD RELEASES
Here’s our regular look at the more interesting titles released on DVD in the US and UK over the past few months. Some may be available to rent from local video clubs, or you can always order over the Internet: dozens of suppliers, but http://www.amazon.com (for US) and http://www.play.com (for UK) are among the most reliable, if not necessarily the cheapest. Prices quoted don’t include shipping. Note that US discs are ‘Region 1’, and require a multi-region player.
NEW FILMS
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD: Still waiting for this to arrive in cinemas, so we might as well mention the DVD (though it’s been out for a couple of months now). A glorious, gorgeous Western, though the paucity of extras means a better package may be coming soon. Don’t hold your breath. [US/UK]
THE WITNESSES: First-rate drama from French director Andr? T?chin?, turning AIDS-related in the second half. No extras, apart from a trailer. [UK]
OLD FILMS
ECLIPSE 8: LUBITSCH MUSICALS: From Eclipse (part of the Criterion Collection, specializing in monthly box-sets) come four early-30s musicals directed by Ernst Lubitsch – and if you think that’s dull you obviously haven’t experienced the joy of listening to a hairdresser sing about ‘Trimmin’ the Women’ in ‘Monte Carlo’ (1930)! Sparkling stuff, also including ‘The Love Parade’ (1929), ‘The Smiling Lieutenant’ (1931) and ‘One Hour With You’ (1932). [US]
PETER’S FRIENDS (1992): Bad, maudlin British comedy, but check out that cast: Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie. Luvvie heaven. [US]
TOOTSIE (1982) (25th Anniversary Edition): Dustin Hoffman as a woman in uproarious 80s comedy; extras include a 3-part documentary on the film, as well as deleted scenes and original screen-test footage of Hoffman in drag. [US/UK]
MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (1978) (30th Anniversary Edition): Another ‘anniversary’ DVD: notorious Turkish-prison drama comes with various featurettes and commentary by director Alan Parker. [US]
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA 1980: THE COMPLETE SERIES: Neither the recent ‘Galactica’ nor the original 70s show – actually a kind of sequel to the latter – but still lots of Cylons, spaceships and sci-fi bits and bobs. A must-have for ‘Galactica’ fans, especially at around ?10 for the 2-disc package. [UK]
