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The epicurean exile, "something of a philosopher," nostalgic for "Kremlin bells" while witnessing the rise of fascism in his new land. "I stand before me." It's a tricky thing, to fabricate a state of mind, Rainer Werner Fassbinder has Tom Stoppard's adaptation of Nabokov in one hand and Dirk Bogarde's sublimely arched eyebrow in the other, and proceeds to build a lambent house of cards. Hermann Hermann in 1930 Berlin, a chocolate business shook by the Wall Street Crash, "too bitter, or not bitter enough." His wife (Andréa Ferréol) is a lush scatterbrain carrying on with her bohemian cousin (Volker Spengler), his home is a frosted glass cage polished by a continuously moving camera. The carnival maze introduces the twin who isn't, the homeless bloke (Klaus Löwitsch) who welcomes a bullet for the insurance fraud. The perfect murder, "the one that never happened but was committed," or better yet, "the one where the victim did it." Bertolucci's The Conformist for the glittering technique, Sturges' Unfaithfully Yours for the droll stance. The factory merger goes nowhere, a zoom on the antihero's emotional declaration is staged as a visual joke with sugary cherubs on conveyor belts gliding across the bottom of the screen. Lousy forgeries, taunting mirrors, the aesthete's distaste for swastikas (cf. Losey's Mr. Klein). The "binding line" spotted at the movie theater snaps, dissociation festers until Hermann becomes "a man outside himself," thus egg shells into porcelain shards. "I am a film actor. I'm coming out. Don't... look... at the camera." Fassbinder on Nabokov like Borges on Whitman ("Yo fui Walt Whitman"), a pleasing arabesque. Artaud, Van Gogh and Unica Zürn are the dedicatees, the line of thought is further refined in Lili Marleen, Veronika Voss, Berlin Alexanderplatz... With Alexander Allerson, Bernhard Wicki, Peter Kern, Gottfried John, Hark Bohm, Adrian Hoven, Roger Fritz, Y Sa Lo, and Ingrid Caven.
--- Fernando F. Croce |