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R.W. Fassbinder retrospective at the Centre Georges Pompidou

from the 13th of april to the 6th of june

by Denyse Beaulieu

Live chronicler of an amnesia-stricken Germany, loving and charismatic torturer of his Factory-style troupe, peerless portraitist of melodramatic heroines, outcasts, transvestites and holy whores… Among all the things that Rainer Werner Fassbinder has been in the course of his short and prolific career, from 1967 to his death in 1982, he was also a prodigious stylist, a creator of some of the most fascinating and sophisticated images of the 70’s.
Within the overabundant complexity of his work, this may not be the most immediately striking characteristic. But when you study the film stills shown in the Beaubourg exhibition, it becomes obvious. Fassbinder knew how to dress women and how to light them. Ingrid Caven as a prostitute with her little white plush bolero in The Year of 13 Moons. Margit Carstensen and Hanna Schygulla in their heavy glittering Deco-inspired dresses, articulated like insect wings, in the feminine huis-clos of The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant.

And, of course, the heroines of the dazzling “German Trilogy”, where Fassbinder reinvents post-war Germany’s missing filmography. Hanna Schygulla as the unforgettable Maria Braun, carnal and dauntless, trading her family silverware for a little black dress in the ruins of Berlin – the black marketer is played by Fassbinder himself –, as the first rung of her ruthless social climbing… The film’s poster, Maria in hat and Merry Widow corset pulling up a stocking, is one of the most enduring icons of 70’s cinema. Schygulla again, as an opportunistic Lili Marleen surfing on the Nazi wave, until she staggers, heavily made-up and mummified in a lamé dress after an attempted suicide, in front of a gaggle of Third Reich dignitaries…