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The "Douglas Sirk Strasse" gag is a literal signpost, it points up this as an acidic rearrangement of Interlude. (Lang's Secret Beyond the Door is another key precedent.) Thirtysomething virgin and tranquilizer-popping librarian, Martha (Margit Carstensen) is on a Roman holiday until Dad keels over on the Spanish Steps, she enjoys her first cigarette moments later while wondering how Mom will take the news. The Libyan gigolo and the wealthy employer are turned down, she instead goes for the engineer (Karlheinz Böhm) with whom she once shared a delirious circular pirouette. After the reunion in the jungle of an engagement party, a bit of nausea on the rollercoaster—he proposes to her while she pukes, her desperate gratitude makes him turn his back coldly, the camera ascends from the frozen figures until ominously spinning carnival rides fill the screen. "I'm sorry I've hurt you. Try to understand it's because I love you so much." Rainer Werner Fassbinder has a diabolical idea—the passing of oppression from father to husband, like the passing of decay from bourgeoisie to church at the close of El Ángel exterminador—and expands it with an entire catalog of domestic terrors. Violent sex, vicious emotional manipulation, the sports of a bona fide sadist. The sunburned-honeymoon bit from May's The Heartbreak Kid is remembered and pushed to its limits as the heroine, red as a lobster, suffers the inflamed groom's touch. Systemic shocks like the blackest matrimonial jokes, Böhm's resemblance to James Mason ("He's a bit strange," posed on the staircase next to a mounted horned skull), Cornell Woolrich themes plus dissolves to gray. Is the wheelchair-bound punchline the ultimate tragedy, or perversely masochistic wish-fulfillment? A pinch of both, as ever with Fassbinder. Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus. With Barbara Valentin, Peter Chatel, Gisela Fackeldey, Adrian Hoven, Wolfgang Schenck, and El Hedi ben Salem.
--- Fernando F. Croce |