Classic Movie Review: Veronika Voss (1982)

Veronica Voss (1982)

Directed by: Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Written by: Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Pea Frohlich and Peter Marthesheimer.

Starring: Rosel Zech (Veronika Voss), Hilmar Thate (Robert Krohn), Cornelia Froboess (Henriette), Annemarie Duringer (Dr. Marianne Katz), Doris Schade (Josefa), Erik Schumann (Dr. Edel), Peter Berling (Filmproduzent/Dicker Mann), Gunther Kaufmann (G.I./Dealer), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Max Rehbein).

 

Out of the three films in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s BRD trilogy, Veronika Voss is the saddest, the most hopeless. None of these films is cheery, but Veronika Voss is the one in which all joy has been sucked out, and all we’re left with is the sad death spiral. We don’t even get the rise of the star, just the sad final moments before it’s completely fallen.

 

The film stars Rosel Zech as the title character, who was a famous film star before the war, who we first see in a movie theater watching one of her old movies. It’s now 1955, and she hasn’t worked in a long time. Her husband has left her, she has run out of money, and she has become addicted to drugs. The drugs are supplied by Dr. Katz (Annemarie Duringer), who keeps Veronika and her other “patients” in her clinic, in small rooms, where she can control them – giving them drugs, or withholding them as she sees fit. She’ll get all of Veronika’s stuff – the houses, the art – when she dies, and the way things are going, it won’t be long.

 

The other major character in the film is Robert Krohn (Hilmar Thate) – a sportswriter, who Veronika first meets on a streetcar, and assures him that she really is who she says she is, and how embarrassing it must be for him not to recognize her. He doesn’t know who she is, but is intrigued. This seems to be one last gasp of hope for Veronika – perhaps one last person who can save her from herself, and from Dr. Katz. Robert likes her – they see each, they sleep together, even if he already has a girlfriend – Henriette (Cornelia Froboess), who is remarkably understanding about her boyfriend’s new “friend”. Robert is intrigued by Veronika – and outraged on her behalf. How can someone like Dr. Katz do this, how can she get away with this? Like the other men in these movies, he seems blind to the flaws of the woman he has fallen for – allows himself to be sucked into her spiral, no matter what is costs him.

 

This is the only film in the trilogy shot in black-and-white – and it’s a fitting choice for the material. Many look at the film and see echoes of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. (1950) – and it is true that Fassbinder is reaching back to that kind of style with this film. You see it in the broad outlines – the older, faded movie star, the younger man she controls, etc. You can also see it when the pair of them go to Veronika’s house – which resembles a dusty museum – all the furniture is covered with white sheets, the electricity is off, pieces are piled up all over. It stands in stark contrast to Dr. Katz’s house – which is almost blindly white, clinical and sterile.

 

This is also the first of the three films to explicitly address the Holocaust. There is an elderly couple – kindly, grandparent-like – who we see a few times, first directing Robert to Dr. Katz in the first place, and later allowing Henriette to take a lamp to replace one of Veronika’s that has gotten lost. They are also “patients” of Dr. Katz, also near the end of their lives. The man will pull up his sleeve and show Henriette the numbers tattooed on his arm. There ultimate end is perhaps the saddest thing in a movie full of sad things.

 

In the end, of course, Veronika Voss cannot be saved – doesn’t really want to be saved. She spends much of the movie willfully deluding herself – her career is going to turn around again. She loses a part she was never going to get, but does talk herself into a role playing the starlet’s mother – but she cannot remember even her couple of lines. Her big moment is at a farewell party, where Fassbinder concentrates on her face as she sings a sad song. She is doomed by that point and knows it.

 

Like the other films, Veronika Voss is a cynical film – not one where good triumphs over anything, and even if you make it to the end, nothing good has happened to you. Here, Robert isn’t destroyed like Maria Braun’s lover was, nor on the path to destruction like Lola’s lover – but he has grown resigned to corruption – resigned to the fact that the bad guys win, and there is nothing he can do about it. Two final shots sum up the end – when he looks through the window at those who conspired, and got away with, destroying Veronika Voss – or at least helping her along her self-destructive path, and the final one – as he reads a newspaper, and the end we knew happened is confirmed – and just keeps right on reading. More than before, this is how things end – and only sensible thing to do is to leave it alone. You’ll be destroyed otherwise.

Classic Movie Review: Lola (1981)

Lola (1981)

Directed by: Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Written by: Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Pea Frohlich and Peter Marthesheimer.

Starring: Barbara Sukowa (Lola), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Von Bohm), Mario Adorf (Schuckert), Matthias Fuchs (Esslin), Helga Feddersen (Fraulein Hettich), Karin Baal (Lola’s Mother), Ivan Desny (Wittich), Elisabeth Volkmann (Gigi), Hark Bohm (Volker), Karl-Heinz von Hassel (Timmerding), Rosel Zech (Frau Schuckert), Sonja Neudorfer (Frau Fink), Christine Kaufmann (Susi), Y Sa Lo (Rosa), Gunther Kaufmann (GI), Isolde Barth (Frau Volker).

 

Chronologically, Lola was the second in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s BRD trilogy, about life in Germany in the decade after WWII, and how corruption seeped into everyone’s life at the time. I say second chronologically because the title card says BRD 3 – although BRD 2 – Veronika Voss – would be completed after this film. It is also the lightest of the three film – light being a relative term here, as all three films stink with moral decay. Like The Marriage of Maria Braun, the title character here works as singer and prostitute in a club in Berlin – and wants to get out of that life, to something more financially secure – something she sees with the men she sleeps with, but cannot be a part of. Unlike Maria Braun though, Lola doesn’t pull herself up with her own talent – true, Maria Braun sank her hooks into a wealthy industrialist, and used that to get her position, but she was legitimately good at that job – because morals are bad for capitalism, and Maria Braun had none. By contrast. Lola (Barbara Sukowa) sets her sites on the one incorruptible man in the film, and by the end, of course, has corrupted him. The film is a kind of play on The Blue Angel – turned into a masterpiece by Josef von Sternberg in 1930, where a teacher (Emil Jannings) is destroyed by a lounge singer (Marlene Dietrich – never better), but more in terms of broad outline, then specifics.

 

When we first meet Lola, she is having fun with her life as singer/prostitute – her main benefactor being the larger-than-life Schukert (Mario Adorf), the father of her small child. He is a wealthy builder, who has made a killing in this town reconstructing it after the war. Into this town comes Von Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl). He is supposed to be the new building supervisor – the government agent to make sure things are running above board. He is a moral man – he doesn’t frequent the club that everyone does, so he doesn’t know who Lola is when he meets her, and starts to fall for her. There’s a sense that Von Bohm may actually be able to change things – to make things operate above board. He immediately starts to try and clean up the office – both figuratively and literally – but faced with the beautiful Lola, he is doomed.

 

Lola is slightly lighter and more fun than The Marriage of Maria Braun or Veronika Voss, mostly because for most of the movie, Von Bohm is kept in the dark about Lola, her past and present. So we see the larger-than-life Schukert and Lola at the wild parties at the club, and scenes where the quiet Von Bohm courts Lola in his own quiet way. This was the first film Mueller-Stahl made after fleeing East Germany, and there is something different about him than the rest of the cast. He is less crash, more mannered. He’s like a foreigner who doesn’t know the local customs, but tries to be a good sport about them until he starts to see the reality of them. It’s a great performance by him. Sukowa is also great – Lola doesn’t have the depth of Maria Braun – she is a fun loving girl, who simply wants a taste of the good life, and she keeps it fun. She is lying throughout the Von Bohm – but there may be some genuine affection there for him underneath it all. She isn’t going to stop being who she is though. And Mario Adorf is great as Schukert as well – as is Rosel Zech (who would go on to be Veronika Voss) as his wife. She has no delusions over who her husband is – and doesn’t really care. He makes money, he is a success, they are part of what passes for high society here. He keeps his womanizing to the club, which for her is out of sight, out of mind.

 

If Lola is lighter than the other two films in the series, it isn’t because Fassbinder doesn’t see the awfulness at its core – but it is because, at least by the end, the characters are not destroyed. Lola has succeeded in getting what she wants, and is happy. In a way, Von Bohm has gotten what he wants as well – he wanted Lola. But he has been corrupted, and whatever good he may have been able to do, he won’t be able to do it anymore. And you get the sense that while right now, he can do what Frau Schukert does – and ignore his wife’s indiscretions – he won’t be able to do it long term. Maybe I’m wrong – maybe this isn’t lighter than the other two films. It just stops before we get to the destruction. The last scene in the movie is terribly sad – as poor Von Bohm is taking a quiet walk by himself, either unaware, or at least not thinking, about what his wife and Schukert are doing at home.

Classic Movie Review: The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)

The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) 

Directed by: Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Written by: Pea Fröhlich and Peter Märthesheimer and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Starring: Hanna Schygulla (Maria Braun), Klaus Löwitsch (Hermann Braun), Ivan Desny (Karl Oswald), Gisela Uhlen (Mother), Elisabeth Trissenaar (Betti Klenze), Gottfried John (Willi Klenze), Hark Bohm (Senkenberg), George Eagles (Bill), Claus Holm (Doctor), Günter Lamprecht (Hans Wetzel), Anton Schiersner (Grandpa Berger), Lilo Pempeit (Frau Ehmke).

 

Maria Braun is one of the most fascinating characters in cinema history.  She is a German woman who married her husband, Hermann, during WWII, and only got to spend a day and night with him before he was shipped off to war. After we see their marriage, we flash to the end of the war – where Maria believes Hermann is dead, but goes looking for him anyway. But she still needs to survive – to support herself and her mother in the post war years. She goes to work in a bar in an old high school gym that services American G.I.s. She takes a lover there – a black American G.I. – but she remains loyal, if not faithful, to her husband. When her husband does re-enter the picture, she doesn’t hesitate to dispose of her lover – but in a way that will again take her husband away. She will spend the next decade continuing to find ways to survive – the climb the corporate ladder, to get rich. She will use people, be cruel to them, humiliate them – but she is never dishonest with them. She tells them what she’s going to do, and they let her do it anyway. She has been fundamentally broken by the war, and has no morals left.

 

Once the dance halls are over, Maria sets her sites higher. She meets Oswald (Ivan Desny) on the train, and seduces him. He is a wealthy industrialist, untouched by the war (for reasons unknown) who runs a company and Maria talks herself into a job, and into his bed. Oswald loves Maria, Maria knows it, and uses it against him. She rises in his company – not just because she is sleeping with the boss, but also because she’s very good at it. Being amoral never hurt anyone in business. Once she has her hooks into Oswald, she drags him around cruelly. The company accountant, who likes Oswald and hates Maria, doesn’t do anything about it – even he has to admit she is great at her job. Oswald wants to marry Maria – but she’s already married, even if her husband spends years in prison for a murder she committed, and then ran away when he got out. She just leads him on and on and on – right into an early grave.

 

So yes, Maria is a monster. She is cruel and views everything as a transaction. She is loyal to her husband, but cannot be said to love him. In the decade they are married, she barely spends a few days with him. But writer/director Rainer Werner Fassbinder sees her as a symptom of the society that produced her. This is the first part of a loosely connected trilogy about Germany after the war – which sees it as morally bankrupt. Yes, the economy bounced back surprisingly fast from the war – but this is how it did it. As played by Hanna Schygulla, in her best performance ever, Maria is cold and unfeeling – but hardly one note.

 

Fassbinder’s biggest influence was Douglas Sirk – the German director who fled the Nazis, came to America and is best known for his melodramas like Written on the Wind, All That Heaven Allows and others. You can see Fassbinder working in the same vein here – although this film is visually darker than Sirk’s Technicolor dramas were. It matches the environment – which remains full of bombed out buildings – husks of what was before – throughout the film. The war isn’t really glimpsed in this film – the Holocaust never mentioned – but it hangs over everything. If Germans could do that, what could they not do?

 

The film is meticulously shot by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus – his last film with the demanding Fassbinder, who by all accounts was a difficult genius. He would come to America after – and start working with Scorsese on films like After Hours, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ, GoodFellas, The Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York and The Departed. To be one of the go to cinematographers of not one, but two masters is quite a legacy to leave behind. Here, he shots things from around corners, through doorways, etc. all with expert blocking. He makes Germany to be like Maria – a shell of its former self.

 

The ending of the movie seemingly comes out of nowhere. Sirk never would have done that – but then Sirk was operating in a different system, and found different ways to portray the moral emptiness he sees. But the ending also makes logical sense – where else was this ever going to lead to?