Gods of the Plague (1970, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) doesn’t glamorize crime, but instead uses that genre as a setting because it allows Fassbinder to populate the narrative with characters who either can’t find ways to make money or don’t know how to. Its theme could be people need money and what they have to do for it.
Moreover, the criminal underworld here serves as an expressionist depiction of love; a way to communicate all the emotions that come with it. People are constantly buying and selling the whereabouts of others. People are constantly canvassing the streets looking for someone like lovesick obsessives. Being in hiding is like guarding yourself against heartbreak, walling off your emotions so you can’t get hurt again. And betrayal proves fatal.
Because this is a Fassbinder movie, the central protagonist FRANZ WALSCH (Harry Bär) is a mopey sad lethargic puddle of a man. The stock genre trope of one last job that will inevitably go wrong is used to translate the feeling of Franz falling in love with MARGARETHE (Margarete von Trotta). It doesn’t matter who or what the cops are after. First it’s some guy, then it’s known associates, then it’s the murder of Marian, then it’s the Gorilla, then it’s the supermarket job. What’s important is JOHANNA REIHER (Hanna Schygulla) is having sex with the investigating detective so she can get him to shoot Franz because she’s jealous she can’t have him and he left her for Margarethe. When the detective tells Johanna he wants her she brushes him off telling him he can’t have her, laughing because she’s too expensive—that’s a key phrasing, it merges love and money.
When I said the theme of Gods of the Plague is people need money and what they have to do for it, what I really meant is people need love and what they have to do for it. But in the case of this film, both hold true. Notice Franz doesn’t say a thing when Margarethe says that because of him she was let go of her job for missing work, took out a loan that they’ve spent all of, but when she offers to prostitute herself as a means for them to get more cash he slaps the crap out of her.
In Fassbinder’s films I often get the sense of a moral code. Like all of the characters are degenerates except there’s usually a couple that don’t belong there but become engulfed by this fated doom after it’s already too late. Obviously here it’s Franz and Margarethe. But the really intriguing character is that CARLA AULAULU who sells out the supermarket robbery, but also peddles hardcore pornography and it’s maybe suggested in a scene that she’s trafficking that girl who looks suspiciously young. And at one point the cop even says something about her like she knows everything. Love, sex, human desire is all the same to her. She’s gotta make money too. She’s exemplary of Fassbinder’s ongoing themes of exploitation. Someone else will exploit you in order for them to survive. Either your body, your emotions, your life, it’s all the same so long as it’s you not them.
A departure from his previous films, Gods of the Plague moves the camera in almost every setup. The black and white cinematography is high key, high contrast, photogenic surfaces like stone, brick, the textured glass backdrop, smoke in a back room. The Peer Raben score gets into the mix. And we get the first taste of R&B jukebox vibe Fassbinder.
Because this is a Fassbinder movie, the central protagonist FRANZ WALSCH (Harry Bär) is a mopey sad lethargic puddle of a man. The stock genre trope of one last job that will inevitably go wrong is used to translate the feeling of Franz falling in love with MARGARETHE (Margarete von Trotta). It doesn’t matter who or what the cops are after. First it’s some guy, then it’s known associates, then it’s the murder of Marian, then it’s the Gorilla, then it’s the supermarket job. What’s important is JOHANNA REIHER (Hanna Schygulla) is having sex with the investigating detective so she can get him to shoot Franz because she’s jealous she can’t have him and he left her for Margarethe. When the detective tells Johanna he wants her she brushes him off telling him he can’t have her, laughing because she’s too expensive—that’s a key phrasing, it merges love and money.
When I said the theme of Gods of the Plague is people need money and what they have to do for it, what I really meant is people need love and what they have to do for it. But in the case of this film, both hold true. Notice Franz doesn’t say a thing when Margarethe says that because of him she was let go of her job for missing work, took out a loan that they’ve spent all of, but when she offers to prostitute herself as a means for them to get more cash he slaps the crap out of her.
In Fassbinder’s films I often get the sense of a moral code. Like all of the characters are degenerates except there’s usually a couple that don’t belong there but become engulfed by this fated doom after it’s already too late. Obviously here it’s Franz and Margarethe. But the really intriguing character is that CARLA AULAULU who sells out the supermarket robbery, but also peddles hardcore pornography and it’s maybe suggested in a scene that she’s trafficking that girl who looks suspiciously young. And at one point the cop even says something about her like she knows everything. Love, sex, human desire is all the same to her. She’s gotta make money too. She’s exemplary of Fassbinder’s ongoing themes of exploitation. Someone else will exploit you in order for them to survive. Either your body, your emotions, your life, it’s all the same so long as it’s you not them.
A departure from his previous films, Gods of the Plague moves the camera in almost every setup. The black and white cinematography is high key, high contrast, photogenic surfaces like stone, brick, the textured glass backdrop, smoke in a back room. The Peer Raben score gets into the mix. And we get the first taste of R&B jukebox vibe Fassbinder.
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