Despair - A journey into light

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Movie
Original title Despair - A journey into light
Country of production Federal Republic of Germany
original language English
Publishing year 1978
length 119 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder
script Tom Stoppard based on the
novel "Despair" by
Vladimir Nabokov
production Bavaria Atelier , NF Geria II Film, Société Française de Production
music Peer Raben ,
Johann Strauss the Elder J.
camera Michael Ballhaus
cut Juliane Lorenz ,
Franz Walsch alias
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
occupation

Despair - Eine Reise ins Licht is a film by the German author, actor and director Rainer Werner Fassbinder from 1978 . The film, shot in English, is one of the very few Fassbinder films in which Fassbinder only had a minor role in the script. The screenplay of the British playwright Tom Stoppard is based on the novel Despair (English original title: Despair ) by the Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov .

The film was made by Bavaria Atelier and shot in 41 days from April to June 1977. The British star actor Dirk Bogarde plays the main role. With production costs of around 6 million DM , the film was Fassbinder's most expensive film to date. The premiere took place on May 19, 1978 at the Cannes Film Festival and at the same time in the Federal Republic of Germany in the cinema; the ARD -Television broadcast the film on August 30, 1981st

The film shows a man who suffers from private, professional and social worries and who falls ill with schizophrenia . As a way out into a new life, he fakes his shooting by swapping clothes with a man he thinks is his doppelganger. The film is dedicated to Antonin Artaud (filmmaker) and Unica Zürn (writer) , who suffered from schizophrenia, and to the painter Vincent van Gogh , who suffered from delusions , nightmares and depression .

action

Hermann lived in Berlin during the Weimar Republic . After the First World War , he arrived from Russia with changing identities , where his German-Baltic father and his presumably Jewish aristocratic mother (“a Rothschild ”) bequeathed a chocolate factory to him.

Marriage to his uneducated wife Lydia is characterized by the fact that he condescendingly considers her stupid but beautiful. The relationship becomes noticeably cooler when Lydia and her bird of paradise cousin, the penniless painter Ardalion, have a relationship more and more openly before Hermann's eyes. Hermann cynically lists the interests that separate him from Lydia, and at the same time explains why they are a perfect couple: Hermann is the ruler that Lydia needs. When he has to go on a business trip for two days and knows Ardalion at Lydia's, he tells her that he is on the verge of a murder.

The management of the inherited company is a burden for Hermann, of which he says bitterly that he never complained about it. For this he despises his mother, “a fat bourgeoisie ” who let a governess check him out and who had brought his father to his grave in grief. When the world economic crisis was approaching its climax in 1930, Hermann's company also fell into crisis. He admits to be full of fear, but wants to "hold out for his own sake". The desired merger with a Düsseldorf chocolate factory fails. When he returns from Düsseldorf, he panics for a moment when he thinks that his production manager Müller has left - until he learns that the secretary (played by Fassbinder's mother ) meant the resignation of Reich Chancellor Müller . On the street he watches with alarm as Nazis throw in the windows of a Jewish shop.

Hermann likes to leave his body: While he loves Lydia at the beginning, he insists on an open door so that he can watch himself from the living room. Later he swaps positions and actually sits in the armchair, where he sees himself standing by Lydia's bed with a riding whip in his hand. He asks a supposed doctor about his knowledge of schizophrenia because he wants to write a book about it. The doctor turns out to be an insurance agent from whom he buys life insurance .

In the cinema, Hermann sees a film with a doppelganger . In a mirror cabinet he discovers the unemployed Felix and recognizes in him his perfect reflection, a suitable doppelganger. Felix is ​​initially confused that Hermann sees a similarity. But he gets involved with Hermann because he promises him a steady job and gives him his address. Under increasing private, professional and social pressure, Hermann the supposed doppelganger appears in troubled dreams in which Felix kills him. He visits Felix and asks him to be seen as his doppelganger for a moment. Although Felix despises acting, he agrees when Hermann offers him 1,000 marks .

With increasing joy, Hermann prepares all the details of a perfect murder: the extinction of his existence. He sends Ardalion - allegedly at Lydia's request - to Switzerland with a gift of money to paint . He shows the insurance agent a fake threatening letter from a blackmailer. He makes Lydia believe that he has met his twin brother, who is a failed murderous existence; in order to restore his self-respect, he will help him commit suicide, but first change clothes. When Lydia has received the sum insured, she should follow him to Switzerland.

The plan succeeds: Felix believes in the role play, swaps clothes with him and is shot. In Switzerland, Hermann is waiting for a sign of life from Lydia. He learns from the newspaper that he is wanted. He can't believe the police don't think he was the man who was shot, and he retreats deeper and deeper into the mountains. There he is seen by Ardalion and betrayed to the police. When he is transferred, he explains that he is an actor and that a film is being made. He would be out soon. The film ends with his request that the police be held back "so that I can escape".

“I was a black shirt fighting the Reds in the White Army ; then I was in the Red Army myself and pulled against the brown shirts , and now I'm just a yellow belly ( coward ) in a brown shop "

- Hermann about himself

Historical context

Stoppard and Fassbinder show, together with production manager Müller, the self-confidence of the National Socialists that had grown in 1930 . Müller blames the reparations payments for the crisis and gives crazy speeches about Germany's leading position in Europe. With the Düsseldorf chocolate factory owner, the enthusiasm of an entrepreneur for the National Socialists , who has just donated them, becomes clear. Ardalion stands for the carefree, who at the beginning of the 1930s could not imagine that the National Socialists could get much more than 5% of votes in an election .

Awards

German Film Prize ("Federal Film Prize") 1978 in 3 categories:

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Despair - A journey into the light . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2011 (PDF; test number: 126 908 V).
  2. ^ Rainer Werner Fassbinder retrospective program , Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation (Ed.), Berlin, 1992
  3. ↑ German Film Awards 1951 to today ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Deutsche-Filmakademie.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.deutsche-filmakademie.de