Gods of the plague
| Movie | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Original title | Gods of the plague | ||
| Country of production | Federal Republic of Germany | ||
| original language | German | ||
| Publishing year | 1970 | ||
| length | 91 minutes | ||
| Age rating | FSK 16 | ||
| Rod | |||
| Director | Rainer Werner Fassbinder | ||
| script | Rainer Werner Fassbinder | ||
| production | Rainer Werner Fassbinder Michael Fengler |
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| music | Peer ravens | ||
| camera | Dietrich Lohmann | ||
| cut | Franz Walsch alias Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Thea Eymèsz | ||
| occupation | |||
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| chronology | |||
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Gods of the Plague is the third feature film by German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder . The black and white film was produced by Antiteater -X-Film for around 180,000 DM in 5 weeks in October and November 1969. The world premiere took place in Vienna at the Viennale on April 4, 1970 . The first showing in Germany was on July 24th, 1970. The film tells of the failed return of the ex-prisoner Franz to everyday life, of his relationships and his relationship to money.
content
Franz Walsch is released from prison and returns to his friend Joanna, who sings in a nightclub and has her own car. On the way to the restaurant, she slips him money to pay, confidently chooses the table and tells Franz where to sit. She criticizes him for his simple order and wants to know who he's talking to on the phone. Franz arranges to meet his brother Marian and his girlfriend Magdalena to play roulette . In the middle of the game he lets Joanna sit there and stays in a hotel; he still owes the payment.
Franz and his brother visit their mother, with whom no conversation can arise. Franz rejects her offer of money. When he tries to steal a suitcase at the train station and is caught, Magdalena observed this by chance and clarified the situation with money. She takes Franz home with her, where he lets her undress him like a child and learns that his brother has been missing for three days. He stays with her for a few days.
A police inspector urges Joanna to testify about the whereabouts of Franz's buddy, who goes by the name of "Gorilla". Franz learns from a certain Carla who, as an outpatient trader, sells porno magazines and information about where the "gorilla" now lives. He now calls himself “Schöndorf or Schlöndorff or something”. When Franz appears there, his murdered brother is lying in the empty apartment. He moves in with Margarethe and prevents her from going on to work. Although she knows that she will lose her job at customs and will then no longer be able to send money to her mother every month, she lets herself into it. For a while they can live on Margarethe's credit that she took out on her permanent position.
Franz happened to meet his old friend Günther, the "gorilla", on the street. Franz puts aside his indifference for a brief moment and shows joy. This is not tarnished when Günther confesses to him that he shot his brother because he “sang” and it was “an order”. Franz asks Günther whether he was with Joanna during his time in jail. When Günther replies in the affirmative, Franz says: “I love you!” Together with Franz's friend Margarethe they go on a good-humored trip to the country, where they fight and have coffee with their old friend Joe.
Günther moves in with Margarethe and Franz. When the money runs out, Margarethe makes work proposals, but the two refuse and prefer to dream of a vacation in Greece. When Franz tells her that they are planning a supermarket robbery, she suggests that he go on the street, which Franz comments with slaps in the face. Joanna and Margarethe reveal the raid plan to the police inspector. Franz's old friend Martin is the manager of the supermarket and lets Franz and Günther in after the shop closes. When they attack him, the inspector is there and shoots Franz and Martin; Günther escapes injured. He drags himself to the informant Carla Aulaulu and shoots her with the last of his strength after he has beaten her out that she betrayed the plan to Joanna. When he dies, Günther utters the words: "Life is very precious - even right now" - Finally you see Franz 'mother, Margarethe and Johanna at Franz' funeral. Joanna says crying: "I loved him so much!"
background
Fassbinder also used the name of the main character Franz Walsch as his pseudonym, for example as a film editor in Gods of the Plague and Katzelmacher and as the director and screenwriter of his previous short films Der Stadtstreicher and Das kleine Chaos .
In Gods of the Plague , the main character Franz Walsch books himself into a hotel under the pseudonym Franz Biberkopf , alluding to Franz Biberkopf from the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin , which Fassbinder filmed ten years later, in 1980 (see Berlin Alexanderplatz (TV adaptation) ) .
In Gods of the Plague , Fassbinder's mother Lilo Pempeit - after a first appearance in the short film Das kleine Chaos - has her first longer of a total of 20 film roles in Fassbinder films: She plays the mother of Marian and Franz Walsch.
Reviews
“ Gods of the Plague is in some ways a continuation of love is colder than death . This time Harry Baer plays Franz, the role of Fassbinder (Fassbinder himself only appears briefly in an episode role). Once it is mentioned casually that Bruno is dead. And Günther, who shot Marian, acted on orders (from the syndicate?). Joanna, who betrayed Franz once out of love, now betrays him out of disappointed love. And Joanna's betrayal from the first film is now repeated by Margarethe with the same motivation. And like in the first film, there is only one moment of absolute happiness for Franz: When he meets Günther again for the first time, when they embrace and he exclaims: "Wahnsinn". That corresponds to the re-encounter between Franz and Bruno, though much more coolly depicted there. Both circumstances are burdened: Bruno comes as an informant, Günther killed Franz's brother. Nevertheless, Franz's love doesn't seem to hurt.
For me, of Fassbinder's early films, Gods of the Plague, is the most personal, also the most pessimistic, the blackest. In these decorations (the first one that Fassbinder had built), which almost drown in the dark, in this sunless Munich, these little gangsters and poor girls have to fail. Whether Margarethe loves Franz or Joanna no longer loves Franz: the result is always the same. People are so left to their own devices, so incapable of opening up to one another, and so isolated from history and society that only loneliness or death can stand at the end.
Even stronger than love is colder than death , Fassbinder has integrated the suggestions from the American and French gangster film into his personal vision. Quotes no longer take on a life of their own (like the Alain Delon imitation Lommel ), they go seamlessly into the fantastic, self-contained world of gods of the plague . The American soldier a year later will fan out the motifs and quotations again, as it were to a Fassbinder gag festival. "
“ Gods of the Plague is one of those early works by Fassbinder in which, following on from film noir, he takes the gangster film as the starting point for a“ simple ”story that tells of“ simple ”people who“ simply ”cannot break free from their milieu. But even in these early films, the “big” themes of the later films, which are similar to the melodramas by Douglas Sirk, such as those of the so-called “BRD Trilogy” (“ Lola ”, “ The marriage of Maria Braun ”, “ The longing of the Veronika Voss '), hinted at: the impossibility of a love free from constraints, Fassbinder's doubts about it, the gender relationships in which women are often stronger than men - and also more sensitive to everything possible - and, if you will, also the almost fateful entanglement of people in history and the entanglement of history in people, the analogy between history and biography, etc.
Gods of the Plague is not free from a certain sarcasm, for example when Franz rattles the sentence "Shoemaker stick to your last" shortly before his death. Or when Fassbinder gives the gang boss's code name as "Schlöndorff or something like that" (reference to the director Volker Schlöndorff ). [...] "
" Gods of the Plague [...] is about people who do not want to or cannot talk to one another and are therefore unable to maintain relationships for longer. Once again Rainer Werner Fassbinder illustrates his thesis that there is no such thing as a love free from constraints. The men seem unemotional; Feelings are reserved for women who intervene in what is happening because of their feelings. Gods of the Plague is an artificial, minimalist tragedy that parodies the genre of the American gangster film , in which Rainer Werner Fassbinder has dispensed with every flourish, every ornament and every superfluous word. "
"Wordless hopelessness"
"The Gangster Game"
"Black Movie of Munich"
"Biberkopf, is there such a thing?"
Web links
- Gods of the Plague in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Gods of the Plague ( Memento from July 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), film and background information, Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation, Berlin
- Gods of the plague in the lexicon of international films
- Gods of the plague at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Rainer Werner Fassbinder retrospective program, Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation (ed.), Argon Verlag, Berlin, 1992
- ^ Limmer, Wolfgang: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Filmmaker . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek, 1981. pp. 180-181; ISBN 3499330083
- ↑ movie review Wilhelm Roth cited in Filmzentrale.com , first appeared in Rainer Werner Fassbinder , film series, Volume 2, Carl Hanser Verlag , Munich, 1985
- ↑ Ulrich Behrens ' film review quoted from Filmzentrale.com , 2004
- ↑ Dieter Wunderlich's film review on DieterWunderlich.de , 2004