“Lili Marleen” (1981)
The insurmountability of social barriers, and the war between private desire and public image are staples of the Sirkian melodrama Fassbinder emulated throughout his latter career. So as a backdrop, Nazi Germany, an oppressively totalitarian state in which private lives were often forfeit to the political machine, and racial, gender and national barriers were not just reinforced, but codified into an ethos that permeated every aspect of life, must represent some sort of melodrama jackpot. Strange, then, that “Lili Marleen,” a WWII-era tale of the forbidden love between a German nightclub singer and a Swiss Jewish conductor, should end up such an unengaging affair: the pieces are all there, and the onscreen emotional register ranges from the peaks of ecstasy to the depths of suicidal despair, as one might expect, and yet, we never feel much of anything at all. Fassbinder regular Hanna Schygulla’s performance as the central Willi is part of the problem, coming off as oddly schizoid – her reactions, while fittingly overwrought, are often inappropriate to the point of incomprehensible. And without the kind of tragic empathy the great heroines of this genre manage to engender, it’s hard to care for the pragmatic, self-absorbed, narcissistic Willi (we’re not even sure she’d be morally opposed to Nazism if it didn’t keep her from her lover) especially when the very thing that makes her famous is her rather underwhelming rendition of the titular song. The film is not bad, exactly, its lush costuming and dewy soft-focus photography hit the mark, and there are moments of sudden, weird surreality (the drunken sequence in the luxurious white house, a uniformed Nazi arriving on stage via a slide) that perk things up immeasurably. But there are also times when these experimental forays don’t pay off (the interminably returned-to scene in which Willi’s lover is tortured with incomplete snatches of the song endlessly repeated, layers unintentional irony on top of intentional as we, the audience, pray for the damn thing to stop too) and ultimately nothing can distract from the emptiness at the film’s heart. It’s where a real woman, or at least melodrama’s exaggerated version of a real woman, and someone we can care about and become involved with, should be. [B-]
“Lola” (1981)
Fassbinder’s fetish for exquisitely staged Sirk-ian melodrama, an obsession for at least part of his career, is well-documented, so if one wants to see the picture that likely lathered up Fassbinder the most (and was probably also an influence on Todd Haynes‘ similar Sirk proclivities), it’s the lush, candy-colored and sumptuous-looking “Lola.” Another BRD trilogy film set in post-World War II West Germany, the film stars Barbara Sukowa and the great Armin Mueller-Stahl (“Night on Earth,” “Eastern Promises”), and centers on a pious building commissioner looking to eradicate the corruption taking place within the business of local construction entrepreneur (Mario Adorf). Gradually gathering evidence against his prey, the straight-arrow man then meets and eventually falls in love with the titular Lola (Sukowa). Consequently, he’s shocked to learn that she’s a prostitute and cabaret singer in a local brothel. Not only that, she’s the plaything of Schukert, the crooked construction magnate he’s trying to topple. While he now possesses all the ammo he needs, Mueller-Stahl’s Von Bohm fails to reconcile his righteous duty with his lust for the fetching woman, instead falling prey to seduction and soon, to the temptations of money and power. In Fassbinder’s absorbing morality tale, we watch a honorable man become the very vile thing he attempted to fight against. A darkly, yet subtly satiric nod to the persuasive charms of capitalism, as usual, Fassbinder feels no need to underscore or underline the obvious, we watch this beautifully-shot fall from grace and any judgement is our own. [A]
“Veronika Voss” (1982)
Loosely based on the true story of Sybille Schmitz, a former Nazi starlet, whose star faded after the Third Reich crumbled — she committed suicide as a lonely old relic the nation would rather soon forget — the captivating and lush “Veronika Voss,” is Fassbinder at the height of his powers and sadly, it is his penultimate film. It is his “Sunset Boulevard” and “Citizen Kane,” literally and figuratively as both films bear resemblances to the stylish, high contrast black-and-white picture that shows obvious traces of the sumptuous Hollywood filmmaking of the 1950s. On a dark, rain-soaked evening, the unbalanced and melodramatic Voss (Rosel Zech) meets and befriends an empathetic sports writer (Hilmar Thate) who takes a curious interest in her faded-glory story. The well-meaning writer soon discovers the erratic and often desperate former star is propped up by an unscrupulous “Dr. Feelgood”-like physician (Annemarie Düringer), who lords over her — fueling her insecurities with a controlling dose of opiates, but only if she can pony up the exorbitant costs. Meanwhile, the self-sacrificing writer risks his own relationship to rescue the aging ingenue, but to no avail. Having long sought recognition within Germany — the provincial media generally despised his always quotable “enfante terrible” mien — Fassbinder finally received homegrown love when this picture rightfully won the Golden Bear at the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival. [A]
And The Rest: Three shorts preceded “Love Is Colder Than Death”; “This Night,” which is lost, “The City Tramp” and “The Little Chaos.” It was then followed by “Katzelmacher,” which translates, roughly, as “Cock Artist” — not, as the title might suggests, about Warren Beatty, but an adaptation of Fassbinder’s play, about a Greek immigrant (played by the filmmaker himself). 1970 brought “Gods of the Plague” and “The Coffee House” (the latter only a TV recording of his production of Carlo Goldoni’s play), while the year was topped off with “The Niklashausen Journey,” co-directed with ‘Herr R.’ collaborator Michael Fengler.
That was swiftly followed by “Rio Das Mortes” and “Pioneers in Ingolstadt,” both made for TV, while “Whity” is one of the better-regarded films that we didn’t get to see. “The Merchant of Four Seasons” followed ‘Holy Whore,’ and is seen as one of the director’s very best, although it slipped between the cracks for us. 1972 had another theater-to-TV translation, “Bremen Freedom,” the 5-part TV series “Eight Hours Are Not A Day,” while 1973 brought “Wild Game” (based on the Kroetz play), and the aforementioned “World on a Wire,” which we covered in detail last week. It was followed by “Nora Helmer,” a version of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” for TV.
The black-and-white “Effi Briest” is another great one that we didn’t have time to cover, while 1975 brought the short “Like A Bird on a Wire” (unconnected to the Goldie Hawn vehicle, unsurprisingly…). 1976 gave us “Satan’s Brew” and “Chinese Roulette,” while 1977 had “Women In New York” and “The Stationmaster’s Wife,” both made for TV, while he directed a segment of the omnibus “Germany in Autumn” the following year.
“Despair” was his closest flirtation with the mainstream, adapting a Nabokov novel with a Tom Stoppard script (in English, no less), starring Dirk Bogarde, while 1979 brought “The Third Generation” a terrorism black comedy starring Eddie Constantine, star of “Alphaville.” Finally, he made his sole venture into documentary with 1981’s “Theatre in Trance,” and ended his career with 1982’s “Querelle,” another English-language film, based on Jean Genet’s novel and starring Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau and “Midnight Express” lead Brad Davis.
— Rodrigo Perez, Christopher Bell, Sam Chater, Gabe Toro, Mark Zhuravsky, Jessica Kiang, Oliver Lyttelton
