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The protagonist (Harry Baer) at one point gives "Franz Biberkopf" as an alias, and there he is at the very beginning being escorted out of jail by a languid lateral pan. "Was it bad inside?" "No different from outside." A quick stop at a Munich café for an iconic opening (close-up of jukebox cuts to a blast of Ray Charles, a couple slowly dancing as the credits scroll underneath), then a harsh spotlight on Hanna Schygulla's Dietrich number at the Lola Montes Cabaret. A reunion reflected on the dressing-table mirror, a fling with the sister-in-law (Ingrid Caven), a murder, a passing pastoral interlude with the moll (Margarethe von Trotta) and "The Gorilla" (Günther Kaufmann). In his sequel-remake-anagram of Love Is Colder Than Death, Rainer Werner Fassbinder lets the noir pieces fall where they might, all the better to focus on bits of astringent drollery: Baer fiddles with his mustache against a blank wall, then listens to a children's record in its entirety while his girlfriend searches the cupboards for ravioli. Nods to Bande à Part and Alphaville, "a joke between men" plus a certain musicality in the dialogue's terseness. (At a poster store: "One King Ludwig." "A lovely man." "Ja." "Twenty marks.") Sirk's display windows are spotted, the smut-peddler (Carla Egerer) alone at home sings the theme from Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte. The doomed robbery takes place in the phosphorescent wasteland of a supermarket aisle, yet all the bullets don't sting as much as the slap Baer gives von Trotta when she suggests whoring herself to prevent the hold-up—the Fassbinder touch. With Jan George, Lilo Pompeit, and Marian Seidowsky. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |