The bitter tears of Petra von Kant

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Movie
Original title The bitter tears of Petra von Kant
Country of production Federal Republic of Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1972
length 124 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder
script Rainer Werner Fassbinder
production Michael Fengler
camera Michael Ballhaus
cut Thea Eymèsz
occupation

The bitter tears of Petra von Kant is a film drama by the German director, author and actor Rainer Werner Fassbinder from 1972 . It is based on the play of the same name by Fassbinder, which was premiered in 1971 at the fourth Experimenta Theater Weeks in the Frankfurt Theater am Turm under the direction of Peer Raben .

action

The rich and successful fashion designer Petra von Kant lives with her secretary Marlene in a luxurious apartment in Bremen . Her first husband died in a car accident and a second marriage recently fell apart. Although von Kant is lonely, she treats her silent secretary Marlene like a slave and thus humiliates her regularly.

Through her friend, the Baroness von Grasenabb, she met the young model Karin Thimm, who lives in Australia and has a husband there. Von Kant falls in love with Karin and invites her to his home. In order to bind the young woman to himself, von Kant offers her a job as a mannequin . The two move in together and become a couple. But Karin is soon tired of the relationship and has affairs that she hardly hides. When her husband comes to Europe, Karin wants to return to him. Von Kant is desperate and reacts hysterically. She insults her lover as a “little, lousy whore”, but at the same time asserts her deep affection and love and finally lets her go.

After Karin has moved out, von Kant consoles himself over the loss with alcohol. On her birthday, she receives a visit from her mother and daughter Gabriele. She realizes that she never really loved Karin, but only wanted to own her, and realizes: “You have to learn to love without making demands”. When the guests have left, von Kant apologizes to her servant Marlene for the years of humiliation and offers her friendship. Marlene leaves her mistress without a word of goodbye.

background

Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote the script based on his own play. In the opening credits he dedicated the film to "the one who became Marlene here". According to statements from the closest Fassbinder environment ( Kurt Raab , Harry Baer ), this primarily meant Peer Raben . The strongly autobiographical character of the film (like most of the early Fassbinder films) of course also allows the interpretation that the actress Irm Hermann portrayed herself as the servant of her master. Petra von Kant (played by Margit Carstensen ) is Fassbinder himself, Karin Thimm corresponds to Günther Kaufmann , Sidonie von Grasenapp stands for Kurt Raab and Valerie von Kant Fassbinder's mother Liselotte Eder .

Used as a photo wallpaper in von Kant's apartment, in many film scenes as background image: The painting Midas and Bacchus by Nicolas Poussin (after 1624, Alte Pinakothek Munich)

Like the original, the film is structured in five acts and is set exclusively in von Kant's apartment. The settings are often very long. The project was the 12th collaboration between Fassbinder and the actress Hanna Schygulla and marked the breakthrough for Eva Mattes .

The bitter tears of Petra von Kant was filmed in January 1972 in just ten days. The budget was about 325,000 marks. The film premiered on June 25, 1972 at the 1972 Berlin International Film Festival .

The film has the image of a film "that women don't like". Director Fassbinder said: “I look at a woman just as critically as a man. (…) Women are more interesting because on the one hand they are oppressed, but on the other hand they are not really because they use this 'oppression' as a terrorist instrument. (...) My films are for women, not against them. But almost all women hate Petra von Kant - at least those who have the kinds of problems the film is about, but who don't want to admit them. I can't change that. (...) All in all, I find the behavior of women just as terrible as the behavior of men, and I try to illustrate the reasons for this and, above all, to show that we are misguided by our upbringing and by the society in which we live. My description of these conditions is not misogynistic. She is honest ... "

The "lousy little whore" Karin Thimm had the name of a journalist for the Munich evening newspaper , who had initially opposed Fassbinder and the action theater troupe, but since the success of Katzelmacher had suddenly become "very friendly".

Reviews

  • Ulrich Gregor : "... a study of decadence, mutual dependence, passion, frenzy and despair, in its tendency towards excess perhaps the most advanced and most virtuoso of Fassbinder's melodrama."
  • Lexicon of international film : "Virtuoso staged melodrama and chamber play, filmed by Fassbinder based on his own play in a deliberately artificial and kitschy style."
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung : “(...) Frau von Kant is losing her shape, the film is holding its own. He doesn't want to hide for a moment that Fassbinder first wrote this story for the theater. When an act is over, it fades out excessively. When a dialogue expires, the phone rings immediately to help with the action. Again and again Margit Carstensen declaims herself in supernatural, theatrical language situations: She truly speaks iambs at important points, and her sentences then appear as if on display in gold leaf frames. From morning to evening these women move around in flowing trance robes, their heads mostly poking out of little fur rings. No breeze from the outside world blows into this thundered-up living studio of Petra von Kant, which remains the only setting for the film. The artificiality of the decoration and the means turns the wild, ecstatic artificiality of the feelings presented here spiral after spiral higher. For two hours the viewer is locked into this world without a view. A suction arises, a feeling of dizziness, until the seriousness and ridiculousness of this passion story, until the kitsch and the art in it can no longer be clearly distinguished. Once again Fassbinder has artfully put so-called good taste on the cross. (...) "
  • Der Spiegel : “Parody? No, unwilling kitsch. The attempt to sell basic knowledge about the essence of women through artificial language as artistically valuable fails due to script weaknesses and excessive demands on the leading actress. "
  • Wilhelm Roth in the biography Rainer Werner Fassbinder : “As passionately as Petra von Kant seems to have fallen for the young Karin Thimm and as pathetically the fashion designer expresses her passion in words: The bitter tears of Petra von Kant is not a film about female homosexuality, but rather an etude on power relations, in which the homoerotic relationship serves more to clarify a case study. "
  • Ulrich Behrens on filmzentrale.de: “'The bitter tears of Petra von Kant' is not a film about lesbian or bisexual love, not even just about women, although not a single man appears in the film, at most the one in the painting by Poussin. But that's important. The picture with the naked man conveys the permanent presence of the masculine, the domineering, power and violence. (...) What is demonstrated in Petra by Kant in a subjective sense, sometimes with bitter irony, is the loneliness of a person through the loss of his identity and his ability to love. Margit Carstensen proves to be an excellent actress here. "
  • Hans Scheugl : “… one of the few masterpieces with a homosexual theme, artistically refreshing in its total avoidance of the prevailing naturalism of the cinema. the artificiality of the film matches the neurotic artificiality of the main character, Petra von Kant, who is excellently played by Margit Carstensen. "Fassbinder shows" a typical homosexual constellation ", an" amour fou across the class barriers ". In doing so, he “succeeds very well in making the psychological mechanisms within it clear”.

Awards

The bitter tears of Petra von Kant was nominated for a Golden Bear at the 1972 Berlin International Film Festival .

In 1973 the film received three federal film awards (today: German Film Award ) in the categories of Best Actress ( Margit Carstensen and Eva Mattes ) and Best Cinematography ( Michael Ballhaus ).

Irm Hermann received the Italian Acting Prize for her portrayal of "Marlene".

The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.

Dubbing

The text served the Irish composer Gerald Barry as the basis for his English-language five-act opera The Bitter Tears of Petra by Kant , which premiered on September 16, 2005 in London (and was also recorded on CD). The German-language premiere was on May 4th, 2008 at the Basel Theater .

See also

The Fassbinder film Faustrecht der Freiheit is a naturalistic, gay variation on the 'Petra von Kant' theme.

literature

  • Rainer Werner Fassbinder: The bitter tears of Petra von Kant. The garbage, the city and death . 2nd Edition. Publishing house of the authors, Frankfurt am Main 1986. ISBN 3-88661-013-6
  • Tanja Michalsky : The camera's leeway. The aesthetic deconstruction of a female interior in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's “The bitter tears of Petra von Kant”. In: Margarete Hubrath (Ed.): Gender spaces. Constructions of “gender” in history, literature and everyday life . Böhlau, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-412-10299-7 , pp. 145-160.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rainer Werner Fassbinder - retrospective. Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation (Ed.), Argon Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-87024-212-4 .
  2. ↑ from an interview with Christian Braad Thomsen, made 1973, printed in Tony Rayns (ed.): Fassbinder. Rev. and expanded edition. British Film Institute, London 1980, ISBN 0-85170-095-0 , quoted here from Robert Fischer; Joe Hembus: The New German Film, 1960-1980. 2nd edition, Goldmann, Munich 1982 (Citadel-Filmbücher; Goldmann Magnum 10211), ISBN 3-442-10211-1 , p. 76.
  3. ↑ Kurt Raab, Karsten Peters: The longing of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Goldmann, Munich 1983 (Goldmann Taschenbuch 6642), ISBN 3-442-06642-5 , p. 121.
  4. ^ Ulrich Gregor: History of the film from 1960. Bertelsmann, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-570-00816-9 , p. 149
  5. ^ The bitter tears of Petra von Kant. In: Lexicon of international films . Film service , accessed February 18, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  6. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 8, 1972
  7. ↑ Short review in: Der Spiegel 7/1997 ( online version )
  8. ^ Film review by Ulrich Behrens. In: filmzentrale.de.
  9. ↑ Hans Scheugl: Sexuality and Neurosis in Film. The cinema myths from Griffith to Warhol. Heyne, Munich 1978 (Heyne-Buch 7074), ISBN 3-453-00899-5 , p. 208
  10. ↑ German Film Academy