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Reviews
Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (1982)
Interesting; could be better.
The black & white cinematography is extremely elegant and in some scenes the light points shine as stars. Fassbinder adopts styles similar to those from the films where Veronika Voss could have acted if she existed, and leads the film to the end without much of his forced pedantism. Among the best scenes is one of the final sequences, in which Veronika dreams being again the center of the attentions (singing "Dreams are made of this"), and the continuous takes in her attempt to reestabilish her acting. Near its half, the film starts to lose the cohesion and some ways of development of the plot are wasted to arrive in a stupid and complacent ending.
Pot Bouille (1957)
As François Truffaut once said:
"Pot-Bouille is not a film d'auteur. On the contrary. It is quite clearly a literary work written by one person and filmed by someone diametrically the opposite. Nevertheless, Jeanson's ferocity and verve, multiplied by Duvivier's obstinate gentleness, result in something pleasant and unusual." - François Truffaut, Cahiers du Cinéma, Dec., 1957.
In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden (1978)
Fassbinder's self-indulgent tale of the last days of a transvestite.
This is a confused and incoherent mess of interminable scenes of boring dialogues and monologues. That is no exaggeration: you have to make a tremendous effort to even try to become involved with it.
I sincerely thought Fassbinder would make something interesting in order to tell why does Erwin/Elvira suicides at the end, but instead of this, in every scene somebody is trying to explain: "when he was young, this happened..." and "he just came back from Casablanca and ordered to cut everything down there...", etc.
Soon in the movie, Erwin/Elvira is in a slaughter house talking with a friend prostitute (certainly a slaughter house is the best place for a pleasant little chat), and while telling her the story of Elvira's life, Fassbinder shows the killing of one cow after the other. It is difficult to choose between giving attention to the disturbing images or what the transvestite is saying. Of course we come to the very forced and coarse symbolism of "I have suffered much in my life, and am about to die".
In one of the sparse moments where actually happens something, Erwin/Elvira encounters a former lover, that only after performing a extremely gay choreography with two other guys (as if going for the necessary level of homosexuality) is that he recognizes Elvira.
There are some interesting shots and ideas, I must admit (such as when the nun tells the story of the young Erwin), but everything on the movie is wasted due to Fassbinder's self- indulgence.