Movies
Veronika Voss
The third in R.W. Fassbinder's "trilogy" on post-war Germany, and the first of them to be filmed in black-and-white. Its palette of pale, luminous grays is quite evocative of the bygone cinematic era in which the movie is set, although the actual cinematic technique, notwithstanding the array of antique wipes and irises and whatnot, is not always true to the time. (Period fidelity is shaky in other areas as well: the year is 1955, but Johnny Horton's "Battle of New Orleans," four years ahead of time, is all over the radio.) Fassbinder's stylistic exercise -- "Light and shadow!" the heroine of the piece rhapsodizes: "The two secrets of film!" -- has, in the last analysis, a very hip, arty, experimental feel to it. We get electric lights smeared around as if seen through frosted glass, overhead fans shooting off glints like Fourth-of-July sparklers, lots of artificial framing devices such as window panes and curtains, lots of views through grillwork, glass display-cases, rain-streaked windows, balusters, louvers, palm fronds -- you could possibly enhance the viewing experience if you were to look at the screen through fingers held a few inches in front of your face. Beneath and behind all this, there is a trashy (but no doubt symbolic) plot about a Tennessee Williams-ish faded and deluded movie actress, in the grip of morphine and of a lesbian neurologist. The drawback to this completely insincere pastiche of Sunset Boulevard, Barefoot Contessa, Baby Jane, et al., is that the storyline, too, is of interest only in a decorative sense -- the tragic heroine is hardly more than a wax figure, virtually indistinguishable from the statuary, candelabra, vases, potted plants, etc., in her tomblike home. 1982.
Reader Rating:
MPAA Rating: R
