I won't be content until I know he's been completely destroyed

The final of Fassbinder’s first eleven films, Beware of a Holy Whore (1971, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is a depiction of an emotionally incestuous surrogate family of creative professionals chamber dysfunction drama set in a hotel where a German film crew are on location in Spain. It belongs to the subgenre of movies about making movies. Running a hundred and four minutes, it’s an hour until we get to go to set. The film is heavy with a sense of the Fassbinder trademark crushing ennui of languor.
     In its way Beware of a Holy Whore is one of the most loving affectionate portrayals of the human aspect of all those involved in the production of a motion picture. What does that final line about the director, JEFF (Lou Castel) mean: “He rediscovered something that’s been forgotten. Time?” It’s not talking about the movie within the movie. It’s talking about Fassbinder the director and the movie itself. In real life you never stop hearing variations of these cliches on set like “Hurry up and wait,” from every department, all the way to extras, which everyone knows especially well, but I’ve also heard an actor once say “I act for free. They pay me to wait around.” Everyone hates the waiting. But Fassbinder turns it into a form of metaphysical psychological horror. Like even in a remote way when the young actress HANNA (Schygulla) laments how she feels sorry for [EDDIE and MARGRET] because they’re afraid of aging. Time.
     In most of Fassbinder’s work we get a sense of desperation (or impending doom) about characters’ desire for love or sex and in this film it’s also manifested subtly through the symbolism how for the first hour they can’t do anything until the film stock arrives. One of the most cohesive narrative threads running throughout is a growing panic that leads to doubt, hopelessness, and fear about not going what’s going to happen. Not knowing if any of them can do what they’re expected to do. With an air of tragedy.
 
The other significant aspect of the plot’s structure is how the power is abused through chain of command. A codependent toxic work environment has never looked this cool. Because film production is broken down into departments through a division of labor like the military, it’s Production itself which is the department we can get the best understanding of this dynamic through. At the top Jeff, the director. He’s immature, temperamental, prone to fits, tantrums, and highly abusive, but he’s also under the most pressure because his decisions must be carried out above all others. Also I love how Fassbinder cast Castel, the non actor dude who is a psycho megalomaniac passionate spoiled rich baby constantly cracking with convulsive epileptic seizure breakdowns in Fists in the Pocket as his alter ego here.
     Next is SASCHA (played by Fassbinder himself) the line producer. Sascha is the one character who is amazing at his job. The line producer doesn’t necessarily have more power than the producer or executive producer, but because they’re doing an indie, and he can handle the director and not only knows and understands every aspect of production costs, availability, and what is or isn’t necessary, he is able to handle the director. And deal with any crisis. Anytime. This character is not human. He’s an idealistic fantasy of the most efficient go to ruthless get shit done without all the glory reliable true asset. Notice how the producer (Karl Scheydt) in comparison doesn’t really do much. And the only time Sascha shows any emotion is when RICKY (Marquard Bohm) one of the main cast has to miss a few days to go to the hospital for severe stomach pains from ulcers. Sascha is crying on the bed like he’s been dumped by the love of his life, but really what’s happened is it’s gonna cost the production a few thousand dollars each day until Ricky’s back.
     Then the trickle down continues onto KORBINIAN (Ulli Lomell) the unit production manager, and BABS (Margarete von Trotta) the production secretary. The UPM gets it the worst. Everyone keeps telling him how lazy he is and to do some actual work for a change. It’s so really like that. Crew are so harsh on people with a higher up title if they deem them to be incompetent. Dude is trying his best. But in reality good enough is inferior. Babs gets away with more because she’s in bed with the director but also Sascha and he seem to like her. (Oh and she’s later hooking up with Sascha’s sound mixer brother.)
     Eddie, Hanna, Ricky and Margret are cast. DAVID (Hannes Fuchs) is the assistant director. FRED (Kurt Raab) production designer. MIKE (Gianni di Luigi) director of photography. In that first scene in the hotel lobby when that make-up lady says Hanna, Ricky, David, Fred and Kosinski are in some kind of commune, if you’re wondering, there’s a slate at the end that shows Jeff’s last name is Kossinski. This is how it looks to someone new to the group. You pick up on who seems to be part of their own little clique (or more).
 
The third act moves faster. It’s more fragmented. And there’s a lot of payoff. Like the sequence at the end. When we see the rushes the footage is silent (because they shot it MOS) but accompanied by an operatic score that turns it sublime. The idea for the ending Jeff described way earlier in the film about the husband killing the wife. And subsequent later scene when the DP asks Jeff where to put the dolly track and Jeff pops off that amazing dialogue “Must I do everything myself? If you can’t decide for yourself, you’ll never enjoy work,” we see it all happened just like they said it would.
     That’s the moral of Beware of a Holy Whore. Upon witnessing sheer utter chaos turn into perfectly formed beauty is art. Even that karate chop Eddie said there’s no way he would do. Even dying after orgasm. We see the impossible with our own eyes. And the pain it brings. All Jeff had to deal with. All those he had to fight, beat, fuck, fire, and charm. And finally the shift of context with that haunting line “I won’t be content until I know he’s been completely destroyed.” When we first hear it from Ricky in the convertible it appears to be dialogue from the script he’s rehearsing. But then we wonder if also it’s suggestive of some vindictive grudge he bears Jeff. Yet far more sinister is at the end when it comes from Jeff. Is he talking about Ricky now? Or if one takes into consideration the subtle shift of Jeff’s explanation of the theme of the movie within the movie—from being against brutality sanctioned by the state, later shortened to simply “brutality.” Is Jeff talking about destroying himself? Us? All of the above?

Something to offend everyone

Whity (1971, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is an acquiescent disillusionment western that depicts one’s existence in society as either suffering inhumane oppression or voluntarily walking away from it thus ensuring your own doom. Embedded within its moral there are questions of identity, imposing a frightening trap where it’s impossible to dismantle the source of what’s destroying you because in doing so there’d be nothing left. It’s also a psychologically expressionist horror movie about the corruption of wealth. Yet Fassbinder nevertheless manages to get us to empathize with the downtrodden and afford us the relief of a cathartic awareness resulting in what amounts to violently overthrowing the status quo out of desperation.

     It’s easy to be drawn to Fassbinder if you identify with social outcasts or the weak. Victims. Usually women, sometimes gays, often the poor, always the lovesick. At the center of Whity its dual protagonists are a black slave and his lover, a whore. And what’s so striking upon entering this world is the profound dignity possessed by WHITY (Günther Kaufmann). It’s a matter of honor for him to supplicate himself before the Nicholsons and confirm the law here that black people aren’t human. His girlfriend isn’t just a prostitute, she’s the town’s entertainment, performing in a cabaret act in the saloon. And HANNA (Schygulla) accepts Whity both in public and into her bedroom (even though he has to sneak in through the window). However when the angry bar patron (played by Fassbinder) beats Whity because of an impending transgressive miscegenation this is exemplary of a web that covers every part of the town: someone paying for something someone else did wrong. Because it’s Hanna who shows Whity affection, but it’s he who the Fassbinder belligerent fights.
 
America’s treatment of black people is another theme in Whity. And it’s the perfect fit for what Fassbinder is about. In the case of the Nicholsons, exploiting someone emotionally, psychologically, and physically. In this case providing for them for life. Food and shelter. Treating them with both contempt and at the same time affording them the status of belonging, in name and title practically another member of the family. (In Whity’s case even by blood.) Call it what you will: you only hurt the ones you love, gaslighting, domestic abuse, but it’s a form of extreme contrasts that plays perfectly in melodrama. And America is an analogy for it here. A hundred years before the civil rights movement would gain traction we have the family meeting scene where KATHERINE (Katrin Schaake) says if we gave the blacks more maybe they wouldn’t cause as much trouble is the cynical opportunist mechanisms working behind the scenes but highlighted when MARPESSA is heard singing spirituals in the kitchen and FRANK (Uli Lommel) notices it coming through a door slightly ajar, and then shuts it all the way to make the sound go away—just ignore the problem.
     If Whity feels like the family is more despicable depraved than we might usually get in Fassbinder, one reason could be because if money is the root of all evil in this case paterfamilias BEN NICHOLSON’S seed is poisoned. There’s the retarded son. There’s the partially retarded (syphilitic?) crossdresser KKK other son. There’s the hyaena cheating new young wife plotting to claim a stake in his inheritance. And in a sense there’s even Whity himself. 
     That’s what makes for the most morally ambiguous part of the narrative psychologically. Whity is an illegitimate Nicholson. An Uncle Tom because he believes in his duty to his family. His awakening comes by way of the love of a woman. The midpoint is when Ben pays off Hanna for faking her testimony. That shot is staggeringly epic western, the wide day exterior panning with Ben walking through the empty square. Hanna then tries to talk some sense into her man and get him to stand up for himself but it backfires. Because Whity’s so helpless and weakened by his perceived (but misread) apprehension that Hanna’s lost her respect for him that he cowers and asks if he can pay for sex, which gets him kicked out. Everybody’s telling Whity who to be and how to be. He has to decide for himself. But it’s not an easy question.
     In that scene Whity lays back like he’s in psychoanalysis and Hanna is his doctor. “I don’t understand you. You don’t want to be free. You like it when they beat you. You swine.” And there’s this rad 180° dolly that tells us this is undoubtedly the precise moment Whity has decided he will kill everyone. Also even though it isn’t said, it seems like he’s telling Hanna about the candy incident that just preceded this scene and how Katherine and Frank get so much joy from abusing their power to humiliate Whity. And that once he’s become able to tell Hanna the truth it’s the first step to his empowerment.
    Then he numbs himself with whiskey and goes and asks for a seat at the gambling table. Fassbinder’s his friend now. Fassbinder loves the image system of a game of chance because as we know in his films it means wagering your heart or dignity or everything you are for love or sex and usually losing it all. Just when you thought losing it all couldn’t get any lower, the real Fassbinder low point is when that happens and after that you lose all self esteem.
 
And here’s where Fassbinder proves he’s not as bleak as we might think. Because the one thing he avoids is fear. His characters hit the bottom but while they’ve been down on the floor long enough they come back, despite losing all they never lose their own self esteem. For Whity it’s a massacre of the Nicholsons. But there’s a tinge of melancholy in this final act. The family and that home were everything to him. His entire existence. He couldn’t help but suffer some distorted residual attachment, even resembling a sense of love.
     Along with Hanna, Whity wanders into the desert and they have nowhere else to go. It’s only a matter of time before they die of thirst. But this final sequence is powerful. And evocative because although it’s the end, we still get to see him flee his captors. We see him drink that last drop of water from the canteen. We see them share that final waltz without music. And if you think that’s futile I guess it’s all a matter of interpretation.

The Pollyanna and the whore

Despite his austere, bleak, we’re all doomed because of our desires worldview, in addition to a heightened cinematic formalism comprised of rigorous blocking of actors speaking their dialogue in an often wooden, detached hypnotic emo sulking stylization; take something like Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1971, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) here and you’ll find one of Fassbinder’s funniest comedies. And it’s amazing how well developed the characters are here.

     The characters can broadly be lumped into two categories in this film: disillusioned opportunists, cocky from sexual experience, and innocent idealistic naïve virgins. The dual protagonists are ALMA the whore (Irm Hermann) and BERTA the virgin (Hanna Schygulla). The experienced characters have attained the wisdom that there’s no such thing as love. The idealistic characters only reason for living is the search for love. 
     The plot structure in this thing is truly exceptional. Classic mismatch. Alma gloats about how easy it is for her to use men, until she’s fed up because men only use her for sex, when that very minute she runs into FABIAN in the street. Fabian at this point has just been clicked by a group of drunk soldiers, his fitting comeuppance for being a little bitch virgin jealous of them because they get all the pussy (the explosions “detonate” making him lose his shit are code for orgasms). The mismatch is Fabian was arranged to be Berta’s suitor—because she’s the maid in his house and his father UNERTL buys him a brand new blue BMW as a reward contingent on his son having the balls to fuck their maid. So inevitably the whore and the spoiled brat wind up together, committing to each other instantly when they run into each other after his beatdown. In Fassbinder’s world it’s the perfect match. No love. “Where there’s security you can do without love.” Alma tells Fabian she’s willing to marry him for his money and he’s happy about it. This is better than real life, cinema showing the underlying truths that govern us.
     Berta exists in a different movie—a saccharine fairy tale love story for young girls. She’s a maid in the home of a wicked tradmaster misogynist who is open about her being sexually earmarked for his kid is part of her job description. But Berta meets the man of her dreams, the soldier KARL (Harry Baer) at night in the moonlight on her favorite park bench there for just them. But Karl exists in a Fassbinder movie. He’s aloof from tons of sexual partners, bored, sullen, and doesn’t even act like he cares about Berta for any reason other than he wants to get laid. This film gets it right. In society the way the class system works is in the lower class hot chicks are attracted to dudes that treat them like shit. Through the entire film Karl tells Berta he doesn’t want her so he can get her. He knows it works. And cleverly the plot waits until the very last scene for them to finally succumb to their passions, the climax of the film being very anticlimactic with Berta losing her virginity along with the crushing brutal painful last line “Was that all?” as she yells crying on the ground having a tantrum, used up, seduced and abandoned.
     The moral of Pioneers in Ingolstadt is there is no such thing as love. Alma accepts this fact and lives happily ever after with Fabian. Berta has the unshakable faith that Karl is her true love until he busts one and literally runs away from her—serious comedy. The tragic part is Karl warns her not to fall in love with him from the beginning. The film is telling us there’s no such thing as love. But I fall for it nevertheless. I can’t get enough of lovesick Berta and her pining away forlorn dreaming it’s gonna work out. In the small town of Ingolstadt where this film is set all anyone seems to think about is hooking up. It’s like a teenybopper love story movie. That’s what Fassbinder gives us and we get to enjoy it, even though the dagger is hidden inside this gorgeous dessert just waiting to tear our hearts out. It turns out you can still laugh even if your heart’s broken, maybe it’s even better conducive to do so.
 
When I was young and I watched a bunch of Fassbinder I’d began to become acquainted with his vast stock actors group, but watching these films again there’s one I never noticed. Dude I love Carla Aulaulu. She’s almost like a West German Bulle Ogier. In Pioneers in Ingolstadt the scenes with FRIEDA (Aulaulu) and Alma talking shit standout as some of the funniest moments. Frieda is a teen virgin who hates Alma because she’s a bitch, but also because she’s taking all the soldiers, but also because allegedly she’s making all the other girls look bad. There’s also some cringe scenes with the SGT taking advantage of Frieda that are so sad predator exploiting this lonely girl though. 
     And then there’s Inertl the asshole dad. The only character I undoubtedly loathe is Fabian. But his dad Inertl, though he’s a pompous mean grouch, I kind of identify with a lot of what he says. So I’m a monster, okay. Like that scene where the son tells him he’s selfish, and Inertl replies, “Everyone is selfish,” I love that line. I’ve said that line. And it’s funny to think about feminist ideology say advocating that a woman’s place isn’t to be some object, servant, docile maid, when Inertl treats Berta as precisely that—but she is the maid, that is her job. Why do I think this movie is so funny? Fassbinder might not believe in love as a viable possibility, but he sure gets it, and fills his films with characters who want nothing more. It works both ways, just like in life.

Sub-culture

La nouvelle vague has captivated me since right around 1999, when I'd first arrived in Portland. Around that time I'd also happened upon Dogme 95, but whereas that movement proved to be a passing fancy, a shallow trend, its entries seemingly all but have elapsed any interest or value I can find in them, La nouvelle vague appears as inexhaustibly pertinent as an exercise in personal filmmaking style. Jean-Luc Godard is and always will be my most revered, but it's not possible for me to exclude Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette--both of whom I had to wait longer for and found less of their work to view.

Of all the time I'd spent watching Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette) I'd wanted to see more by its writer-director, Jacques Rivette, but had no luck. Finally after importing a British dvd of Paris nous appartient (1958, Rivette) I'd had something else to process. Surprisingly, Paris nous appartient was unlike Celine and Julie Go Boating in several ways; for the most part, it was darker. Shrouded in paranoia, conspiracies, intrigue, and shot in black and white, it was hard to believe it was by the same person.

By the way, I'd always been a filmographile. Wait what's the word for that? I mean like obsessed with filmographies of directors. And as I'm sure people who know me are sick of hearing, I began my pursuit of seeing all the movies of specific directors before the days of prevalent access to the internet. In researching the filmography of Jacques Rivette, one will find his fourth feature film listed as Out 1 (1971, Rivette) with a running time of thirteen hours. When I first thought about it, I did a double-take. As intriguing as it sounded I sadly concluded that I'd never actually have a chance to see it. Especially not in a theater. Especially not in one day. But, again, thanks to Austin, sometimes a chance comes along to see a movie I've waited for my whole life and never thought I'd get to see in a theater.

The day before I was to attend the theatrical screening of Out 1 I was scared. The longest movie I'd seen in a theater was Lawrence of Arabia, at nearly four hours. How was I going to sit through a thirteen hour movie? Would I get like bed sores? Would I get claustrophobic? Fall asleep? It began this past Saturday at 10:30AM and I had a seat in the middle, flanked by other audience members, but I saw that the front row was nearly empty and not too close to the screen so I moved there so I could sprawl out and slouch in my own space. For the first few hours I yawned a lot but then I was transported to that calmingly relaxed hypnotic trance into another world. Okay, okay, sadly it was a DCP, but other than that I was in complete bliss.

Out 1 contains several references to the number thirteen. It's strongly tied to Honoré de Balzac's three novels from La comédie humaine called "The Thirteen," as Colin (Jean-Pierre Léaud) finds, along with the Lewis Carroll reference about the thirteen gathered to hunt the Snark while searching for clues to solve his conspiracy theories. And it seems to me, although difficult to prove, Colin and Frédérique (Juliet Berto) are the two central leads, along with the five members of the Seven Against Thebes theater group and the Prometheus theater group's six members, which makes that thirteen principal cast members to follow. Also, the film runs thirteen hours.

I so admire Rivette's style in Out 1. He takes us down a rabbit hole into the intricacies of social dynamics among these thirteen people who all embody a cool, early 70s, bohemian, youthful, free-spirited, creative, cultured, literary cluster of sexy intellectuals. And he shoots them often on the streets of Paris, filming found locations. Maybe I'm jaded because I've been working in film and television production for the past three years, but how refreshing to see Out 1 full of most of the things it's my job to prevent: boom or other crew or equipment's shadows or reflections, and random people (bogies or lookie-loos as we call them) looking at the scenes being filmed, for example. I've always wanted to make movies like this.

And then there's the austerity that comes from Rivette's choice to leave the film without a non-diegetic score. The opening shot is unforgettable: the Seven Against Thebes group is stretching and we hear a recording that is played of some tribal bongos. Those bongos open the subsequent seven of eight parts of the film to follow and they become akin to a theme. But while I'm on that opening shot, most of the first two hours is just two different theater groups rehearsing, and while trying, it sets the foundation for Rivette's diegesis.

So if half of the movie is the two theater groups, the other half is Colin and Frédérique. Both he and she live alone in small apartments that feel like prison cells to me. Both of them are introduced as cafe hustlers. They both eventually hunt the thirteen. And they both fall in love by the end of the film, albeit to different people. And they cross paths only for a second and never say more than one word to each other or actually meet.

These are some simple structural techniques I noticed. The movie is thirteen hours long, I'm not gonna go crazy here. Colin's scenes are fun and break the theater group's monotony. But Frédérique's scenes are magic because Juliet Berto has to be the sexiest most sensually ravishing actress to have come out of French 60s cinema. The way Rivette photographs her recalls Godard's work with Jean Seberg, Anna Karina, Bridget Bardot, and Anne Wiazemsky. And, Berto is fun too, just like she'd go on to carry Celine and Julie Go Boating--who's character in that film coincidentally went on to provide the inspiration for Madonna's character in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985, Susan Seidelman). Frédérique spends the latter half of the movie in her own spy disguise with a boyish short hair wig, trousers, jacket, and collared shirt with cravat--damn that cravat puts me in stitches.

Thomas is a little older but damn he's cool in the stereotypical French way. He (and his theater group) smoke tons of cigarettes, he's always breaking down the literary relations to their rehearsals, always wearing mock turtle-neck sweaters, romancing seemingly every woman he meets, drinks wine, and enjoys eating in a lot of scenes, one of which he's seen sharing snails with Sarah. Oh, the French.

Like Paris nous appartient the air of paranoia prevails heavily. I forget what all goes on in that movie but I know the Betty Schneider character stumbles upon mention of a guitar recording by a character named Carlos, whom she never finds and is never shown in the film nor is his recording. That's key to Out 1's plot points. It's like never finding or showing Pierre. Same with the way Paris nous appartient features many scenes--and attracts the Betty Schneider character--of rehearsing a play that is never performed. I love that the journey is the payoff not the destination. I feel like Bruno Dumont makes his films similarly. Oh, the French.

But so yeah, the thirteen hours I spent sucked into the world of Out 1 was immersive and powerful, unlike any experience I can begin to think of comparing this to cinematically. Bulle Ogier as Pauline is also similarly photogenic in the way Juliet Berto is in this. Both of them go on to appear in Celine and Julie Go Boating and other of Rivette's 70s work. Man I wanna see Duelle (1976, Rivette) with Juliet Berto and Bulle Ogier. To bring up some of the film's playful humor and self-referencing, there's a scene with Colin hanging out with Pauline in her shop with some other friends. They're eating crackers and fruit jam. Pauline asks Colin if he's ever heard the story of "Charlotte and the Jam Pots." Colin replies that he has not. To which Pauline responds she'll tell him some other time because it's too long.

Needless to say, I'm proud to have discovered that there's a place for something like Out 1 and that it works. And I can't wait for the chance to see more of Rivette's early work.

--Dregs