Pussy pitfall epic. Marriage doesn’t work Third Reich period melodrama. Bolweiser (1977, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is a power struggle that lasts a lifetime that centers its conflict on who wears the pants?
Most of the narrative of Bolweiser is Xaver (Raab) getting into trouble. If you think about how it’s set up: Xaver has this sweet post as part of the board of directors in the Reich running a train station and has a hot wife whom he loves with a rich father after all that what do you think could go wrong? Exactly. When it comes to his disillusionment trajectory and limerence voracious sexual desire Fassbinder crafts an entire infrastructure of tension apprehension fear paranoia jealousy doubt humiliation and complete loss of control around it. Continuously. Unease. Thriller.
Xaver attends this court case where a woman LIESL is on the stand accusing her employer of something she says like “I’ll marry you when the old woman is gone.” Xaver goes out and gets wasted with TREUBERGER (I always love Peter Kern in a Fassbinder movie) on those huge steins and on the train ride home pukes out the window with Leisl’s words swirling around in his conscious like a tempest. (I always wondered how Germans could hold so much beer I like how this scene shows sometimes they can’t.) This foreshadowing establishes a vibe: cheating on your spouse + trying to negotiate some deal to get away with it long-term = on court trial busted for it.
Also on this little trip Treuberger blackmails Xaver because he found some fancy undergarments and smellgood soap in his attaché. Xaver’s wife HANNI is already distraught now about the soap so Xaver has to beg her to believe he didn’t have an affair. This is important because again it foreshadows the tragedy that’s eventually gonna go down. Because it leads to Hanni’s first infidelity. Hanni has this brief fling with MERKL the butcher and yes this film stoops to lines like she’s stepping out because she wants to go get some meat. But as the board boys quickly make the butcher affair public and Xaver the laughingstock we get the first match in the messy bout between the married couple.
The psychology here is achingly confoundingly true while completely beyond comprehension. In other words human. Because as soon as Xaver questions Hanni she becomes hostile and a master of blameshifting, which causes Xaver to plead with her excessively that he’s not jealous or suspicious and loves her so pathetic so desperate. And soon after he’s lost the power he calls himself a steer. Yep. She’s cut his nuts off. (Later you can notice when he’s trying to reclaim his virility in that whorehouse he calls himself a bull again.)
It’s also interesting the way Hanni breaking it off with Merkl is depicted. Once she’s decided to end it there’s that scene where she closes the door and um well looks to be struggling with the conflict of her carnal lust. She wants him. But she ends their hooking up because she says people are finding out. Conflicted characters are compelling characters. She takes up with this hairdresser SCHAFFTALER played by Udo Kier next. Then at home looking at herself in the mirror she spits. End of part 1.
Compounding the impact of her forcefulness when Xaver catches Hanni in a lie stepping out with the hairdresser she turns it on him with the famous what were you spying on me accusation. “Do I have to tell you my every move?” But the best is she ends it with I forgot where I was that night. Not even trying to come up with a believable cover up anymore. Is Bolweiser long? Yeah like three and a half hours. But It earns it to feel just how long a codependent relationship like this can go on.
Their lives are pure miserable. The film is pure miserable (which makes it sublime). There is a lot of sex in this movie. And some business loose ends. But I’ll sum it up with the ultimate twist of fate. Another snitch goes to the Reich and Xaver gets arrested and convicted on trial because it is discovered that in an earlier trial against his wife cheating he provided a false alibi so now he has to do a four year stretch. Going to prison because your wife cheated on you. Ouch.
There’s this coda that’s almost unintentionally too funny where Xaver is out of prison wandering the countryside and finds this cabin in the woods where some dude with a Lincoln-Ahab beard tells him Hanni’s married the hairdresser and Xaver ends up living there for the rest of his life. He buries Lincoln Ahab. Grows his own beard. Takes up canoeing. The end.
Okay the sheer magnitude of the epic is how tortured Bolweiser is over his devotion attraction to Hanni. And her dalliance with the butcher is over so quick. Frivolous. Then she’s onto the hairdresser and that’s that. She’s unfaithful. Nothing can change that. But Xaver so intensely wants to possess her that he’s often willing to sacrifice his composure dignity sanity livelihood reputation and drink himself into a stupor or blow his wad with a team of prosties and champagne showers just to cope. It’s like Lincoln Ahab said in a marriage one eventually gets wilder and the other one colder. Don’t do it.
Xaver attends this court case where a woman LIESL is on the stand accusing her employer of something she says like “I’ll marry you when the old woman is gone.” Xaver goes out and gets wasted with TREUBERGER (I always love Peter Kern in a Fassbinder movie) on those huge steins and on the train ride home pukes out the window with Leisl’s words swirling around in his conscious like a tempest. (I always wondered how Germans could hold so much beer I like how this scene shows sometimes they can’t.) This foreshadowing establishes a vibe: cheating on your spouse + trying to negotiate some deal to get away with it long-term = on court trial busted for it.
Also on this little trip Treuberger blackmails Xaver because he found some fancy undergarments and smellgood soap in his attaché. Xaver’s wife HANNI is already distraught now about the soap so Xaver has to beg her to believe he didn’t have an affair. This is important because again it foreshadows the tragedy that’s eventually gonna go down. Because it leads to Hanni’s first infidelity. Hanni has this brief fling with MERKL the butcher and yes this film stoops to lines like she’s stepping out because she wants to go get some meat. But as the board boys quickly make the butcher affair public and Xaver the laughingstock we get the first match in the messy bout between the married couple.
The psychology here is achingly confoundingly true while completely beyond comprehension. In other words human. Because as soon as Xaver questions Hanni she becomes hostile and a master of blameshifting, which causes Xaver to plead with her excessively that he’s not jealous or suspicious and loves her so pathetic so desperate. And soon after he’s lost the power he calls himself a steer. Yep. She’s cut his nuts off. (Later you can notice when he’s trying to reclaim his virility in that whorehouse he calls himself a bull again.)
It’s also interesting the way Hanni breaking it off with Merkl is depicted. Once she’s decided to end it there’s that scene where she closes the door and um well looks to be struggling with the conflict of her carnal lust. She wants him. But she ends their hooking up because she says people are finding out. Conflicted characters are compelling characters. She takes up with this hairdresser SCHAFFTALER played by Udo Kier next. Then at home looking at herself in the mirror she spits. End of part 1.
Compounding the impact of her forcefulness when Xaver catches Hanni in a lie stepping out with the hairdresser she turns it on him with the famous what were you spying on me accusation. “Do I have to tell you my every move?” But the best is she ends it with I forgot where I was that night. Not even trying to come up with a believable cover up anymore. Is Bolweiser long? Yeah like three and a half hours. But It earns it to feel just how long a codependent relationship like this can go on.
Their lives are pure miserable. The film is pure miserable (which makes it sublime). There is a lot of sex in this movie. And some business loose ends. But I’ll sum it up with the ultimate twist of fate. Another snitch goes to the Reich and Xaver gets arrested and convicted on trial because it is discovered that in an earlier trial against his wife cheating he provided a false alibi so now he has to do a four year stretch. Going to prison because your wife cheated on you. Ouch.
There’s this coda that’s almost unintentionally too funny where Xaver is out of prison wandering the countryside and finds this cabin in the woods where some dude with a Lincoln-Ahab beard tells him Hanni’s married the hairdresser and Xaver ends up living there for the rest of his life. He buries Lincoln Ahab. Grows his own beard. Takes up canoeing. The end.
Okay the sheer magnitude of the epic is how tortured Bolweiser is over his devotion attraction to Hanni. And her dalliance with the butcher is over so quick. Frivolous. Then she’s onto the hairdresser and that’s that. She’s unfaithful. Nothing can change that. But Xaver so intensely wants to possess her that he’s often willing to sacrifice his composure dignity sanity livelihood reputation and drink himself into a stupor or blow his wad with a team of prosties and champagne showers just to cope. It’s like Lincoln Ahab said in a marriage one eventually gets wilder and the other one colder. Don’t do it.
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