Seemingly a triumphant parable about a slave's emancipation from a cruel, inbred patriarchy, Fassbinder's outré Spanish Western employs a unique hybrid of incisive, scabrous character examination, eerie stretches of silence, and a deadpan editing scheme that makes empathy desirable but never attainable. The eponymous character is the son of despotic aristocrat Ben Nicholson, whose children look and behave like grotesque zombies (their faces are caked with a putrid green sheen of powder), whose wife is a sexually manipulative hussy, and whose one-time mistress (and Whity's mother) is the other servant in the house, a proud anthem-singing woman whose charcoal-darkened face renders her an indistinguishable void.
This artificial hue also serves as a contrast to Whity (Günter Kaufmann), who is caught between fealty to the father and his tradition of old money, and his mother's tradition of slavery. In the film's first scene, Whity tells his mother that "black music" isn't welcome in the house; she responds by spitting in his face and derisively labeling him "Whity." Such an extreme example of stratification illustrates Whity's dual identity and his confusion about how he'd like to be perceived. The mother's rebuke is especially cruel when one considers her role in his figurative schizophrenia (copulating with her white master) and the selfsame compromise of racial identity inherent in his conception.
There are further signs of ambiguity: he dresses to the specifications of his masters, looking the part of an Uncle Tom in the opening tilt shot, which pans slowly up Whity's body from his spit-shined shoes to his immaculate red dust jacket; he proudly pledges his gratitude after severe beatings; and he may be romantically involved with Nicholson's disabled son. Whity's brutal turn in the final sequence, in which he methodically executes the entire family, is a particularly definitive choice of identity, though hardly, from an outside perspective, one of vindication or clarity given Whity's contrary choices (or are they necessities of survival?) throughout the film. Like the other two Fassbinder films I've seen—The American Soldier and Rio Das Mortes—character motivations, intentions, and actions are anything but clear-cut, and the director is prone to self-amusing stretches of bizarre revelry. But also similar to those films is a sense of spontaneity and social conscience along with an analytical rigor that reminds me of a less-polished and less self-regarding Godard. If his later films are equally resistant to the cinema of spectacle (of which the closest he's come is the extraordinary ending to The American Soldier), I may yet come to fully appreciate this most enigmatic auteur.
This artificial hue also serves as a contrast to Whity (Günter Kaufmann), who is caught between fealty to the father and his tradition of old money, and his mother's tradition of slavery. In the film's first scene, Whity tells his mother that "black music" isn't welcome in the house; she responds by spitting in his face and derisively labeling him "Whity." Such an extreme example of stratification illustrates Whity's dual identity and his confusion about how he'd like to be perceived. The mother's rebuke is especially cruel when one considers her role in his figurative schizophrenia (copulating with her white master) and the selfsame compromise of racial identity inherent in his conception.
There are further signs of ambiguity: he dresses to the specifications of his masters, looking the part of an Uncle Tom in the opening tilt shot, which pans slowly up Whity's body from his spit-shined shoes to his immaculate red dust jacket; he proudly pledges his gratitude after severe beatings; and he may be romantically involved with Nicholson's disabled son. Whity's brutal turn in the final sequence, in which he methodically executes the entire family, is a particularly definitive choice of identity, though hardly, from an outside perspective, one of vindication or clarity given Whity's contrary choices (or are they necessities of survival?) throughout the film. Like the other two Fassbinder films I've seen—The American Soldier and Rio Das Mortes—character motivations, intentions, and actions are anything but clear-cut, and the director is prone to self-amusing stretches of bizarre revelry. But also similar to those films is a sense of spontaneity and social conscience along with an analytical rigor that reminds me of a less-polished and less self-regarding Godard. If his later films are equally resistant to the cinema of spectacle (of which the closest he's come is the extraordinary ending to The American Soldier), I may yet come to fully appreciate this most enigmatic auteur.