Chinese roulette
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Chinese roulette |
| Country of production |
Federal Republic of Germany , France |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1976 |
| length | 86 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
| script | Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
| production | Albatros production, Les Films du Losange under the direction of Michael Fengler |
| music |
Peer Raben , Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben ( power plant ) |
| camera | Michael Ballhaus |
| cut | Ila von Hasperg, Juliane Lorenz |
| occupation | |
| |
Chinese Roulette is a film by the German director, writer and actor Rainer Werner Fassbinder . The film was shot over 36 days from April to June 1976. The location was mainly the Lower Franconian Stöckach Castle . The costs amounted to approx. 1.1 million DM . In seven years it is Fassbinder's 28th feature film; after the failure of Whity (1971), the second to be produced for an international audience. The film premiered on November 16, 1976 at the Paris Film Festival . On April 22, 1977, the first performance took place in the Federal Republic of Germany. The film shows the cool vengeance of a girl suffering from polio, who feels hated by her parents and who takes pleasure in exposing the hypocrisy of her fellow men.
action
The wealthy couple Ariane and Gerhard pretend to be separated on business for the weekend. Her 14-year-old daughter Angela, who is unable to walk, stays with the silent educator. In fact, the father meets with his Parisian lover Irene. They drive to the family castle, where the servant Kast and her son Gabriel run the household. Surprisingly, Gerhard meets his wife there with her lover Kolbe.
After a short astonishment, the four of them come to terms with each other laughing and decide to spend the weekend together in the castle. The housekeeper explains to the landlord that she would have prevented the encounter had the daughter not said on the phone that his wife would not come. Secretly she is happy that the couple's secrecy is exposed.
After dinner, Gabriel proudly reads to the castle visitors from the prose he has written, as he has done on other occasions. Daughter Angela comes to the castle with the teacher Traunitz. When the mother realizes that she has arranged the meeting, she wants to attack Angela. The father is just stopping them.
In the evening, Angela explains to Gabriel that she is a cripple and that her parents hate her for it. When she fell ill 11 years ago, her father started the relationship. She has been with her lover since the mother's doctors made it clear 7 years ago that her disease was incurable.
The next morning Angela looks accusingly into the rooms of her parents and her lovers. She accuses the housekeeper of being a matchmaker. When the adults wonder how they're spending the day, Ariane suggests doing some target practice. When Gerhard hands her a pistol, she aims at her daughter in front of the window. Gerhard's lover stops Ariane from shooting.
Angela wants everyone to have dinner together. Then she insists on playing “Chinese Roulette”: a two-group guessing game in which one group has to ask which person has chosen the other group. “For example, if the person were a car, what car would they be?” Asking the questions: The mother, the housekeeper and the two lovers; Giving answers: Angela, her teacher, the father and Gabriel. After everyone has asked two questions and one last question is still outstanding, Gerhard Ariadne recalls “our famous question”, which the mother then asks: “What would the person have been in the Third Reich?” The daughter's answer is clear: “ Concentration camp director from Bergen-Belsen ” .
The group seems to have a hard time breaking up and opts for the housekeeper. When the daughter tells her mother that she was meant and leaves the room laughing, the mother picks up the pistol and shoots - Angela's beloved educator Traunitz. After screaming, Angela goes down the stairs depressed. Gabriel tells her it was just a graze and asks if she wanted her mother to kill her. Angela explains scornfully to him that she has known for two years that he doesn't write himself, but steals everything. Shortly afterwards, another shot rang out in the castle.
background
Idea and realization
According to Michael Ballhaus, Fassbinder had received funding and discussed a new film with him. They first thought about the actors, and Ballhaus suggested a house in Franconia that he thought would be a nice location. The three months between the idea and completion were then the shortest thing Ballhaus had ever experienced in his career. Fassbinder went to Paris for 14 days and then came back with the script. Ballhaus actually suspected that shooting would be a disaster, as Fassbinder actually went out every night and always had to have people around - "and there was nothing far and wide (...), but then exactly the opposite happened." House lived together. Fassbinder felt that he "had a family, so to speak, he didn't want to leave."
Fassbinder says the film was made “in an atmosphere that I found to be one of the most positive I've ever shot.” Everyone lived in one house and “played the same games in the evenings and all night long that are in the film . "As a result," a lot of personal relationships have shifted, and that has gone into the work. "|
According to Margit Carstensen, the game was about telling the truth, even if it hurt. The person who was just “the victim” was cornered with precise questions until the truth was out, whereby Fassbinder did not exclude himself.
music
Music plays a major role in the film as a background for the emotions that speak from the eyes of those involved when the camera circles them from many perspectives. In one scene the music style changes when Angela lets her educator Traunitz dance with crutches to the song “Radioactivity” by the popular electro-pop group Kraftwerk .
When asked about the interview, Peer Raben said whether there had been something like this in music in parallel to the formal and technical development of Fassbinder's basic themes: “ Chinese roulette comes to mind . He shot scenes as if the movements of the characters corresponded to a ballet choreography. I was then able to write ballet music for it. It complemented each other so well that he wanted to do it again and again later. There are scenes in ' Querelle ' that were filmed to music running. "
camera
According to Michael Ballhaus, three films that were interesting for their collaboration were made during this time. Little by little, a great understanding developed between them, so that we knew what we could do with each other. In Chinese Roulette, “the camera became a person, an actor, so to speak”. They have "developed a visual language that was very precise and very interesting". He said he learned “an incredible amount” from the film, and it was “amazingly” a very harmonious collaboration.
Quote in the movie
Angela quotes her teacher Traunitz and the housekeeper Kast at breakfast from the letters from Rimbaud :
“Because I am different. If the brass wakes up as a trumpet, it's not your own fault. This is obvious to me: I have a helping hand in the development of my thought: I see and hear it: I do the first bow stroke: in the depths the harmony starts to move or it suddenly leaps onto the stage. "
The first movement also appears in Shadows of the Angels , the 1976 film adaptation of Fassbinder's play The Garbage, the City and Death . Fassbinder asked Daniel Schmid to shoot the film and told him why he didn't want to direct it himself: “ I can't do that, I don't even know what it is. “Daniel Schmid related this to his relationship to the play,“ that he didn't want to make it himself as a film because it just came out of him ”.
Fassbinder on the film
“The story is about people being so estranged that they continue their relationships with one another even though they have long since ended. All human relationships have been reduced to repetitions and rituals - we want to reveal that, but not by showing how people actually behave or how this is reflected in their faces, but we want to show it with the movements of the camera. If the camera moves around something dead for a very long time, then the dead becomes recognizable as dead, and then the longing for something living can arise, and therefore one will long to break with the bourgeois ritual. I have tried to make a film that pushes artificiality, the artificial form to the extreme, so that I can completely question it afterwards. I'm pretty sure that there is not a single film in film history that contains as many camera movements, tracking shots and counter-movements by the actors as this one. (...) For me, the rituals continue in the mirrors and from the mirrors are broken, and I hope that these breaks will be imprinted on the subconscious mind of the viewer so that he is ready to break with these rituals, the end products of a bourgeois way of life. But of course it is asking too much to expect this or that effect from a film. "
“I made the film mainly because it appears to be a film about marriage, and because that is so infamous that it says more precisely how wrong and destructive marriages are than other films that seem more openly against marriage are directed. (...) Marriage as an institution gives people a pseudo-security of belonging together, which no longer forces them to constantly check this security in a positive and affectionate way; they are only forced to do so when there is a conflict. That is, if there is a conflict, the marriage is already broken. Then all that's left to do is putty. "
Reviews
“ Chinese roulette , in contrast to the carefully artless, almost coarse staged Satan's roast with artificial perfection: a chamber play composed down to the smallest scenic detail, Fassbinder's most ingenious staging since the bitter tears of Petra von Kant , a very quiet, intimistic, but Not at all larmoyant film that draws its extremely intense inner tension from the confrontation of eight characters within a closed interior. (...) Once again, Fassbinder's tendency to expose his figures to the extreme is evident, a radicalism that is of course filtered through a strict staging: constant, often barely noticeable camera movements of admirable precision define the relationship between the figures, creating new ones again and again Constellations until any development seems possible. Fassbinder's actors (...) act extremely concentrated and cautious this time: a stronger contrast than between Satan's roast and Chinese roulette hardly seems possible. "
“The tempo of the narrative never suppresses what destroys the characters, how much suffering and despair lies hidden in them. (...) That leaves the viewer with dismay - and enough distance to become aware of it. "
“The basically banal story, which looks a lot like an existentialism trimmed down for Fassbinder's household, is worth seeing because of the perfect form of staging: the elegant camera work ( Michael Ballhaus ) defines the relationships between the characters, the actor, with subtle, barely noticeable movements -Ensemble, in which, in addition to Fassbinder actors such as Margit Carstensen and Ulli Lommel , the French stars Macha Meril and Anna Karina also act, impresses with its homogeneity . Fassbinder uses melodramatic patterns and means in a cool and deliberate manner , like a mathematician trying to prove an equation. The result is a very artificial and very artistic structure full of melodramatic symmetries , in whose formal framework people fidget like marionettes. A geometry of cold and human boredom. "
“The roles seem completely reversed. It is the exchange, the surplus value - as Marx would say - that determines the relationships between the actors. The married couple is no longer really together and togetherness, their daughter is in the emotional world of the parents, especially the mother, no longer a daughter, but rather: ballast. You have changed partners and a governess , Traunitz, still mute, is something like Angela's social mother. Lies, deceit and constant tension dominate the scene, which you want to solve by laughing when the two couples meet in the castle. But that only works for the moment. The swap has long been completed, not just the partner swap in relation to the officially existing marriage of the parents, but also the parent swap. In between stands Angela, who walks through the castle with her splinted leg on crutches, looks into the rooms and holds up the mirror to her parents in view of her failed life.
The two couples cultivate their new exchange relationships - you could say: as long as another “good” does not emerge that dissolves the loose relationships and establishes new ones. Sex is the only binding agent, the market in which exchange relationships are regulated and business relationships exist. Angela appears as a kind of outcast, one who has been ousted from the market - ousted because she "brings nothing", an unemployed person, a severely disabled person, a cripple who has been given over to welfare: Traunitz, the dumb welfare who does what she can do. "
“ Chinese roulette is a highly stylized, brilliantly staged psychodrama in which the inescapable thought and body movements of the protagonists are arranged into a fatal ballet. Michael Ballhaus's camera circles the figures who seek shelter behind ultramodern Plexiglas furniture and double themselves in mirrors. The formal mannerisms identify the staging as an intellectual product, as a hypothermic demonstration of how people become monsters. "
“ Chinese roulette is the completion of the Fassbinderschein space-figure constellation. In no other film does he prove better how important the composition of bodies and groups is to him, and no other film is so filled with reflections, frames, window views and door openings, with transparency and obscurity, with fears and longings, than all of these Shapes only show the destroyed emotional world of Fassbinder's characters. "
“In the last shot of the stylized psycho - melodrama artistically recorded by Michael Ballhaus and his circling camera in the mirrored hall of the castle, a procession passes the Franconian castle. Until then, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's star cast (...) had explosively released pent-up aggression, hurt love, hurt feelings, hatred and suppressed dissatisfaction. Uncompromisingly staged by RWF . "
More reviews :
- Brigitte Jeremias, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 23, 1976.
- Wolfram Schütte, Frankfurter Rundschau , November 25, 1976.
- Peter W. Jansen, Vorwärts , April 28, 1977.
- Sven Hansen, Die Welt , May 13, 1977.
- Sebastian Feldmann, film service , May 24, 1977.
- Norbert Jochum, Tagesspiegel , May 14, 1977.
- Günther Kriewitz, Stuttgarter Zeitung , April 29, 1977.
- Eckhart Schmidt, Deutsche Zeitung / Christ und Welt , April 29, 1977.
- Balts Livio , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , 19./20. May 1977.
- Edgar Wettstein, Zoom Film Advisor , 11/1977.
- Rolf Wiest, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , 18./19. June 1977.
literature
- It is better to enjoy pain than to suffer it , Rainer Werner Fassbinder on Roast Satans , Chinese Roulette , Despair and two projects, conversation with Christian Braad Thomsen (1977), in: Fassbinder on Fassbinder , Robert Fischer (ed.), Verlag der Authors , Frankfurt am Main, 2004, ISBN 3-88661-268-6 .
Web links
- Chinese Roulette in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Chinese roulette , film and background information, Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation, Berlin
- Chinese roulette at filmportal.de
- Chinese roulette at Kino.de
- Chinese Roulette - Rebellion and Reaction Detailed review by Ulrich Behrens at Filmzentrale.de
- Fassbinder on his film Chinesisches Roulette Presseheft, the authors ' film publisher , quoted from FassbinderFoundation.de
- Chinese Roulette Trailer at New-Video.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Rainer Werner Fassbinder retrospective program , Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation (Ed.), Berlin, 1992.
- ↑ A new kind of reality , interview by Juliane Lorenz with Michael Ballhaus , p. 202 in: The whole normal chaos , conversations about Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Juliane Lorenz (ed.), Henschel Verlag, Berlin, 1995, ISBN 3-89487- 227-6
- ↑ It is better to enjoy pain than to suffer it , Rainer Werner Fassbinder on Satansbraten , Chinese Roulette , Despair and two projects, conversation with Christian Braad Thomsen (1977), in: Fassbinder on Fassbinder , Robert Fischer (ed.), Verlag of the authors , Frankfurt am Main, 2004, ISBN 3-88661-268-6
- ↑ The longing to be loved , interview by Juliane Lorenz with Margit Carstensen , p. 121 in: The whole normal chaos , conversations about Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Juliane Lorenz (ed.), Henschel Verlag, Berlin, 1995, ISBN 3-89487 -227-6
- ↑ Work without end points , interview with Peer Raben , p. 75 in: The completely normal chaos , conversations about Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Juliane Lorenz (Ed.), Henschel Verlag, Berlin, 1995, ISBN 3-89487-227-6
- ↑ A new kind of reality , interview by Juliane Lorenz with Michael Ballhaus , p. 202 in: The whole normal chaos , conversations about Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Juliane Lorenz (ed.), Henschel Verlag, Berlin, 1995, ISBN 3-89487- 227-6
- ^ Rimbaud - Paris war song ( Memento of November 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Letter to Paul Dement, Charleville, May 15, 1871, quoted from Physiologus.de
- ↑ Something Far, Mongolian , Interview with Daniel Schmid , pp. 18 and 26 in: The whole normal chaos , conversations about Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Juliane Lorenz (ed.), Henschel Verlag, Berlin, 1995, ISBN 3-89487-227- 6th
- ↑ Fassbinder on Chinese Roulette press booklet, the authors' film publisher, quoted from FassbinderFoundation.de, 2012 ( Memento from February 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Rainer Werner Fassbinder, quoted from: DVD cover Chinese Roulette , Two Thousand One Edition, Leipzig, 2012
- ^ Hans C. Blumenberg Die Zeit , October 15, 1976, quoted from Arsenal-Berlin.de , 2012
- ^ HG Pflaum Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 22, 1977, quoted from Arsenal-Berlin.de , 2012
- ^ Hans Peter Cookingrath Die Zeit , May 6, 1977, quoted from Arsenal-Berlin.de , 2012
- ↑ Ulrich Behrens quoted from Filmzentrale.de, first published on Follow-me-now.de
- ↑ Film announcement on arte for broadcast on November 27, 2000 ( Memento from October 12, 2008 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ Rainer Werner Fassbinder, quoted from: DVD cover Chinese Roulette , Two Thousand One Edition, Leipzig, 2012
- ↑ Kino.de Film criticism on Kino.de , no year
- ↑ Bibliography on Chinese Roulette ( Memento from February 17, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) quoted from FassbinderFoundation.de