Fassbinder's Gods of the Plague
I saw my first Rainer Werner Fassbinder film, Effi Briest (1974), sometime in the 1980s. A black and white, lengthy (140 minutes) adaptation of an 1894 novel by Theodor Fontane, the film mesmerized me, its slow pace seeming perfect for its subject matter--the story of its eponymous heroine, played by a riveting actress I'd never seen before, Hanna Schygulla. My father, sitting next to me in the university's theater, watched the same film but didn't like it. I remember him saying to my mother, "It's very Germanic."
Even then, in my early twenties, I was beginning to realize I had a high tolerance for long, slow movies, a capability coming in handy when, many years later, I watched Jacques Rivette's close to thirteen hour long Out 1 (reviewed in this blog), as well as other Fassbinder films I've seen since Effi Briest.
Fassbinder will show you people looking at nothing in a quiet room. He'll show a character driving across town, depicting the process of travel through passing sights and sounds. In one lengthy and astonishing sequence in Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) he'll put on the soundtrack a montage of voices and domestic noises in the apartment complex where Franz Biberkopf, a man just released from prison, is adapting to life on the outside.
Gods of the Plague (1970) also deals with an ex-convict, Franz Walsch (Harry Baer), struggling to adjust to straight life. He identifies himself to someone as Franz Biberkopf, but where Biberkopf makes his struggles in Weimar Germany, with the Nazi State looming ahead, Franz Walsch lives in Munich, West Germany, a place in many ways indistinguishable from consumer capitalist America or other West European countries reshaped culturally and economically by World War Two.
He's so depressed most of the time he seems like he's in a trance. He looks up an old girlfriend, Johanna (Hanna Schygulla, in one of her numerous Fassbinder film roles). A nightclub chanteuse, she emulates Marlene Dietrich, has a poster of that film star on her dressing room door. She's still associated with the criminal element Franz belonged to, including a Black man nicknamed Gorilla due to his strength and build. This man, Günther (Günther Kaufmann), has killed, because he was ordered to do so, Franz's brother, Marian Walsch. It's a testament to Franz's fatalistic outlook that he goes along with this, remaining friends with Günther, who, to make things even worse, also had sex with Johanna while Franz was locked up.
Franz's demeanor seems to propel him towards a fatal encounter with a cop who's tracking him, trying to get information on the gang Franz belonged to before his imprisonment. This cop (Jan George) is a broad-chested blonde son of a bitch who follows Johanna around, turning her into an informant, pushing himself on her and eventually having sex with her. Johanna finds out what Franz's plans are--an after hours grocery store robbery--and passes them onto the cop. The scene with this unnamed cop getting dressed after fucking Johanna plays up the macho behavior of this man as he gets into his clothes, tucking in his shirt, strapping on two holsters, like a Western movie gunfighter getting ready to face the bad guys. An amazing scene, shot in one medium distance take as Johanna watches him, melodramatic music on the soundtrack.
Franz and Günther are let into the grocery store by the manager, an old friend of Franz's. The cop gets inside too as the door is left ajar. He stalks them and shoots the manager, then Franz, and wounds Günther. The cop then takes his spare gun, the one he used to kill with, and puts it in the dead hand of pathetic Franz. Günther staggers down the sidewalk past lit up department store windows featuring displays of luxuriant furniture and clothing--another amazing scene that just proves that Fassbinder's films, though slow and careful in their unfolding, often produce utterly breathtaking cinematic moments as great as anything ever created in the medium.
Günther finds the woman who told Johanna about the grocery store robbery, ties her to a chair, beats her and finally shoots her to death. He staggers to the door--we think he's going to go after Johanna now, but he collapses halfway into the hall.
This film of petty criminals and a vicious corrupt cop, of betrayal and a protagonist beset with aimlessness and self-loathing, also possesses beauty in its depiction of love. Franz, after Johanna, gets involved with Margarethe (played by Margarethe von Trotta, who became a great film director herself), a woman whose compassion for Franz doesn't really get under his skin, but the mere fact of her heart's concern for him speaks as a hopeful sign, even as she, along with Franz's mother and Johanna, attend his funeral, each woman backgrounded by crosses atop mausoleums. Each of them, in different ways, loved the wretch whose own death was part of a lie arranged by a corrupt cop.
Welcome to Fassbinder's universe.
Vic Neptune
I saw my first Rainer Werner Fassbinder film, Effi Briest (1974), sometime in the 1980s. A black and white, lengthy (140 minutes) adaptation of an 1894 novel by Theodor Fontane, the film mesmerized me, its slow pace seeming perfect for its subject matter--the story of its eponymous heroine, played by a riveting actress I'd never seen before, Hanna Schygulla. My father, sitting next to me in the university's theater, watched the same film but didn't like it. I remember him saying to my mother, "It's very Germanic."
Even then, in my early twenties, I was beginning to realize I had a high tolerance for long, slow movies, a capability coming in handy when, many years later, I watched Jacques Rivette's close to thirteen hour long Out 1 (reviewed in this blog), as well as other Fassbinder films I've seen since Effi Briest.
Fassbinder will show you people looking at nothing in a quiet room. He'll show a character driving across town, depicting the process of travel through passing sights and sounds. In one lengthy and astonishing sequence in Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) he'll put on the soundtrack a montage of voices and domestic noises in the apartment complex where Franz Biberkopf, a man just released from prison, is adapting to life on the outside.
Gods of the Plague (1970) also deals with an ex-convict, Franz Walsch (Harry Baer), struggling to adjust to straight life. He identifies himself to someone as Franz Biberkopf, but where Biberkopf makes his struggles in Weimar Germany, with the Nazi State looming ahead, Franz Walsch lives in Munich, West Germany, a place in many ways indistinguishable from consumer capitalist America or other West European countries reshaped culturally and economically by World War Two.
He's so depressed most of the time he seems like he's in a trance. He looks up an old girlfriend, Johanna (Hanna Schygulla, in one of her numerous Fassbinder film roles). A nightclub chanteuse, she emulates Marlene Dietrich, has a poster of that film star on her dressing room door. She's still associated with the criminal element Franz belonged to, including a Black man nicknamed Gorilla due to his strength and build. This man, Günther (Günther Kaufmann), has killed, because he was ordered to do so, Franz's brother, Marian Walsch. It's a testament to Franz's fatalistic outlook that he goes along with this, remaining friends with Günther, who, to make things even worse, also had sex with Johanna while Franz was locked up.
Franz's demeanor seems to propel him towards a fatal encounter with a cop who's tracking him, trying to get information on the gang Franz belonged to before his imprisonment. This cop (Jan George) is a broad-chested blonde son of a bitch who follows Johanna around, turning her into an informant, pushing himself on her and eventually having sex with her. Johanna finds out what Franz's plans are--an after hours grocery store robbery--and passes them onto the cop. The scene with this unnamed cop getting dressed after fucking Johanna plays up the macho behavior of this man as he gets into his clothes, tucking in his shirt, strapping on two holsters, like a Western movie gunfighter getting ready to face the bad guys. An amazing scene, shot in one medium distance take as Johanna watches him, melodramatic music on the soundtrack.
Franz and Günther are let into the grocery store by the manager, an old friend of Franz's. The cop gets inside too as the door is left ajar. He stalks them and shoots the manager, then Franz, and wounds Günther. The cop then takes his spare gun, the one he used to kill with, and puts it in the dead hand of pathetic Franz. Günther staggers down the sidewalk past lit up department store windows featuring displays of luxuriant furniture and clothing--another amazing scene that just proves that Fassbinder's films, though slow and careful in their unfolding, often produce utterly breathtaking cinematic moments as great as anything ever created in the medium.
Günther finds the woman who told Johanna about the grocery store robbery, ties her to a chair, beats her and finally shoots her to death. He staggers to the door--we think he's going to go after Johanna now, but he collapses halfway into the hall.
This film of petty criminals and a vicious corrupt cop, of betrayal and a protagonist beset with aimlessness and self-loathing, also possesses beauty in its depiction of love. Franz, after Johanna, gets involved with Margarethe (played by Margarethe von Trotta, who became a great film director herself), a woman whose compassion for Franz doesn't really get under his skin, but the mere fact of her heart's concern for him speaks as a hopeful sign, even as she, along with Franz's mother and Johanna, attend his funeral, each woman backgrounded by crosses atop mausoleums. Each of them, in different ways, loved the wretch whose own death was part of a lie arranged by a corrupt cop.
Welcome to Fassbinder's universe.
Vic Neptune
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