“You want to be told lies”
...Fox and His Friends (1975), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), and In a Year with 13 Moons (1978)
I’ll start by bringing back a quote I ended on last week--Hanna Schygulla talking about her friend and director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder: “Perhaps this ambivalent feeling about truth was precisely what bound us together. Rather than this or that, it’s this and that. It’s how Rainer made his movies. Things were like this, on the one hand, and like that, on the other. His movies are about things that don’t fit together at all and don’t follow any theory. That is why his movies are still valid.” (14) Fassbinder brought up all of the most engaging sociocultural issues in his work, but then played them out in difficult, contradictory sequences that often left actors and audiences shattered. He told queer stories that were often caught up in racial and class animosity, or situations that involved emotional confusion and manipulation. Instead of presenting utopian fantasies about how life should be, he showed it as the suffocating and dangerous reality that it was/is. The pieces did not fit together at all, and as Schygulla mentions, this is precisely why they hold such validity.
Early on in Robert Katz’ book Love is Colder than Death: The Life and Times of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, he details how the director had met celebrated cult cinema actor Udo Kier as a teen. Kier, nicknamed “Dodo”, was an underaged, gay hustler who relied on Fassbinder for a while as his pimp. In another instance, Katz details RWF’s relationship with El Hedi ben Salem, the Moroccan gastarbeiter who appeared in a number of his films, most memorably as the title character in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974). Their relationship was a tumultuous one that would descend into aggression whenever Salem would drink whiskey. When Fassbinder eventually left him, Salem stabbed two random people on the street in a drunken frenzy. In a later relationship with Armin Meier, Armin was eventually driven to suicide over Fassbinder’s emotionally manipulative games. In the contemporary landscape of mainstream cinema that tries to present queer relationships in safe, progressive, neo-liberal ways, Fassbinder in comparison may stand out as a toxic element. But in the 1970s he was one of the only openly gay filmmakers in the world who reached great success, to the point where he was the highest paid director in post-WWII Germany. In Thousands of Mirrors, Ian Penman writes, “And is some aspect of this fundamental untidiness why he doesn’t seem to have had the thriving afterlife a lot of us expected? At various points in the last few years, scrolling through a social media timeline of sexual fluidity, tantrums, locked-in lives, queer pol, trans activism, cinematic nostalgia and seven types of ambiguous dysfunction… I often wondered: well now, how come Fassbinder isn’t hailed as king and absolute ruler of this wild and tattered kingdom?” (21) Here I will briefly touch upon three of RWF’s pictures that were far ahead of their time, which still remain dangerously unique works of cinema: Fox and His Friends (1975), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), and In a Year with 13 Moons (1978).
Fox and His Friends stars Fassbinder in the lead role as a young hustler who gets by as part of a traveling carnival. He wastes all his money on lottery tickets and eventually finds himself taken in by a loose group of rich homosexuals who take a condescending interest in him. Fox is caught between Eugen (Peter Chatel) and Philip (Harry Bär), while the older Max (Karlheinz Böhm) is always lurking on the periphery. After Eugen gets Fox a job at his father’s business, Fox suddenly wins the lotto, initially creating a major shift in social power. But soon enough they are all exploiting him and his deutschmarks. Along the way we get RWF at his most vain, going full frontal in a mud bath sequence, and being sure to wear the tightest pants possible the rest of the time. He comes across entirely different from the bloated, late period Fassbinder, who succumbed to rich food, constant alcohol, and cocaine. The ending is grim for Fox, in a melodramatic way that could almost be expected.
As I mentioned last week, all of Fassbinder’s films have their basis in tensions among social and economic classes. By now, Fox and His Friends is a landmark of queer cinema, but it should also hold a place in working class cinema. The events of the movie could just as easily happen among people in a heterosexual relationship, but perhaps Fassbinder decided on a men’s story in order to avoid the usual power inequities that exist in relationships between men and women. The most charming and cringe-worthy quality that Fox embodies is his painful naivete about the upper class. At one point Eugen says to Fox, “You’ll have to learn about culture. It’s difficult, I know. But in the end, we’ll manage to make a human being of you.” Much of the social difference is seen in the absurd ways that Eugen and the other men react to Fox. Eugen gets upset when Fox lays on his bed with his shoes on, and after Fox strips off his clothes, Eugen makes sure to fold them before joining his new friend in bed. In another scene, Eugen can’t drink just sekt (generic sparkling wine), he needs to drink dom pérignon. Maybe the reason Fox is so bad with money is because he never had an opportunity to learn how finances are supposed to be responsibly managed. In one scene he says, resignedly, “I don’t mind things like that. I know that I'm stupid.”
Penman writes, “[Fassbinder] received a lot of criticism over the years for his ‘imperfect’ gay characters. Characteristically seen by different sides as either too political or not political enough. Always too much or too little. His response: just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you’re any more likely to find true happiness, desire or freedom in this awful society. This was not a point of view universally appreciated at the time among rad/pol gay/lib sections of his audience.” (167-8) Much like I was saying last week about the polarizing reactions to Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day, viewers who insist on very heavy handed, clear statements about culture are far more interested in propaganda than art. One of the many remarkable aspects of Fassbinder’s work is how seemingly personal it all is. He is one of the few filmmakers who was allowed to control so much of a production, continuing to make enough money for the next one. He was far more interested in showing the hypomanic state among him and his group of friends/colleagues, that ended up saying far more than movies that are finely catered to specific demographic groups, like so much of media today. Katz quotes RWF as saying, “If you’re always trying to avoid being misunderstood, you’re finished.”
Which brings us to The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. It shows us a femmecentric world where men don’t exist. Or they do, but only in memories or outside the walls of Frau von Kant’s home. Inside, Petra (Margit Carstensen) lays around luxuriously and possibly hungover, doted upon by her silent slave of love, Merlene (Irm Hermann). She talks about her fashion line to friends who stop by to chat, although we see Marlene as the one who is clearly designing the clothing. Her friend Sidonie (Katrin Schaake) introduces Petra to Karin (Hanny Schygulla), a young beauty who quickly moves in and becomes Petra’s obsession. The movie started as a stage play and is one of the most theatrical pictures of Fassbinder’s career. We watch how Karin manipulates Petra, but also how Petra is prone to self-destructive impulses, and lots of gin. The story presents a cycle of abuse, or maybe even more appropriately, a sphere of abuse, where everyone who comes into Petra’s orbit is drawn in. At the core is Merlene, silently posing with her hand up to the window, light pouring in on her unrequited desire and servitude
I’ve never read that the film was supposed to be an allegory for Fassbinder and his crew, but the comparison can be made. It is known that he gave all of the men in his casts and crews female nicknames, so it is plausible to imagine him metaphorically switching into Petra. His self awareness of the power dynamics of the group had been apparent since Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) retold the making of Whity (1971). It is not much of a stretch for Fassbinder to imagine himself as a character who is wronged and emotionally attacked, while also dishing out abuse to other people. Irm Hermann in particular is known to have been completely dependent on him, despite his penchant for making her feel useless and unworthy. In an interview, Hanna Schygulla stated, “When Rainer entered the room, everyone stood at attention. People with masochistic tendencies became so hysterical that he could squeeze them dry.” (14) Reading accounts of the Antitheater group turned movie makers in 1969-70 is sometimes reminiscent of another charismatic leader and his followers, Charles Manson and his family. On one side this comparison may seem offensive to RWF and the crew, but once the manipulative accounts of what happened on set and in their communal lifestyle are heard, it does make some sense. As it turns out, the murderous impulses of Germany’s counterculture went the way of The Baader-Meinhof Group, while RWF and Antitheater went on to unbelievably productive heights, albeit under emotionally fraught conditions.
Fox and His Friends, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and In a Year with 13 Moons are highly unique films that all boil down to desire and the frequent inability to attain the wanted person or thing. As Petra says, “I think people are made to need each other. But they haven’t learned to live together.” In a Year with 13 Moons is possibly the most painful of the three films, while also being the most experimentally ambitious of them. We are presented with the only RWF film that has a supernatural premise--the opening lets us know that a thirteenth moon in a year is a rare occurrence that compels some emotionally stricken individuals to pursue reckless and deadly paths. It tells the story of Elvira (Volker Spengler) a down and out trans woman on the verge of collapse. Years earlier, she went to Morocco to have a sex change operation after Anton Saitz (Gottfried John), a coworker of hers who she was infatuated with said “...if only he were a girl.” When Elvia returned to Frankfurt, Anton was nowhere to be found. She eventually ends up with an abusive intellectual named Christoph (Karl Scheydt) who treats her horribly. Elvira also has an ex-wife Irene (Elizabeth Trissenaar) and daughter Marie-Ann (Eva Mattes) from earlier in her life, who she occasionally depends on. But it is Elvira’s sex worker friend Red Zora (Ingrid Caven) who leads her on an odyssey of long takes and elaborately simple sets, until she eventually ends up at the door to Anton Saitz’ office with the correct password (“Bergen-Belsen”). Although there are some moments of bizarre levity, by the end Elvira acknowledges, “I have my life and other people have theirs.”
I use the term sex change operation as opposed to the contemporary medical term gender affirmation surgery, because in Elvira’s case it is not necessarily something she does to affirm her own identity. Her decision to become a woman is based on her desire to please Anton. Maybe her plight has to do with a supernatural thirteenth moon? Or maybe it simply has to do with how our culture negatively treats trans women. Before he storms away, Christoph goes on a tirade: “You’re not even funny. You’re just repulsive. You’re a fat, revolting, superfluous lump of meat. And you know why? Because you have no will of your own, no initiative, no brain. You’ve no imagination… I’ve always searched for something like a soul. Something like you doesn’t have a soul. You’re just a thing, an object, completely superfluous. Nobody would notice if you ceased to exist.” A few minutes later we are treated to an extended slaughterhouse scene in which a number of cows bleed out. Volker Spengler delivers a brilliantly hysterical monologue that shows us Elvira’s desperation and unstable headspace. She goes from uncontrollably crying in an arcade, to moments of calm lucidity as she watches a man hang himself. In a Year with 13 Moons has a raw power that is seen in few other films--Fassbinder and his crew at their most torrential.
At one point Zora takes Elvira to see Soul Frieda (Walter Bockmayer), a queer drug dealer who is shut away from the world. Frieda gets philosophical, saying “What, in expressive terms, I regard as my body, if I can be aware of it in another form, is in fact my will. Or, my body is the objectivization of my will. Or, apart from it being a concept of my imagination, my body is merely my will.” It is a statement that makes us think of Elvira’s body and how she modified it. She didn’t become a woman because Anton asked her to, but for a reason that ultimately was her own will. Soul Frieda’s statement is memorable because it reminds us of how desire manifests in our bodies, which is perhaps the most powerful aspect of RWF’s cinema. We see these characters’ minds and emotions laid bare, manifested in draining, captivating performances in front of the camera.
Next week I will conclude a month of RWF essays by focusing on the director’s personally cinematic relationships with women in The BRD Trilogy.
Lorenz, Juliane (Editor) Chaos as Usual: Conversations about Rainer Werner Fassbinder. New York: Applause, 1997.
Katz, Robert. Love is Colder than Death: The Life and Times of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. New York: Random House, 1987.
Penman, Ian. Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors. London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2023.