hasosch Reviews

My Führer (2007)

Repulsive crap

[1/10 · 23 January 2010]

is probably the only adequate description for this movie whose main intellectual contribution is to portray Adolf Hitler as a „bedwetter, impotent and depressive". Neither the glorious beginning – the old joke based on the difference between the exclamation „Hail" and the verb „to heal" – nor the end, when the Führer is obviously not realizing anymore what Grünbaum lays in his mouth in occasion of his Big Speech - are remotely funny. However, I would by no means say that the nauseating hopping-around of the „Great Dictator" alias Chaplin was funnier. What I say, is: Put Herbert Achternbusch's „The Last Hole" finally (after almost 20 years) on DVD and observe the Nile's journey from the physician who describes him one schnapps in order to forget one Jew until his suicide in the Vulcano Stromboli, equipped solely with a war helmet, a tennis-racket and an amulet in which Last Susn has admitted him her eternal love.

L'Atalante (1934)

One of the greatest movies in a horror edition

[10/10 · 20 January 2010]

New Yorker Film Release is not a bad address. As a matter of fact, a legion of fundamental European were made known to the American public during decades solely by this company, and we have all reasons to be grateful to them for their video-releases. With the DVD-releases, however, they seem to have not the same good hand. The edition of L'Atalante, uncontroversially one of the milestones of film history, comes in horrible edition. But I do not speak about the film and sound quality. What I mean are the translations on the one side and the commentaries in the specials on the other hand.

It is true: Michel Simon's mumbling which he could do so well and which he also used, e.g. in "Boudu", is very hard to understand even for French native speakers. A special that came in addition, in his case, was his 1934 still audible Swiss accent, including at least one Swiss syntactic construction which I heard: "Ca Va Avec Moi" = "This goes (is fine) with me". However, whoever translated this movie, is far away from being a native speaker. Whole passages are simply wrongly translated. Only a nice pardonable little detail is there when the captain, Dasté, cries out: Hercule! - The translator heard "Père Jules" - Simon's character in the movie. Especially catastrophic are the translation of the "Language Parlé", for which the translator could have used one the first editions of Henri Bauche's standard work - but he didn't. Actually, for linguists, L'Atalante is an Eldorado for "vulgar" and "Argotic" words and expressions (which are practically all not known anymore today).

For Annette Insdorf, professor of film at the famous Columbia university, L'Atalante is an early talkie. As a matter of fact, it is silent movie which was post-dubbed. Jean Vigo started the filming already in 1929, but, due to his illness that lead finally to his death with 29 years, he was unable to finish it until 1934. Absence of sound does not make a movie silent - as presence of sound does not make a talking. For the latter case take Murnau's last movie "Tabu" which is a silent talkie (while L'Atalante is a talking silent movie). Murnau threw the sound-track out because he decided it would not fit to the movie's pictures. About the post-dubbed silent movies, there are many, cf. e.g. Dreyer's "Vampyr". This was done mainly in order to sell these movies better, and we are grateful that in this way we have the voices of persons which otherwise would be lost (cf. Greta Garbo). About the rest of the commentary I do not have the space here to show all the mistakes. I have no idea why Mrs. Insdorf shows up everywhere as an expert for early European film history. Simply the fact that she mispronounces all German names shows that she actually never heard them pronounced correctly. Mistakes for which in other places students would be kicked out of their first semesters.

I strongly suggest that L'Atalante, a groundbreaking highlight and milestone of film history, can go over to Criterion, simply the qualitatively best film series around the globe. May they exchange the translations and substitute the specials, and in this way we can hopefully soon throw the present US edition where is belongs: into the dumpster.

Christmas Story (2007)

A modern alternative mythology

[10/10 · 18 January 2010]

In most parts of Europe, St. Nicholas comes on the 6th of December, together with Knecht Ruprecht/Krampus/Schmutzli and equipped with a huge bag in order to throw the children therein who did not obey their parents during the year past. For the other children, the strange couple has nuts, oranges, apples, perhaps chocolate. But before St. Nicholas decides what to do with the children, they must recite a little poem, may it be self-made or learned by heart.

In the Northern Part of Europe, originating from England and in the whole USA, also originating from England, however, St. Nicholas appears on Christmas Day bringing the children their gifts. (In Europe the Christkind itself bring the parcels on the 24th of December ... .) According to what the children, when they become older, learn, is that St. Nicholas of Myra has been a historical figure, who lived in the 3./4. centuries. However, when you look how many Patrocinia of a Nicholas there are in the Christian world, then it is clear that we cannot speak about one single person. That St. Nicholas of Myra has not been thrown out of the lists of Saints during the 2. Vatican Council (like St. George, St. Michael, St. Christoph ...) is a wonder of itself.

Now, Lappland comes with a quite new, a modern and alternative interpretation: Little Nicholas became an orphan when his parents had a lethal accident on their way to seek the doctor for helping their little daughter. Since the place where Nicholas lived was a very poor fishermen's village, no family could afford to take the little boy to them. There, the priest had an idea: Each of the families should give him shelter, nourish him and care for him during one year. And always at Christmas time, in remembrance to the day when his parents died, he should change families. And so it happened. Until the boy had reached an age of about twelve years and already proved great talent in wood-carving. Then, the old and strange Isaac offered him to stay with him and learn to become a wood-craftsman. So, Nicholas grew up with the grumpy but goodhearted old man and lived with him until Isaac had do be picked up by his family because of his high age. And every year, Nicholas would carve his little wooden animals for all the children - steadily enlarging his area of distribution. And nobody know who the "Christmas-Man" was, until a nosy little girl found out Nicholas' secret. Not long after, it must have happened that God decided to take Nicholas amongst the Saints and give him his deserved place in heaven. While his closest friends stood sad on the frozen surface of the lake in which Nicholas parents and sister died, the little girl called her parents: Look up, there! And in the Heaven, St. Nicholas drove with a long carriage pulled by rein-deers through the skies, wishing every child and every parent Marry Christmas. --- An absolute highlight!

Querelle (1982)

In the Light of Hell

[10/10 · 17 January 2010]

Amgonst the 66 movies that R.W. Fassbinder made in his only 37 years long life (the single episodes, none of them less than 1 hour, counted as singles), "Querelle", his last work (1982), seems to march to a different drummer. This impression is reinforced because, except Günther Kaufmann who plays Nono, none of the "Fassbinder family" is in the leading roles (although one can see in the background, almost reduced to extras, some of the Old Garde). Not only is the whole movie set in a more artificial than artistic environment (a masterwork of Oscar winner Rolf Zehetbauer), but especially the treatment of homosexuality has nothing to do, f.ex. with that in "Fox and this Friends".

Nonetheless, the omnipresent mirrors suggest that there are points of contact with such movies like "The Stationmaster's Wife", "Chinese Roulette", and especially "Despair". The latter movie whose German subtitle is "A Trip into the Light" seems over big passages to be a preparatory work of some central issues in "Querelle": 1. The search of identity. 2. The Doppelgängers(Theo/Gil, Querelle/Robert?). 3. The problem of sexual might/force in relationships (cf. "Warum Läuft Herr R. Amok", "Martha", "Fear of Fear"). New is the strong mystic symbolism: Seblon as godfather (?), Lysiane as overthrown goddess (?). Then, again as a sequel of the last scene in "Despair": the landscape that looks as if the sun would rise constantly: In "Querelle", we are not anymore only in a Trip into the Light, we have reached the Light: it is a picture of hell.

Downfall (2004)

Insights into the private life of Mr. A. Hitler

[10/10 · 16 January 2010]

It is a peculiarity of Germany that it produces, on the one side, uninterruptedly movies about the time of the National Socialism with the clear purpose of "explaining the unexplainable", but, on the other side, it punishes and persecutes with the utmost severeness all those who try to have their own opinion about national socialism or some of their exponents. Exactly the latter happened to "Der Untergang" (2004): Director Hirschbiegel was most heavily criticizes through weeks in the boulevard tableaux because he did not dissociate himself from the "benevolent and favorable" picture that Traudl Junge (on whose memories the film is based) gave about her former boss Hitler. Indeed: Somebody who watches this movies without the burden of allegedly commonly borne (and "suffered") past, he or she may sense Hitler as a bearer of sympathy: He does not drink nor smoke, eats only vegetarian and small-sized meals, drinks herb-tea and no coffee, is not pro miscue and loves animals and children over anything. Junge/Hirschbiegel also clearly differentiate (at various places of the movie) between "the human A.H." and "Der Führer".

It seems to be forbidden, at least in Germany, that also a dictator (who was by the way correctly elected Reichskanzler) is a human being and not a monster from outer space. When recently multi-Oscar winning director Oliver Stone called Hitler a "scapegoat" - whole Germany shook frightened its head. Had Stone been a German (or perhaps only in Germany to the time when he uttered that), the police would have arrested him because of "belittlement" of war-crimes. Of course: Only about two years ago, famous and popular TV moderator and writer Eva Herman lost her job because she was telling in one of her shows that the children's care had been much better in the NS-time than it is in present-day Germany. Nothing else. When, again some years earlier, a chemist offered a court house to show his chemical proof that cyclone B could not possibly have been used in cold Auschwitz - he was arrested and sentences without even having been given the possibility to show his scientific proof. The same happened to a meanwhile whole bunch of scientists who have tried to shade light on some of the innumerable inconsistencies and contradictions of what happened or not happened between 1933 and 1945. Speaking nicely about Hitler is strongly forbidden in Germany, one just wonders that this movie has not been banned in Germany. The more one has to praise its director, not only for his great and admirable achievement, but mostly for his courage in a land where only that is accepted as "truth" about the NS times which is accepted by Jewish historians.

Thirst (1949)

Relationship as substitute and metaphor

[8/10 · 15 January 2010]

The women-type Rut does exist, and it is so excellently portrayed in this movie that I dare saying: In his later movies, Bergman was hardly ever so honest. However, this is not the basic tenor of this movie, the question is: What is this glue that holds a relationship together? At the end, Bertil says to himself: Yes, I'm in hell with her, but being alone would be much worse. - Hell is only one stadium before self-abolishment, but not itself.

Rut is a drinker, and therefore, Bergman's title "Törst" is at least not exclusively metaphoric. As a very young girl, she had a relationship with a married and much older man. Her pregnancy would possibly be classified as due to rape in certain environments. During abort, she lost her fertility. By her lack of intelligence, she cannot cope with her second husband, a university professor. Thus, she is quite unclear about her function: She cannot be mother and neither partner (partner in what?). During her drinking she floods away her bad memories, but only with the result that they come back with even greater intensity. She is addicted to little signs of love. If he caresses her on the mistaken side of the face, the catastrophe is programmed. She is able to condemn him with an avalanche of the worst vocabulary, and to apologize begging and whining for what she just said two minutes later. Her husband also realizes that she flirts with death: f.ex. he follows her in the corridor of the train and listens when she is in the bathroom.

This early movie is already a typical "Bergman": existentialist down to its "pores", asking a lot of question and letting the answers to the watcher.

Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1971 TV Movie)

Laying out topics for future movies

[10/10 · 14 January 2010]

I cannot deny when many people think that "Pioniere Von Ingolstadt" (1971) was more of less an apprentice piece for Fassbinder, although he had already done a couple of feature films before. I have also no major arguments against those who criticize that both film and play (by Marielouise Fleisser) are basically content-less (why Brecht seriously recommended to perform it "not as whole, but in its parts"): "Pioneers" come into a small Southern German town, the girls, oppressed by the Bavarian patriarchs, are eager to escape with the next-best soldier who comes across them. However, they are disappointed, because they experience sex where they expect love. And the pioneers build a bridge -a really strange metaphor. Is this bridge, that probably never get finished, a connection between the oppressors and the oppressed, the rich (patriarchs) and the poor (servants, the two female lead-characters Alma and Berta or A and B)? The movie raises more question than it gives an answer why Fassbinder did it. Considering that social problems, especially such involved with women, will become central in Fassbinder's later work, we may speculate that here, he laid out all the topics to which he would come back in his following films.

Children of Paradise (1945)

Marcel Carné's Magical Realism

[10/10 · 13 January 2010]

It is a fantastic and poetic world which Marcel Carné has presented to his public in his limited number of movies, almost everyone a masterpiece on its own. A world, in which fantasy and poetry have magical power. There is no gesture, no mimics, no sign without a meaning, a little character can change a world. Insofar, Carné is a late heir of Novalis. According to him, the sign is necessarily bound to its object, there is no arbitrariness and no convention. There is a "sympathetic abyss" between sign and object, and at the beginning of the creation of every sign therefore stands the Great Sign Creator, God. So, every syllable, every twitch and flutter and flicker and bicker and flash is a message from Heaven. No wonder, that in such a world practically everything is possible. And no wonder, that the gigantic fairground which Carné presents in his epochal "Les Enfants Du Paradis" is a world in the world that is protected by the Sublime. I even think that Carné's typical style, which is the style of a merciful and enchanted marionette-player, shows that the sense of life does not consist in enforcing everyone's alleged free will, but to learn how to communicate, to interpret and to act in this highly artistic semiotic world. Nietzsche had written that he supports an anti-metaphysic world-view - as long it is artistic.

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (1970)

That's not me whom you see

[10/10 · 10 January 2010]

The idea that the human being is a Kosmos of his own, is know since the times of Romantics, at last. The even stronger theory according to which the human was been created after God has become a common feature of Christian religion. However, it has taken almost two thousand years before the philosopher Gotthard Gunther has stated that between an "I" and and "Though" there is exactly the same qualitative difference as between the human and God. On therefore has not to travel to the edges of transcendence in order to experience what a con-texture border means, it is sufficient to learn that insight into a Thou is excluded on principal reasons. This turns out to be important in all those cases where even close friends of a human become shocked and react in a way similar to: we would never have thought that he could do that.

Another problem, perhaps in a certain perspective even more delicate, is the border between a deed in thought and a deed in fact. Many people kill others in their wishes, dreams, they even say it without meaning it. On the other hand, some people would never say it, but then there is a moment when they do it. What is it that causes the transgression between thought and deed? R.W. Fassbinder presents a fully uncommented, non-condemnatory approach in "Warum Läuft Herr R. Amok?" (1970). Up to a certain degree, the absolute free speech which gives the illusion of everyday-conversations observed by a candid camera, has the form of a Brechtian "Lehrstück", however, there is no wagging finger to sense in this movie. The spectator is elevated into the position of the judge - if he really still thinks that the deed of Herr R. can be judged after having watched and understood the movie. The spectator even becomes a part of the movie, without him the communication scheme is incomplete. He is the receiver of a message from whom not even an answer is expected, but a revision in thinking on the basis of which has been presented to him. "A good movie is a movie that does not stop when people come out of the cinema, but continues in their heads", Fassbinder said once.

The Gendarme of Saint-Tropez (1964)

Ludovic Cruchot and Jacques Clouseau

[10/10 · 9 January 2010]

The first "Pink Panther" movie, directed by Blake Edwards, with Peter Sellers in the main role, came out in 1963. As practically everybody knows, it was a wonderful spoof of the French police as seen through British eyes. Although the exact relationships between the Pink Panther movies on the one side and the totally 6 "Le Gendarme De Saint-Tropez"-movies, directed by Jean Girault, has, as far as I know, never been revealed or scrutinized, the latter ones, starting in 1964, can surely be seen as an answer to make fun of the French provincial police by some people from Paris.

A short comparison between Sellers (who has been considered widely as the best comedian of all times) and De Funes (who never got really famous in the US despite the release of such movies like "Rabbi Jacob" and the VHS release of "La Grande Vadrouille"), De Funes' comic is devastatingly different from the one of Sellers. De Funes, who was a trained pantomimic, used this special capacity of his in most of his films, his being-a-comedian has elements of vaudeville - yet not in the sense of the Marx brothers, of slapstick - yet not in the sense of the early American silent movies, - of horseplay, yet without striving tastelessness or primitiveness. However, his comic is never intellectual, Funes could never have played Dr. Strangelove - as Seller could never have been Balduin or Oskar.

Nevertheless, the characters of Cruchot and Cluseau are closer than one would expect, yet still radically different in their basics. While Clouzeau never seems to be ridiculous when he hunts criminals, Cruchot does, because he is more interested in chicken-stealing than in felonies. How Cruchot treats his caught thieves, reveals that he is not to much different from them. On the other side, Clouseau is different from everybody, he would be too clumsy to associate with his "victims". Clouzeau is much more the French guy as he is seen by foreigners than Cruchot: Quiet, with a tendency to be elegant, womanizing, polite. But now quite the opposite is Cruchot: He walks around with his uniform even at home, he is loud, rude, slaps and hits and beats his "subservients", has mostly a daughter (in later "Gendarm"-sequels a wife), but does not come in flirting contact with any other women. He uses politeness and respect strictly to get to his purpose - as he uses otherwise rudeness and disrespect. However, both Cluseau and Cruchot are behaving strictly against police rules, but in their "anticyclic" behavior they reach the goal where probably everyone else would fail.

Louis De Funes has often being criticized for having played the allegedly primitive, but funny "Gendarm"-movies, after having been for decades a revered, but outside of France completely unnoticed stage actor. It is true that especially his work that he did with Gerard Oury belongs probably to the best that French comedy of the 60ies and 70ies had to offer, but without the "Gendarm"-movies he possibly would never have reached his enormous popularity. It is time that these 6 movies are edited for the international audience, too.

Effi Briest (1974)

The Calculus of Fear

[10/10 · 9 January 2010]

One the tablets used by Fassbinder in this movie (the same method he shall use 6 years later in "Berlin Alexanerplatz") shows the text: "He put her under pressure wherever he could. So-to-say a calculus of fear" (Fontane). As any other calculi, also the calculus of fear consists of theorems. Speaking about the relationship between Von Instetten and Effi, we have: 1. Never treat her without menacing, but do not show the menace open, so that you can deny it after. 2. Isolate her from society, best make her a child as soon as possible so that she does not get bored. 3. Never praise her for what she is doing, unless in the presence of foreigners. 4. Praise her in front of her parents with whom you should establish a good friendship. If she is complaining later about her marriage, the guilt will be given to her.

As the sub-title of the movie says (the longest ever used in a movie): The movie is about those people who are capable to see the unjustness of social rules but don't help changing them, and by doing so, confirm them. "Effi Briest" is therefore a typical Fassbinder movie which he liked to call "melodramas" and thus also a predecessor of his later "women-movies" about Maria Braun, Lola, Lili Marleen and Veronika Voss.

That this film is an outstanding masterpiece has nowadays been recognized by all leading film experts around the world. Although Fassbinder let himself sometimes inspire by works of literature, Fontane's "Effi Briest" is one of his only three explicit literature adaptations, besides "Berlin Alexanderplatz" and "Querelle". One could perhaps go as far and say: While in "Effi Briest", society is criticized at the hand of one single, individual fate, in "Berlin Alexanderplatz" a society as a whole is put in the pillory, and in "Querelle" a possible alternative world after all the disgust is shown. Fassbinder made this long way in societal criticism in only eight years, during which he approached the society of the time in which he lived, by systematically coming closer to reach the 50ies of the 20th century (Lola). His movies can be seen as chronicles of different means of suppression by using calculi which turn out to be independent of time.

The Haunting of Molly Hartley (2008)

The Christian source of horror

[10/10 · 7 January 2010]

I have the terrible suspect that this movie has become victim of basic misunderstandings: It is clearly revealed that religion, here: Christendom, contributes to the "haunting", resp. the horror-visions of Molly Hartley. That this story is settled in a special part of the USA seems to me not to be by chance either: There is possibly no other land on this globe that houses so many sects, many of them are even allowed to trace their roots back to Christendom - in reality most of them have their roots in the time of European witch-trials and had been expelled from the European continent. But still today, and not only in New England, they are allowed to let celebrate their partly dangerous nonsense-ceremonies. This has nothing to do with freedom of belief.

Molly Hartley is one of those victims. Even her father seems to believe in the "apocalyptic" story that happened when she was born. It is also shown that the same society who protects in fact these sects paradoxically puts certain of its members in psychiatric clinics. The psychiatric clinics as followers of the medieval monasteries, as Oskar Panizza explained it? Fact is, that even in "moderate" Christian families, still most children grow up with a god who observes you, who punishes you, who threatens you with hell, if you do not obey. Another, also Christian-based resource, are the classical fairy-tales, in which children are raped, their hands cut off, their tongues burnt out, who are blended, hijacked, separated from their parents, imprisoned in mountains, etc.

Frankly speaking, it is a wonder that not more psychotic children grew up to be become insane under the promise of the "Eternal Relief" after their death if they only are accepting to go through a life in hell, a life which is clearly negated by the Christian Church, because it is considered a kind of exams before humans enter the "real" life after their death. Humiliate yourself before the cross, kneel down and accept and life in fear and terror - and Thine will the Revelation. Such nonsense can only be treated in the form of comedy or horror. Mickey Liddel, who directed "The Haunting of Molly Hartley" has done an amazing job and, as the low rating of his movie proves, just hit exactly into the wounds of all those mentally sick people who still make their life dependent from transcendence. Special congratulations to the main actress: May we see many more movies with her! Her face seems to transport the story, a face that one does not so easily forget.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

The story of Ali, Emmy and Barbara

[10/10 · 6 January 2010]

In "Angst Essen Seele Auf" - literally translated: "Fear To Eat Soul Up", we have one of those characteristic cases where the director, R.W. Fassbinder, plays one of the ugliest roles in the movie by which he intended to pillory all those who do the same, his wife is played by Irm Hermann, and for connoisseurs: practically the whole "Fassbinder family" is in this movie. However, new was the main actress, Brigitte Mira, who used to be a star on stage, film and TV since her earliest childhood, but never really had her break-through, until she was discovered by Fassbinder when she was already approximately 60 years old. The present movie, another one, "Mutter Küsters Fahrt Zum Himmel", and a few smaller, but also important roles before and after made so-to-say over-night a world-star out of her, and whoever has the opportunity to listen to the interview she gave in the age of 93 on the special bonus-disc, curated well as usually by Criterion, will by all means enjoy that quite specially.

But nevertheless, the movie does not only tell the story of "Ali" and Emmy and their impossible or "forbidden" love, but, more precisely, there is a triangle story in the background, caused by Ali's indecisive relation to the character of Barbara Valentin (who looks as gorgeous in this movie that her appearance alone makes you at least watch it twice). She is the owner of the "Asphalt-Schenke", where Ali and his Arabic colleagues congregate every evening for beer and Oriental music. The relationship between the two German girls in the bar and the Arabic men seems to be good, even couscous is cooked. So, one asks oneself why it was necessary that one rainy evening Emmy had to seek shelter in the bar where after Ali takes the first possibility to move in to her and even marry her. The famous words which gave the title of the movie Ali speaks one night to her, underlining her "kindness" and opposing her to "all other Germans", "for whom Arabic people are dogs, not humans". However, when the first problems between Ali and Emmy arise, Alis flees to Barbara who seem to have awaited him long before and opens her door with wide arms, also cooks his couscous and sleeps with him. So, although this movie has the usual great dramaturgy going back to Fassbinder himself, the relationship between Ali and Barbara is not fully motivated. Why did he not marry her instead of old Emmy?

A Woman in Berlin (2008)

Correcting tendentiousness

[10/10 · 3 January 2010]

Max Färberböck, known to the world-wide audience since his "Aimee and Jaguar", shows in this newer film for once not the standard story of the bad Germans, who, deserving after what they have done, being Nazis, are liberated by the good Russians, the good Americans and the good Allies. It shows exactly the same experience that we all, who grew up in the East Block, had about our Russiand "friends". They came to rape, to destroy, to violate, to erase. It is a very interesting fact concerning mass psychology or perhaps better mass-psychosis that nobody normally speaks about the enormous amount of destruction done or caused by the liberators of end-World War II Europe. And nobody even mentions the Stalinist concentration camps. This is why we need films like "Eine Frau In Berlin".

However, in Färberböcks film, we see the Russians, "like animals, like pigs, an-alphabets, without culture" - as the Russian Major says it in his own words, he, who speaks, according to the main female character "a seldomly high-style Russian". Well, a little bit of "justness" had to be - not ALL Russians are like the "scum" (quotation from the movie) that we see. Interestingly, my Hungarian home-town had been bombed by Americans, but afterward the Russians came like vultures and pitched themselves into the ruins, what was female, was raped, what had been church or synagogue - was emptied and the treasures stolen, a subculture sneaking from the sou-terrain up to the ruins and even profiting from corpses and debris.

Lola (1981)

The memory of love

[10/10 · 3 January 2010]

Von Bohm is from East-Prussia, his two "weaknesses" are "East-Prussian human beings and West-Frisian tea", he tells to Lola's mother who works as his house-keeper after he has been elected as the new head of the construction department by the city of Coburg. Coburg - as any German city in the time of the "Wirtschaftswunder" - is a place "where people have an outer and an inner life, and both have nothing to do with one another". Although Von Bohm agrees, he has not a ghost of an idea that the elegant and beautiful young lady who gets his hand-kiss is in her "inner" life the attraction of the local bordello where the "crows" (major, police president, politicians, heads of the governmental departments) and the "vulture" (Schuckert) reunite every evening while their wives are knitting at home or are already asleep.

It is amazing what Fassbinder made out of the Heinrich Mann-Von Sternberg drama "Professor Unrat" or "The Blue Angel", respectively. Fassbinder's Lola is not a man-murdering and at last unreachable "beauty" like the (not so beautiful) Marlene Dietrich, but a girl who has to nourish her little daughter and still has the hope for a better live. She is "open" for everybody and does not flirt with the distance. In the opposite: On the stage she goes from hand to hand and is something like a collective propriety of the "Creme De La Creme" of the little city. (The figure of Esslin - whose name is close to Enslin -, who quotes Bakunin in Lola's Boudoir, is probably the rest that remained from the original protagonist character of Professor Unrat.) Therefore, Fassbinder's Lola is not about the decrease of a society member by entering the "wrong" society, but about her way to become a part of her society and Von Bohm's desire to possess his beloved "object". This is managed in an almost fairy-tale-like style, typically (and ironically) for the Germany of the Adenauer-era, so that in the end everybody looks happy, since everybody got what he wanted: Lola says to Mrs. Schuckert: "Now I belong to you". Schuckert earns his 3 millions of D-Marks from the "Lindenhof", the Mayor will be reelected, and Von Bohm gets Lola. Then, Lola's little daughter asks him: "Are you happy now?". Von Bohm answers a bit hesitatingly by "Yes". Unlike Professor Unrat, he does not pay with his life for his love, but probably with his soul.

Vacancy (2007)

The motel as a trap

[10/10 · 2 January 2010]

As everybody knows, a house has many functions, the original one probably being shelter against a possibly violent environment. However, never ever has it been shown so terrificly how a house can turn into a trap, offering the whole series of imaginable brutality instead of protection against them as in Antal Nimrod's "Vacancy". That the American-Hungarian film director is a specialist of tunnels, one has seen galore in his biggest success "Kontroll" (2003) which is settled wholly in the Budapestan Metro underground, with tunnels, corridors, hallways, gangways, etc. Interestingly, also the Motel in "Vacany" is undermined with a tunnel, connection all strategically important positions for the "film makers".

Another interesting question is why exactly motels are recurrently chosen for the Lieu De Crime, starting, as also everybody knows, with Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960). A possible answer is that unlike regular houses, the rooms of motels are taken for a short-time by strangers: neither their neighbors in the other rooms nor the proprietor knows them, and in the place where they stay overnight, they are mostly strangers, while in the house where they normally live, their disappearance would be noticed quickly. Moreover, unlike hotels, where more people meet inside of the building, the single houses which form a motel are often isolated and as 1-level-unities spread over a wide field where it is much more difficult to react to upcoming danger than staying in a hotel-room and just go into the hallway in order to seek help. Originally created possibly for maximal privacy and utmost liberty, away from possible neighbors whom one could disturb or who could disturb oneself, motels therefore easily turn out to be more dangerous traps than houses are by their very nature.

Real Women Have Curves (2002)

The decline of America

[10/10 · 2 January 2010]

The new millennium started promisingly: In 2002, we got to see America Ferrera, curvy, round and sexy like no other Hollywood film star at that time. Then, three exhaustingly long years later, the lover of Big Beautiful Women was highly awarded with Kylie Sparks, leading actress of "Pizza" (2005). And now? We have just buried the first decade of this millennium, and it looks less promising than ever. What can a lover of Big Women do besides consulting the pertinent special fashion magazines of BBWs, visiting the web sites of a few of them who are proud of flaunting with what they have gotten? In TV nor film you don't see them. They cannot make carrier unless they loose "willingly" the substance that turns them from being beautiful into being gorgeous. Unfortunately, so did Mrs. Ferrera. Allegedly, I have read, she looks more appealing than ever. A terrible lie! For a real lover of BBW's, watching one of the several sex-scenes in Hollywood movies is as enjoyable as watching a gay-striptease.

Rio das Mortes (1971 TV Movie)

Et Ad Rivum Mortuorum Ego

[10/10 · 31 December 2009]

In Fassbinder's published manuscripts, interviews, notes and his own work as a playwright, poet, film critique, including philosophical writings, there is practically nothing to be found about the possibly highly interesting relationship between Fassbinder and Herbert Achternbusch (in 1971, Achternbusch's first big novel had appeared). Achternbusch must have taken up "Rio Das Mortes" thematically in his film "Das Letzte Loch" (1982) and in the novel "Das Haus Am Nil" (1981), respectively. Thereby, it does not matter if the Nil is in Egypt or not - the Nil is the protagonist, best a personification of an abstract concept "Nil" - and like is bearer basically unbound. And so is the Rio Das Mortes - by the way, it is not in Peru, but in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Nietzsche wrote his famous passage about Mexican Oaxaca - needless to say the had never been there and the name and his concept have not much more than a phonetic reality. Such use of landscapes, cities, rivers, etc. have a good and long tradition in German literature, going back at least down to Goethe's Arcadia: Et in Arcadia ego.

Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven (1975)

Egoism + Solipsism = Anarchism

[10/10 · 31 December 2009]

The above given (qualitative) equation means that if someone is clever enough to recruit solipsist phrases in order to adorn his bare egoism, he finds ways to give his egoism a societal, namely anarchist status and thus the possibility to glorify even terror and murder.

Giving Piel Jutzi's Arbeiterfil "Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück" from 1929 a U-turn, R.W. Fassbinders depicts in one of his most openly political movies the last ten or so days in the life of Mother Küsters. After her husband has killed in affect his boss because he and his colleagues lost their jobs, he is talked up as a hero of the laborers, and soon after the deed, everyone is prone to profit form the alleged heroism of the quiet and during decades never disobeying plant worker. A rich couple which declare themselves as Communists invite Mother Küsters to join their party. But after she had had her introductory speech, other problems seem to be more important. Fassbinder's open critique against this "Salon-Communism" is splendid. However, Mother Küsters is not interested in the doctrine of Communism; all she has in mind is the rehabilitation of her husband whom the newspapers had portrayed as a violent-tempered, drinking bad husband and father. One day, she meats Mr. Knab who calls himself an Anarchist and convinces her that what society needs are not salon-Communists, but determined people who will complete an "action". Soon enough the old woman sees herself amidst of such an "action" in the editorial department of the famous German populist newspaper "BILD". Specially to mention is that Fassbinder decided to exchange the bitter end his movie (which gave its title) by a much more harmless "socialist" version for the American audience - with the effect that during the premiere of "Mutter Küsters Fahrt Zum Himmel", the theater got bomb threats from the ultimate political Left as well from the ultimate political Right. - A movie, despite its age, that has nothing lost from its provocative fervor.

Lolita (1962)

The dissimilarity of Doppelgängers

[10/10 · 26 December 2009]

In Nabokov's "Lolita", the protagonist is Humbert Humbert, his Doppelganger is Clare Quilty, a man with whom he shares no resemblance at all. In Nabokov's "Despair" (filmed in 1978 by R.W. Fassbinder), the protagonist is Hermann Hermann, his Doppelganger is Felix Weber, and again, there is no resemblance. In both cases, outer similarity between two persons seems to be unnecessary because they are less Doppelgangers but Alter Egos - and as such projections of the mind. It is quite unclear what Lolita means when she tells Humbert that she never loved someone more than the sophisticated writer Quilty, because she has nothing to answer when Humbert asks her back about the quality of her love for him. Humbert does not realize that she betrays him with himself - as little as Hermann seems to be aware that his wife Lydia betrays himself in the shape of her cousin Ardalion: another dissimilar Doppelganger of Hermann Hermann? A highly interesting question that has hardly even been brought up comes from that scene where Humbert waits at the front desk of the hotel, why Lolita is up in their room: Besides Humbert, there is Quilty, masked, yet with an also masked woman: Who is she? Who is not a Doppelganger of somebody, this seems to be the question in Nabokov's world. As Hermann chooses his dissimilar Doppelganger in "Despair" in order to shoot him - so Humbert kills his dissimilar Doppelganger in "Lolita" (1962), but while in the Lynne-film from 1997, we see Humbert's face covered with wounds and blood so that is seems that he tried to kill himself, both in Lolita (1962) and in Despair (1978), the dissimilarity of the Doppelgangers is kept up strictly. The big difference between Lolita (1962) and Lolita (1997) is that Nabokov also wrote the scenario for the 1962 version.

Is the Lolita whom we see at the end of both Lolia versions a similar Doppelganger of the original girl?

The Axe of Wandsbek (1950)

The tenderness of the butcher

[10/10 · 24 December 2009]

And alas, another masterpiece from the late GDR/DDR, edited in marvelous quality by the Institute for German Studies of the University of Massachussetts at Amherst! Thank you for this forgotten jewel! And look at the crew, there are actors inside that you could not seen anymore since the Silent Time and that you probably hear for the first time speaking - unless you had the chance to watch some of these movies in the former GDR/DDR.

I consider Dr. Falk Harnack's "Das Beil Von Wandsbek", together with "Obchod Na Korze/The Shop On Main Street" by Jan Kadar, and "Der Verlorene" by and with Peter Lorre as a Triptychon of the best World War II movies. Watch all the three, although the latter is still not available on international DVD (but you may order it from Germany and watch it on your computer or get one of the rare VHS editions edited by New Yorker Release some fifteen or so years ago).

Whoever has seen the scene where the newly "elected" headsman Teetjen (Erwin Geschonnek, who passed away not long ago, 100 years old, forgotten, in an assistant living home close to Leipzig) stands in his borrowed mask and mantel with his ax before the mirror and exercises, will never forget this picture even when he lies on his death-bed. This movie belongs without doubt to the greatest rediscoveries in film history. After having watched it, you will not be the same anymore. R.W. Fassbinder said that what makes a good movie is, that it continues playing in the heads of the watchers when they leave the cinema. Et Voici!

Lolita (1997)

Humbert Humbert and Hermann Hermann

[8/10 · 17 December 2009]

Nobel price laureate Vladimir Nabokov was a specialist for doubling of personality, elimination of individuality and confusing the reader by using multi-perspective levels of narration. Both in "Despair" (filmed in 1978 by R.W. Fassbinder) and in "Lolita" (filmed in 1962 by Stanley Kubrick and in 1997 by Adrian Lyne), the protagonist is suffering from an impossible love. In Despair, Hermann Hermann breaks apart living together with his "stupid, scatter-brained" wife Lydia, starts to see himself, looks for a real Doppelganger (who has no resemblance with him), kills this Doppelganger and starts his Trip into the Light (so Fassbinder's sub-title to his film).

In "Lolita", a college professor who bears strong resemblance with Edgar Allan Poe (cf. Annabel Lee vs. Annabel Leigh) looses as a boy his 14 years old girl friend (Poe married a 13 years of girl) by death. Since then, he is without inner rest and looks to find her in another body. Who is Humbert? And who is Humbert? A split personality as Hermann Hermann? Too late in the film version of Adrian Lyne we learn about his antagonist, Clare Quilty. Who is he? How was is possible that he could liberate Lolita during the night from the hospital, after the physician told Humbert that he will keep her until the morning and Humbert was waiting directly before the hospital during the whole night, sleepless, in his car, his eyes directed to the only entrance and exit? Is Quilty Humbert's Alter Ego? Totally dissimilar to him as is Felix Weber to Hermann Hermann? At the beginning and at the end of the movie, we see Humbert sparkled with blood from his execution of Quilty. Of course, this could be Quiltys blood. Or --- did he try to kill himself - but did not succeed - while Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray actually did succeed? But there is another motive, as I see it, which gives the whole novel a quite strange last perspective which has been constantly overseen. After Humbert's Doppelganger Quilty has liberated Lolita, she lives in a relation to a young man from whom she is pregnant. Humbert needs years to find her, crossing all around Amerika. She confesses him that her love to Quilt was the most intense in her life, and when he asks about her love to him, she looks like she has already answered his question. Neither one of them survive their love. She dies in child-bed the same year, he dies five week earlier in prison from a heart disease. Thus, the end of the story reminds strongly Abaelard and Heloise who could only be together after their death.

Being John Malkovich (1999)

What happens if you crawl into your own brain?

[8/10 · 15 December 2009]

I agree with the absolute majority of the hundreds of commentators who have honored this movie that its appearance has, in my words, a similar importance for the future movie-making as "Citizen Kane" had at the beginning of the talkies. In short, there are movies before and after "Citizen Kane", and now, there are movies before and after "Being John Malkovich". Since meanwhile 10 years have passed since BJM was broadcast, this prediction has proved to be right.

I personally doubt that still in the 80ies it would have been possible to lance a box office hit based on a scenario solely consisting of metaphysics, and of metaphysics in its purest form: the question of the Self. But since then, especially in the genre of horror movies, we recognize more an more elements which go back to cybernetics, semiotics, non-Aristotelian logic and related topic. The generation of the movies before were restricted to Einsteinian physics. When "Stars Wars" came to and end, when people got tired of traveling through the universe, BJM came, and people became more interested in traveling into the self. By the way, the Self is a universe of its own.

However, what happens if you crawl into your own brain? Correctly speaking, the basic problem with the identity-eliminating corridor in the movie starts already when other people crawl into your brain: Do you realize that or not? It seems that Malkovich does not feel it. This would mean that he disposes of an alter ego with is not in communication with his ego. Furthermore, this alter ego is not recognizable for the subject as a (common) object. If this would be true, Malkovich would be unable to recognize himself as a subject, since not only can subjects recognize alter egos, they are even characterized by iterating themselves, thus creating subjects of subjects of subjects ... . So, if you crawl into your own brain, you correctly see - as depicted wonderfully in the movie - a large number of Yours who are yourself and at the same time not yourself. (Of course, since the tunnel is an identity-elimination device.) This idea, by the way, is from E.T.A. Hoffmann, mentioned in his diaries and henceforth quoted in many philosophical, psychological and psychiatric studies. Unfortunately, at that point, the movie stops (thematically), and it would be highly interesting to see how a director would deal with the fact that one person is dissolved into several egos without drifting into the false concept of schizophrenia. A logic, in which this splitting of individuality is possible, is a logic which transcends by far the Aristotelian light-switch logic and leads into a universe whose discovery will be infinitely more interesting than the time-travels through worm leaks or Einstein-Rosen-Bridges with which old-generation Science Fiction has entertained us during decades.

The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008)

Did you understand what the RAF wanted?

[10/10 · 13 December 2009]

The "Deutsches Reich" existed from 1871 until 1945. As most people know, its last ruler was Adolf Hitler (1933-1945). In May 1945 he committed suicide when the US and UK bombers invaded Germany.

Up to here, there is full agreement about German history. However, what concerns the time after, the opinions go as much apart as they can. From the standpoint of the National Socialist, the "liberation of Germany" was nothing else than a terrorist attack executed by the US army and supported by the Red Army. This implies that all this people who stood on this standpoint, did not accept that the US together with the UK imposed four years later, in 1949, the "democratic" ruling system named "Bundesrepublik Deutschland". They still do not accept it, and this is the reason for the never decreasing waves of National Socialism. Only a few month ago, attorney Horst Mahler was sentenced to many years of prison - simply because he published texts concerning exactly this standpoint.

But this is only the first half of the truth, since at the same time, in 1949, when the US/UK imposed the pseudo-democratic government onto Germany, the East part of it proclaimed the "German Democratic Republic" (GDR/DDR) which lasted until 1990, the time of the German "Wiedervereinigung". So, in Germany after 1945, there were on the one side the old Nazis who did not accept the change of their government imposed by foreign invaders, and on the other there were the old Communists, going back to the time of the Weimarer Republik, who considered Hitlers Bräuhaus Putsch as illegal and hence proclaimed the unchanged re-uptake of a Communist Germany. To those, the RAF belong. Therefore, their fight against American imperialism - since America created the state of Germany by declaring it "democratic", therefore the fight against people like Schleyer, Ponto and Buback who all had a Nazi past which they survived too well (Entnazifizierung). Without all this knowledge, "The Baader Meinhof Complex" is not understandable, especially since in American schools the legend of the American liberators is taught in an uncritical manner. Fact is: American imperialism is still to-date present in Germany as well as in many European countries, meant to protect Germany from a relapse into their Nazi-past, but in reality in order to secure the illegitimate and illegal government that USA and UK had imposed in 1949 - illegal against the Nazis as well as against the Communists. And as long as this injustice will endure, there will be Neonazis, there will be a new RAF. The big question is only, if this is really terrorism. Both groups claim the restoration of an old legal system and not something new. If you believe that the terrorists are always those people who are in the minority, then you are quite wrong.

Inland Empire (2006)

I am not who you think I am

[10/10 · 12 December 2009]

David Lynch who did not study philosophy but seems to belong to those natural talents to whom incredible insights of the deepness of mind just fall - comparable to people who did find amazing results in mathematics without ever having studied one semester mathematics -, has become more and more the only film maker who systematically eliminated all traces of Aristotelian logic by replacing implications through associations. So, whoever has studied the relevant literature between Kant or Hegel and Heidegger or Gotthard Günther and still has no concrete picture in his mind how a world would look in which logic has been replaced by sensation, must watch Lynch's movie - starting from "Eraserhead", in which the alienation of the human being in a world had been shown which had become utterly senseless - up to "Inland Empire", a masterwork which bears all signs of an ultimate stadium from where there will be no way to lead further.

A world in which there is no logic is a world without causality. What we call association is merely an empty container in which everything falls which does not fall under logic. However, there is a huge difference between what the surrealists did at the beginning of the 20st century and what Lynch is doing today: It is not true that everything is possible. Abolishment of logic means, in Lynch's sense, that one reasons can have innumerable consequences - but those are well determined, you just do not know which one will follow at a certain time and place from the reason. In this sense, one could speak of unequivocal multi-possibility. This is very well shown in "Inland Empire" by the many recurring scenes - scenes which are shown first isolated, and then are recurring in many different and allegedly non-fitting contexts. As we see, the Un-equivocalness of the multi-possible consequences is nothing but the memory of the lead actress to hold together what still can be hold together. Hence memory plays an important role in Lynch's films (while they do not do in surrealist movies): Memory is the only possibility to isolate and recognize recurring elements which may serve later in order to give structure to a stream of ideas which seem to be deserted by logic. We thus do wonder that associations, which have replaced logic, are solely based on memory. But there is nothing left to coordinate the associations. In the end, we found ourselves confronted by memory versus mind.