Whity (1971) User Reviews

A Fassbinder Western

[ALauff · 7/10 · 23 April 2004]

Seemingly a triumphant parable about a slave's emancipation from a cruel, inbred patriarchy, Fassbinder's outré Spanish Western employs a unique hybrid of incisive, scabrous character examination, eerie stretches of silence, and a deadpan editing scheme that makes empathy desirable but never attainable. The eponymous character is the son of despotic aristocrat Ben Nicholson, whose children look and behave like grotesque zombies (their faces are caked with a putrid green sheen of powder), whose wife is a sexually manipulative hussy, and whose one-time mistress (and Whity's mother) is the other servant in the house, a proud anthem-singing woman whose charcoal-darkened face renders her an indistinguishable void.

This artificial hue also serves as a contrast to Whity (Günter Kaufmann), who is caught between fealty to the father and his tradition of old money, and his mother's tradition of slavery. In the film's first scene, Whity tells his mother that "black music" isn't welcome in the house; she responds by spitting in his face and derisively labeling him "Whity." Such an extreme example of stratification illustrates Whity's dual identity and his confusion about how he'd like to be perceived. The mother's rebuke is especially cruel when one considers her role in his figurative schizophrenia (copulating with her white master) and the selfsame compromise of racial identity inherent in his conception.

There are further signs of ambiguity: he dresses to the specifications of his masters, looking the part of an Uncle Tom in the opening tilt shot, which pans slowly up Whity's body from his spit-shined shoes to his immaculate red dust jacket; he proudly pledges his gratitude after severe beatings; and he may be romantically involved with Nicholson's disabled son. Whity's brutal turn in the final sequence, in which he methodically executes the entire family, is a particularly definitive choice of identity, though hardly, from an outside perspective, one of vindication or clarity given Whity's contrary choices (or are they necessities of survival?) throughout the film. Like the other two Fassbinder films I've seen—The American Soldier and Rio Das Mortes—character motivations, intentions, and actions are anything but clear-cut, and the director is prone to self-amusing stretches of bizarre revelry. But also similar to those films is a sense of spontaneity and social conscience along with an analytical rigor that reminds me of a less-polished and less self-regarding Godard. If his later films are equally resistant to the cinema of spectacle (of which the closest he's come is the extraordinary ending to The American Soldier), I may yet come to fully appreciate this most enigmatic auteur.

Fassbinder conveying his typical themes in a stylistically Leonesque film

[Perception_de_Ambiguity · 5/10 · 26 June 2009]

* For people who haven't seen the film I recommend skipping the first part of the comment to start reading right at - The Style - *

What's noteworthy is how much more this relatively early Fassbinder has in common with his later films such as the BRD trilogy than with anything he did before. For example the fact that the main character is trying to integrate into a family/society against all odds, with fatal consequences. Not only do those families/societies reject the main characters of the RWF films in question, but those systems turn out to be miserable and integration into them turn out to be undesirable. The propagated Weltanschauung is downright pessimistic, with no realistic hope anywhere in sight.

So the movie's title character Whity is trying to integrate, even to the point of lacking much of a personality. He doesn't care if he is black or white, or even straight or gay, he just wants to be a part of something that is bigger that himself.

• The Themes -

Interestingly the film doesn't seem to be much concerned with racial issues. I don't see Whity to be representative of the black man in America, but rather it uses a black man in the West as an example of slavery and a man who tries to integrate into a system that doesn't want him for superimposed reasons, all the while he is more competent than most other people around him.

The (white) members of the Nicholson family all have makeup that makes them look sickly pale, which could be to empathize those people's degeneration, compared to Whity. They are free, he is not, they have power, he hasn't, purely because of superficial reasons and not because they are actually stronger.

What's also important is the capitalism versus love theme. In the family everyone is ridden by greed, money is their biggest concern and this reflects their decadence. Whity doesn't have much desires at all, he is the best example of happiness in slavery. He doesn't know a better life, so he is satisfied with his position. That was until he found love. It's partly through this love that he realizes the degenerated state of his family (the Nicholsons) and it's love that is enough of a substitute that it makes him want to radically leave behind his family in the end.

But the movie doesn't give a solution for Whity's tragic situation, in the end he leaves the system that he fought to be a part of all along, just to go into the vastness of the desert (a non-system, if you will, a place where money and power doesn't matter), just to die, suggesting that there in fact is no solution, other than death. This is why I find the film to be extremely pessimistic. Whity has found love, but not only is it not considered a solution, but it implies that there is none, by Whity consciously deciding to end his life, basically.

• The Style -

As for the style, obviously the film is much more inspired by Spaghetti Westerns than by American ones, which starts with the opening credits with the names flying towards the audience, and continues with the intentionally slow-paced nature of the film, its melancholic atmosphere, and the exaggerated ambient sound. In fact, it's directly reminiscent of Leone, but the big difference is the small scale of RWF's film. I found the slow pace more tedious than anything else. It's too much of an imitation and not enough its own thing.

As good as Ballhaus' camera work is on its own, the concept of frozen subjects captured in fluid images doesn't work well if there is little (appropriate) content to back it up, not to mention that this is pretty much the opposite of Leone's cinematography, which is mostly rigid camera where even the smallest protagonist movement looks epic. If Leone's camera moves it is to follow the protagonist, not to pan to another protagonist. He fearlessly employed a cut to show another character, which made every character the star of his own shot.

• The Resume -

Although the film certainly isn't devoid of appealing themes, the way it is I can't say that it tells an interesting story. Apart from Whity all the characters are just too empty, they are just pawns in Whity's story, which wouldn't be as bad if there weren't so many scenes in which he isn't much more than a spectator or isn't even present.

As implied before, the content simply doesn't lend itself to a Leonesque Western. A Leone Western lends itself to strangers being unpredictable, danger-laden atmosphere and situations, and gunslinging, it doesn't lend itself to internal family affairs, everyday life and character studies. I would consider 'Whity' a failed experiment, Fassbinder's story-telling sensibilities combined with an imitation of Leone's style is a system into which integration is undesirable.

whity

[RaulFerreiraZem · 7/10 · 19 July 2019]

Weird film by Fassbinder. For starters, its a western-ish film which in itself already is a uncommon thing for a Fassbinder film considering this is the only one western he has ever done in his 40+ films filmography; and not quite a western too, it's like a western bertold brecht play adaptation. I name drop Bertolt Brecht not only because i know for a fact that Fassbinder was influenced by him but also because i see in the characters unnatural poses an echo of his epic theatre, not to mention the use of black face on the already black actress and the white face on the already white actors that makes the racial conflict seem, at the same time, a farce and even more present than it would've already been otherwise. I think that there are some really important things being shown here concerning whity's parents being a white father( a free slave owner) and her mother being black ( a slave) and how the fact that his white parent didn't change much in the way he is perceived as he continues to be a slave but changed the way that he sees white people, seeing them with more respect than his mother,for example sees them It was a good film and Hanna Schygulla was great in this as usual. It does, however look very much dated and the soundtrack seems never to quite fit in with the scene's climate.

Fassbinder's eerie comprehension of Gunther Kaufman's psyche through a nihilistic Nietzschean tale

[JuguAbraham · 7/10 · 25 March 2024]

Fassbinder's western with spoken lines in German. An interesting film of Fassbinder because you get to peer into his personality and his intricate knowledge of his actors' psyche. Gunther Kaufman on screen plays the mulatto character Whity, whose mother is black and biological father is possibly his master. Whity offers himself to be whipped in the place of his master's son--a commendable Christian action. Decades later after Fassbinder had died, Kaufman goes to prison to protect his own wife, who was suffering from cancer, for a crime she had perpetrated. Did Fassbinder see this hidden characteristic in Kaufman's character?

The tale is sewn together with negative characters: Whity's masters' family all who wish to kill his master, a prostitute who lies to the law to protect his master from a murder she has witnessed, a gunslinger (Fassbinder) who hates blacks, Whity's master who lies about his medical condition, etc. Everybody would like to kill or lie.

The end itself is spectacularly negative--something close to Nietzsche's philosophy. Visually powerful end, that beats logic for survival, as we understand it.

Ballhaus' cinematography and Kurt Raab's creditable production design are commendable. Syberberg's actor Harry Baer in two of Syberberg's best films (Hitler; and Ludwig) has a minor role.

WHITY (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971) **

[Bunuel1976 · 4/10 · 4 April 2008]

When is a Western not really a Western? When it’s directed by Fassbinder! WHITY is only my sixth film from the so-called German wunderkind: I admire Fassbinder for his prolific and versatile output, though I’ve yet to be won over completely by a film of his; frankly I was hoping this would prove to be the one – but, as it turned out, I couldn’t have been more wrong! For the record, I’ve got four more titles from him to watch: still, considering my dismal experience with WHITY (especially since I had fully expected it to be the most accessible of the lot!), I don’t know when I’ll muster the courage to get to them now…even if DESPAIR (1978) is a reasonably enticing title, given the participation of Dirk Bogarde and the Vladimir Nabokov source.

To be fair, the Western ambiance is delivered in spades throughout. The film was stunningly shot in Widescreen – by Michael Ballhaus (later a valued collaborator of Martin Scorsese) – in Almeria, location site of many a Spaghetti Western. It generally has the right feel for time and place with regards to settings and wardrobe, while the all-important score is highlighted by a decidedly infectious riff. Even so, the repertoire of English-language ballads (the bulk of the film, of course, is in German) allotted to chanteuse/prostitute Hanna Schygulla – not to mention her own affected delivery – is inappropriately modern and comes across as unintentionally laughable! Schygulla was a fixture in Fassbinder’s work; the film also features Ron Randell (best-known, if at all, for playing Christ’s attorney[!] in Nicholas Ray’s KING OF KINGS [1961]) and Ulli Lommel (who later graduated to directing himself, notably TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES [1973] and THE BOOGEYMAN [1980]).

The overriding pretentiousness at work here is palpable above all in the film’s lethargic, indeed deadly, pace (never have I seen a movie in which the characters moved more s-l-o-w-l-y!). Besides, it isn’t helped by unsympathetic (even annoying) characters – mostly members of a dysfunctional family (and particularly the pasty-faced, frizzy-haired sons of landowner Randell) – indulging in all manners of transgressions (from such commonly-depicted capital sins as greed, lust and murder down to nymphomania, masochism, interracial relationships and incest!). In the midst of all this is an unsavory gay subtext which, inevitably, seems to be on the agenda of virtually all directors so inclined in real-life (but becoming obviously more pronounced in the liberalized modern cinema)!

The plot, for what it’s worth, is reminiscent of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s THEOREM (1968) – coincidentally another gay parable – as the life of everyone involved is influenced in some way by the household’s black manservant (the character bears the ironic titular nickname but is also curiously underwritten and inexpressive), who’s actually the fruit of Randell’s illicit affair with his frumpy colored maid! The fact that each, in turn, pleads with him to slay the other could have turned this into a pointed black comedy – but the film is simply too labored and deliberately self-conscious for the subtlety intrinsic to such refined treatment...

In the end, one should note that 1971 saw a boom of arty Westerns with other such offerings as Alexandro Jodorowsky’s EL TOPO, Peter Fonda’s THE HIRED HAND and Robert Altman’s McCABE AND MRS MILLER. As for WHITY (whose shooting, by the way, inspired Fassbinder’s own BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE [1971]), I had owned the Fantoma DVD – which includes an Audio Commentary from Ballhaus and Lommel – for quite a while before actually sitting down to view it. I’d purchased the disc through the company’s own website during a sale but, as I said, could only manage to find a slot for it in my hectic/eclectic schedule after having enjoyed a couple of equally stylized (but far more satisfying) Spaghetti Westerns – DEATH SENTENCE (1968) and YANKEE (1966) – earlier this week.

A western where everyone speaks German

[Itchload · 9/10 · 18 January 2003]

I recently watched the DVD of "Whity", Fassbinder's German Western. After seeing it, the fact that all the character's speek German despite the Spanish locations didn't seem out of tune at all with the overall movie.

For the record the commentary on the DVD is one of the greatest I've heard. However, Ulli Lommel and Michael Ballhaus both agree that this is Fassbinder's 5th movie. That would mean this amazingly photographed, sweeping epic--which boasts by far the best production designs of any of Fassbinder's first movies--followed the crude looking excruciating black comedy "Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?" I find this a bit hard to believe. Judging by the fact that Lommel and Ballhaus make a few factual mistakes (this was not the first Fassbinder movie with Günther Kaufmann, "Gods of the Plague" was), maybe they're a bit off. My guess is probably number 8 or 9. If it is number 5, that's amazing.

Anyhow, this is easily the most polished of Fassbinder's first movies. It's also probably up there with "The American Soldier" in terms of perverse bizarreness. You'll find lots of flaggelating, KKK, incestual undertones, homoerotism, prostitutes, bleached eyebrows and eyelashes, bad hair, greenish-white cakey makeup, and some severe mental retardation all in these frames. The odd thing is, none of it seems to be played for laughs, which only adds to the perversity. Fassbinder thought this movie was so personal to him that he didn't want anyone else to see it, or any movie theaters to show it.

Also of note, the ending of this movie is highly unusual for Fassbinder. No suicide, no crying, no corpses? I guess for the final shot, Fassbinder had his convertable engine running so he could drive off forever into the distance the second it was completed. It just seems directors don't have that type of dedication or personal anguish attached to their movies anymore. All the more reason to keep watching Fassbinder's I guess.

Bad

[Cosmoeticadotcom · 1/10 · 24 September 2008]

In 1970 the German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote and directed a German language American Western film that, unlike the Spaghetti Westerns of that era- also filmed in Almería, Andalucía, Spain, was not played straight, but more like a silent era Expressionistic film, replete with melodramatic music, cartoonish face makeup, and over the top acting, especially in the physical movements of the actors' bodies. It's one of those films that is so highly stylized, so earnestly trying to be deep and/or profound that it is instead really, really bad; but in the best possible sense of the word bad. It's so bad a film that it is often hysterically funny. This starts from the very notion of Old American West gunslingers sprechen in Deutsch, as well as having them speak German even though all of the signs and Wanted Posters are in English. It's absurd, but wonderfully so.

To say that it is absurd or bizarre is, however, an understatement, yet the film is obviously a satire; unlike, say, Werner Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small or Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. In a sense, this film also reminded me, in terms of lighting and stillnesses, of Kubrick's 1975 costume epic Barry Lyndon, crossed with some of the manifestly fake Western sets in American television shows of that era, especially those that were not Western based shows, but those that had Western themed special episodes, like Star Trek or The Prisoner. Then, added to that, there is mental retardation, transvestism, homosexuality, prostitution, racism, Ku Klux Klan hoods- wholly displaced in the Old West (something a German likely did not know, thinking it merely the American equivalent of the swastika), incest, bestiality, bleached eyebrows, green-white cake makeup, and sadomasochism. Yet, what makes this film so uproariously funny is that Fassbinder's camera and style seem to be oblivious to how truly and uniquely bad and funny the film is. One might even believe that he was a German version of Ed Wood, if this film is any indication of his talents, for true camp comes unwittingly, when an artist is being serious and is oblivious to the worst aspects of his work.

Whity was filmed in garish color, in Cinemascope, where the palette leaps out at you, and this is in keeping with the rest of the over the top nature of the film, and suggest Fassbinder must have known he was making a Carnivalesque romp, if not an outright burlesque. This gaudiness includes the art direction of Kurt Raab, which also won a German Academy Award. While a bit too much, there is no denying that the color palette used by Fassbinder sears into the viewer's head, on an emotional level, and the film seems almost like an Impressionist painting- especially a Monet watercolor, come to life, with its rich reds, ripe oranges, sensuous yellows, burnt browns, and other lesser colors that texture the film like some narcotic fantasy. Also, Ballhaus provides some interesting camera movement that makes the ill written and acted scenes at least interesting to watch, if nothing else; and since film is a visual medium, this is worth noting, even if there's no intellectual reason behind it. For example, in the scene where Ben Nicholson reads his last will and testament, the rest of the actors are standing still, as if composed out of something from one of Ingmar Bergman's hyper-composed 1960s filmic experiments. The camera slowly sweeps over all of them for minutes at a time, while weird music by Peer Raben, who scored the film, and remanent of the just passed psychedelic era, drones on. Some critics contend that this is meant to allow the viewer to ponder the psychological bonds between all the family members, but really it's a funeral dirge for any remaining health the clan might have had, and the filmmaker taking stock of the coming body count.

Thankfully, Whity does not push its tenuous humorous likability by being too long. It's only 95 minutes, and its manifest flaws lead one to believe that part of the problem was that Fassbinder probably did not spend enough time crafting the film, which was shot in only thirty days. Before he overdosed in 1982, at the age of thirty-seven, he would make forty-three films, direct fourteen plays, write four radio plays, and direct twenty-four television projects. It is interesting to note these flaws and compare them to the flaws that followed him across the films of his career. As for Whity, it's simply a bad, bad film, but more in line with Robot Monster or Plan 9 From Outer Space good bad than with The Hours or Brokeback Mountain or Crash bad bad. As for whether Fassbinder realized he'd made a camp classic, a film that is funny enough to give Blazing Saddles a run for its money? I don't know. Nor do I care, just as I so not care how one labels this film- satire, camp classic, Neo-Expressionist masterpiece, black comedy, melodrama; for funny is funny, and the hour and a half of laughs I got from this dreadful little film was worth something. Perhaps even what little I paid for it.

Rarely screened, but must be seen by all lovers of the German New Wave, Fassbinder in particular, and high camp.

[Lemmy-7 · 10/10 · 22 January 1999]

Rarely screened, forgotten by even the most devoted admirers of Fassbinder, _Whity_ is nonetheless a crucial film in Fassbinder's own development as a film-artist. For one, the style of the film marks Fassbinder's turn away from his earlier, Neo-realistic efforts (notably _Katzelmacher_ and _Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?_) and turn towards the flamboyant, melodramatic form favored by him until his untimely death in 1982. Melodrama turns out to be the best possible style for the film's story, which chronicles the fall of the seigniorial Nicholson family in the Mexican 19th century. Indeed, this film should be seen for no other reason than the inescapable weirdness one feels in watching German actors play Mexicans in the Old West. It's like seeing Peter Lorre playing John Wayne: ridiculous, if only it weren't so creepy. "Decadent" and "dysfunctional" are words redefined by the Nicholson family: the patriarch, Ben Nicholson, is remote and cruel, the wife a nymphomaniac, the older son a flaming homosexual, and his brother a severely retarded adolescent. Then there's Whity, the ironically named mulatto slave of the Nicholson family, an inadvertent focus point of each family member's perverse obsessions. It is this mutual obsession with Whity (an obsession shared by the viewer by film's end) which allows Fassbinder to explore the themes which were to comprise his greatest contribution to film's development as a medium, including: dominance and submission, the role of the Other, sexuality, the doppelganger, the economy of familial relationships, and the obstacles fate puts in the way of consumating love. These issues gain complexity when one considers that the slave Whity is played by Fassbinder's then-lover, Gunther Kaufmann. Given this, what is the viewer to make of such stylistic scenes as when Whity is disciplined by his master, while the other family members garrulously look on--knowing that Fassbinder himself is also watching from his director/dictator's chair? (The complex inter-relationships of Fassbinder and the actors during the filming of _Whity_ were later chronicled by Fassbinder in his film _Beware of a Holy Whore_, which is based on the real-life melodrama that occurred _off_ the set of _Whity_.) If nothing else, _Whity_ deserves to be included in with the other Fassbinder films, such as _Despair_, which are so justly celebrated for their psychological depth and complexity. Beyond this, two aspects of Fassbinder's technique in making _Whity_ deserve special mention. The first is that in _Whity_, one of the first of his films to employ a half-way reputable color process, Fassbinder shows himself to be a great colorist in the tradition of Delacroix, bathing the eyes with the lushest oranges, browns, and reds to be seen this side of a sunset. The palette is one that seems to have existed in film only in the late 60s and early 70s, finding similarly gorgeous expression in Truffaut's _Fahrenheit 451_, Boorman's _Point Blank_, Godard's _La Chinoise_, and Nicolas Roeg's early efforts (_A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to The Forum_ , _Performance_, _Walkabout_, _Don't Look Now_, _The Man Who Fell to Earth_). The second aspect of noteworthy technique is a camera movement that truly has no precedent in film history--a fact which makes the obscurity of _Whity_ among film scholars all the more remarkable. The best example of the technique occurs in a scene in which Ben Nicholson reads his last will and testament to the silent family members surrounding him. During an unbroken ten-minute take, the actors remain virtually motionless, as if posed in some Rembrantian tableaux (and in this way recalling Dreyer's _Day of Wrath_). Against this stasis, the camera pans slowly from one family member to another, following their own sight-lines, as if the camera were recording the trace of their attention. For ten minutes the camera repeats this zig-zag path with methodical precision, while psychedelic, trance-inducing music drones in the background. The greatest merit of the technique (seen also in an equally static scene between Whity and the retarded son in the horse barn) is that it allows the viewer time enough to meditate on the relationships among the characters involved in the tableaux--in this case most profoundly on the relationships of power among family members. It's as if Fassbinder, using film technique, took a snapshot of the family, and then spent ten minutes tracing out with his finger exactly who is dominated by whom, who resents the domination, who is perceiving whom and how, and so on. The technique, which to my knowledge Fassbinder never used again to such great effect, can only be seen as the great innovation that it is, and as such, a powerful tool for the revelation of psychological truth. However, let none of these deeper concerns eclipse the enjoyment to be had watching this bizarre, Teutonic _Dallas_ unfold. Like the best moments in a Warhol film, the high camp of _Whity_ is very, very funny to watch--certainly because it is absurd, which is not to say it is without profound meaning.

maybe the weirdest 'statement' on racism ever made

[Quinoa1984 · 8/10 · 27 October 2008]

I barely got through this movie, this kind of half-western half super-dark satire on racism and slavery that makes Bamboozled look like Fraggle Rock... So why the high rating? Possibly just because there's nothing else quite like it. It's about a slave, dubbed Whity by his master/family for his propensity for 'sucking up' (Günter Kaufmann, a frequent actor in Fassbinder's stockade of sorts, who I still can't tell whether or not he's actually a good actor or appears to be so), and his master (Ron Randell) and his family, which includes a wife and two children, one retarded and one homosexual, and there are sometimes very strange requests or orders- like killing other members of the family for things like obvious adultery or the murder by the master of said adulterer (I think that's what happened at one point).

One of the things about the movie that's just totally weird, and yet very weirdly effective, is that the slave owner and family have white make-up put over their already white faces (again, the inverse of Bamboozled, only here not so smug about it being "hey, it's satire!"), and that all of the characters- save maybe for a few minor characters or a supporting one like the saloon singer who falls for Whity- have an affected way of speaking, deliberate like everyone is under some strange spell. What is it all a symbol for? I think, maybe, that racism is so ugly and horrible a thing one can barely ever capture how it affects everyone around them, white or black (the only somewhat down-to-earth figure, Whity's mother played very convincingly by Elaine Baker, is all too brief in the mix for a reason). Fassbinder uses the backdrop of the old west, of a kind of fragmented version of it (he uses sets from other movies, intentionally I'd wager), where this savage but almost meditative story can take place.

Whity shouldn't be something to see right away if you're just getting into Fassbinder - since I'm one of them, I can attest to it being a difficult film - but there's a power about it, some really unique pull to it in some scenes (watch when Whity asks the retarded boy to come over the comb the horse, very tense, erotically so but cruel), that it's hard not to find it at some point if you become an admirer of the prolific German's oeuvre. I'm not even sure I would watch it again, but I know I didn't exactly regret the chance at witnessing risky art.