A few words about Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Fassbinder
Originally uploaded by livingfilm.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the primary figures of the film movement known as The New German Cinema, that began during the mid 1960s and blossomed during the 1970s, bringing new life to the German cinema, long depressed since the end of the second World War. Luminaries of The New German Cinema included such iconoclasts as Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Volker Schlondorf and of course Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Of all of the directors of The New German Cinema Fassbinder was the most prolific, having directed with breakneck speed from 1969 till his death in June 1982, an amazing 43 feature films, including the 15 hour Berlin Alexanderplatz. Fassbinder's cinema would be a fascinating contextualization of Hollywood Melodramas examining post-war German experience. This combination of styles would often challenge his audience, he was sometimes accused of being too Hollywood for the avant-garde, and too avant-garde for Hollywood. Though working so quickly Fassbinder maintained an incredibly high level of quality, and intelligence in all of his films, making them so engaging to discover 30 years later.

Fassbinder would acquire extensive experience in the German Anti-Theater during the sixties, perfecting his skills in all aspects of production before making the plunge into film in 1969 (he would direct five feature films that year alone!). The influence of the theater can be felt in many of his later films, notably The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, that I will talk about later in a different post. I have not yet seen any of the films Fassbinder directed during this stage of his career, so I cannot comment on these films from experience. I do know that many of his early films were stylistically an extension of his work in the Anti-theatre, and were often influenced by American Gangster pictures, particularly the films of directors Raoul Walsh and Howard Hawks (His second short film made in 1966 Das Kleine Chaos-The Little Chaos which I have seen, is a Gangster film, and even includes an homage to Walsh). Fassbinder would claim that the mother/son relationship in Walsh's film White Heat would influence all of the mother/son relationships in his own films.

By the end of 1970, Fassbinder would discover the films of director Douglas Sirk, famous for his Hollywood Melodramas, such as All That Heaven Allows, Imitation of Life, Written on the Wind, The Tarnished Angels, and Magnificent Obsession. Fassbinder was fascinated by the humanity and intelligence he found in Sirk's films. At the time, Sirk's were still considered trashy and sentimental Hollywood kitsch by most of the film world. Fassbinder was one of the first and certainly the loudest of Sirk's reappraisers. Fassbinder would even reimagine Sirk's film All That Heaven Allows, with his loose remake Ali: Fear Eats The Soul -1973

Beginning with Fassbinder's 13th film The Merchant of the Four Seasons -1971, Fassbinder would plant his style firmly in the grounds of a Modern Melodrama. Fassbinder would skirt on the edges of artifice and naturalism for the rest of his career with such varied films as Petra von Kant-1972, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul-1973, Fox and His Friends-1974, Effi Briest-1974, and Fear of Fear-1975 to name only a few.

Fassbinder would find his greatest success during the final stage of his career beginning with the international success of his film The Marriage of Maria Braun-1978. This period would see Fassbinder with much larger budgets than he had ever had before, and his films began to show even more of his Hollywood influence. The visual stylization became more extreme during this period with films such as Berlin Alexanderplatz-1980, Lili Marleen-1980, Lola-1981, Veronica Voss-1982 and his final film Querelle, Fassbinder's adaptation of Jean Genet's novel Querelle de Brest. Some critics have argued that during this later period Fassbinder's films suffered from their larger budgets and epic style. I cannot say, because I feel that even the least interesting of the films from this period I have seen Lola-1981, is still interesting in many ways. I look forward to watching Berlin Alexanderplatz-1980 the 15 hour epic, made for German television. Those that have seen it claim that it is his masterpiece. In any case it is difficult to tell in what direction Fassbinder's career would have ultimately taken him.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder died on the night of June 10, 1982. He was 37 years old. Fassbinder took an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills, while working on the script to a film about Rosa Luxemburg, that was to star Jane Fonda. Up to his final moments Fassbinder was dedicated to the creation of his art. For those of us who love his films, we are grateful for his creative drive, and dedication to film.

La Jetee

La Jetee Poster
Originally uploaded by livingfilm.

I just watched Chris Marker's 1962 short film La Jetee, and I loved it!

La Jetee, is entirely made up of still photographs, and was considerably better than Robert Altman's earlier film The James Dean Story that used the same technique -though I wouldn't trade the laughs I get from that movie for anything! It's really priceless. La Jetee is set in the France of the future, after the Third World War. The few survivors of the war now live underground of course! I never get sick of that premise, both The Time Machine and Logan's Run have similar visions of the future and have always stirred my imagination. Having run out of resources necessary to survive, a group of scientists experiment with time travel to hopefully bring the supplies needed to save the human race. To successfully achieve time travel, someone is needed who can emotionally survive the concept of time travel, and our hero is chosen because of an image of his past that haunts him. It is at the Jetty (La Jetee) before the War in Paris, he sees a beautiful woman, and the death of a man.

La Jetee was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's film 12 Monkeys. Curiously, while watching La Jetee I noticed a scene that is an obvious homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Masterpiece Vertigo, where our hero and the woman of his past examine the lines in a fallen tree stump, while we look at a photo of the woman's hair which is styled in a twist the same way Madeline (Kim Novak) does in the Hitchcock film. Now this is the cute part, I was instantly reminded of how that scene of Vertigo appears in 12 Monkeys, which is then actually an homage to an homage, made by using the original inspiration, and in effect bringing everything full circle, which is actually what both films are about in the end.

I highly recommend watching this film, and considering it is only 28 minutes long, it won't take long for you to watch another French New Wave classic. Enjoy!

Young Man With A Horn

Young Man With A Horn
Originally uploaded by livingfilm.

Young man with a Horn is kind of a failure of a film. I mean, it is beautifully made with very capable performances by the cast of Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day and the always perfect Hoagy Carmicheal, yet the film itself was a contradiction of the what the film was actually about, or rather it is a perfect example of what the film tries to condemn. Let me explain.

Based on the Dorothy Baker novel, that was loosely based on the tragic life of legendary jazz trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke, Young Man follows the life of Rick Martin (Kirk Douglas) through his childhood and discovery and prodigal abilities as a jazz trumpeter.

We are actually told the story of the film by the narrator 'Smoke' Willoughby (Hoagy Carmicheal) -actually Carmicheal was a good friend of Bix Beiderbecke which makes sense of his being cast in this film, yet I am curious to think about how he felt about the finished product.

We first meet Rick Martin as a boy of 10, and we learn that both parents have died (actually his father might not have died, but we are told he "never knew his Father"), and he is left to be raised (and neglected) by his adult sister. Wandering around at night young Rick comes across a homeless shelter run by the church, and is drawn in by the hymns being sung by the people inside, with the accompaniment of a piano. Rick sneaks in while the meal is being served to the poor, to play the piano. We are told by Hoagy Carmicheal's narration that the legend is that Rick taught himself how to play the piano that night. After being kicked out of the church for disturbing the visitors, Rick stumbles across a jazz joint, and listens to the musicians jam. His interest in music endears him to the musicians in particular virtuoso trumpeter Art Hazzard (Juano Hernandez) who takes Rick under his wing and teaches him how to play trumpet.

We meet Rick again, now as an adult, playing music in dance-halls and carnivals to make a living, while playing soulful Jazz in his free time. The popular tastes in music have changed. Mediocrity is King. Rick's mentor Art is now finding work harder to come by, and his talent rendered meaningless in a world where as Art puts it "People don't care about music anymore....They buy records to learn the words". Rick learns this first hand when he is reprimanded by his band leader for playing too expressively in his accompaniment to singer Jo Jordan (Doris Day). Rick is told to simply "Play the music as it is written" because the arrangements cost so much. Both Jo and 'Smoke' who recognize and admire Rick's talent, cannot prevent his continued acting out that result in his being fired from the band.

At about this time Jo brings her friend Amy North Lauren Bacall to hear Rick perform, in a club he now plays in. Amy is an intellectual who is studying to be a psychologist, who claims to have no interest in Jazz, but finds its followers to be interesting subjects. Rick falls in love with Amy, flattered that someone as smart as Amy is interested in him. Amy who's intellectual pretention covers her insecurity at her lack of talent and passion that seem to propel Rick. They soon marry, but quickly discover their relationship disintegrating.

Rick soon finds his life falling apart, and is caught in a downward spiral of destruction. That is the gist of things.

Now my problem is that this film though very skillfully made, lacks honesty and more importantly humanity. Rick is portrayed very two dimensionally, alternating between gifted artist and naive dreamer, and I don't blame Kirk Douglas for this, because he actually has it in him to give the depth this character needs, he is actually playing against type in this film, and that should have been to the films benefit, yet the script must have given him very little to work with. Douglas was usually cast as a bastard in most of his films, and I think that those aspects of Rick's character were sadly missing. Rick was too sympathetic, too Hollywoodized. He was like a gifted saint that just happened to be misunderstood, and could not help his life from falling apart. The rest of the characters in the film were fine, but this isn't their story.

I don't even think I can blame director Micheal Curtiz, who very gifted himself, was the Warner Bros. work horse director, and had turned countless of his studio assignments into classic films such as Casablanca, Mildred Pierce and The Sea Hawk to name only a slight few. And though this film is often very beautifully directed (and I might still recommend watching it, if only to see Hoagy Carmichael who is wonderful in this film), it lacks the passion that moves the character, and the ultimatly the force of this story.

Ironically you can't help but feel that Curtiz was forced to simply play the film as written.