Monday, December 10, 2018
538 - Eight Hours Don't Make a Day, Part 4--Harald and Monika, Germany, 1972. Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Jochen has nowhere to go.
His girlfriend Marion's brother Manni threw him out of the bathroom this morning. Jochen then teased Marion that Manni was the head of the household.
Now her mother, upon first meeting him, has thrown him out of her house altogether.
So he has gone home, only to have his father throw him out of his own house.
Which has driven him to his grandmother's place--she has now moved out and lives with Gregor--only to find Grandma and Gregor too preoccupied with children to notice his existence.
So he leaves.
It is too bad.
The weekend began so filled with hope.
Jochen and Marion went shopping together on Saturday and were clearly in love.
Fassbinder films a typically clever and humorous sequence where the two of them ride up an escalator and back down another one--because Marion keeps forgetting things and having to go back--with the camera positioned in the center below both escalators.
When they exit and cross the street, they stop in the middle of a crosswalk to kiss, and a line of cars piles up behind them. When the motorcycle police officer makes them move and the cars pass by, it is one Volkswagen Beetle after another.
And on Sunday, the day they have promised each other to lie in bed all day, Manni pulls a prank on them by starting an Elvis album on the record player and fleeing the room. The start of the music causes Jochen and Marion to bolt uprightly together at precisely the same moment. Above them hangs an Elvis Presley poster from the 1968 Comeback Special. The one with the black leather jacket and the Gibson guitar. His hair looking somewhat like Jochen's. Only with Jochen's hair dry and Elvis' slicked back with pomade.
And the song Manni plays is one some people might not know--"Wear Your Ring Around My Neck," from The Complete '58 Sessions.
The soundtrack to this episode is fantastic, especially to my American ear. We hear Elvis Presley, Little Richard (called by the live presenter the King of Rock and Roll, which you know Fassbinder included with a smirk), The Rolling Stones, The Platters, Bobby Darin, Paul Anka, The Everly Brothers, and Les Paul & Mary Ford, in addition to being introduced to great European artists.
Thank you for the mix tape, Fassbinder.
Manni seems to enjoy his role as the third wheel. He relishes in being the interruptus to Jochen and Marion's unsuccessful efforts to have a romantic moment alone.
Fassbinder meanwhile continues to be playful with camera angles, having Jochen and Marion lie on their backs with their heads slightly lifted in a two-shot, with the camera at the foot of the bed on a long lens. The effect flattens Jochen's face while looking straight up his large nostrils. At the same time, Marion, with her hair straight and curled back, looks at him lovingly with her deep blue eyes.
But after being rejected at all houses, he goes to the riverbank to sit and think. Then he plays pinball at the arcade (where we hear Little Richard's playing of "Lucille" live), only to find himself annoyingly surrounded by couples in love.
Me meets Marion at the restaurant. The one we keep returning to with the monkey and the goldfish. And the plastic flowers on the table. Where the waitress surreptitiously eavesdrops on people's private and intimate conversations.
He tells her he wants to get married.
She is wearing a cap. Her face is allowed to shine more radiantly whenever the ringlets in her hair are pulled back out of it.
He orders "a piccolo of bubbly." How wonderful.
As she accepts his proposal and declares her love for him, we look down at them through the iron bars of the railing above. Symbolically imprisoning them. Ah, Fassbinder. Always the sneaky ironist.
Across town, Monika is flailing inside her own prison bars. She tells Harald she wants to work again.
To which he replies, "Shouting puts you in the wrong." He returns to his work and ignores her as she makes her case. When he does respond, he refers to her "idiotic wishes."
And so we begin our cross. Our X. Our travel across two relationships, with one marriage on the rise and the other, on the descent. One, about to end; the other, about to begin.
With both hesitating along the way.
The one might not end, and the other might not begin.
Everything culminates in a party at the Epp house, a set piece which deliciously takes up the final 30 minutes of the film.
Where everyone is present. Jochen's workmates and their significant others. Marion's workmate, the self-righteous and judgmental Irmgard, friends, and all the family, including Aunt Klara.
The Italian Giuseppe, who speaks broken German, spends the entire evening describing recipes to others.
Grandma works her tricks to manipulate Harald into giving in to Monika's wishes.
Manfred makes his move on Monika, which we predicted in Part 1.
People hook up whom you might not expect.
Wolf and Kathe finally get some time alone.
And by the end of the night, after everyone has left, Jochen and Marion realize that the move towards marriage might encompass a corresponding move away from the innocence and freedom of romance.
As Marion walks past Jochen, blowing off his greeting.
And falls into a chair.
And falls asleep.
Alone.
* * * *
Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to the Okeh Club. We're featuring here tonight the King of rock and roll. And when I say "the king of rock and roll," I mean his majesty. A big round of applause for the one and only Little Richard.
Take your time. Not your life.
Sprinkle flowers of love for a lifetime and save each other from heartache. - Plaque on the Epps' wall.
Shouting puts you in the wrong.
We've always agreed our child has priority over your idiotic wishes.
I'm not being mean. Just sensible.
Children don't need to be happy. Children need to be prepared for life, and that means discipline.
I'm not interested in whether I'm happy or not. I have to do my job. That is what is required of me.
I wasn't offended, because I'm right.
One has to be good for something, right?
Isn't it better to write what they want to hear? We can always do what we feel is right.
We have to cast out one evil with another evil.
Aren't you going on a honeymoon? . . .
People don't do that anymore. And it's right that way. Marriage is a sensible, everyday thing.
You could always learn new things.
* * * *
Wear My Ring Around Your Neck, Elvis Presley
Lucille, Little Richard
Lady Jane, The Rolling Stones
La Mer M'a Donne, Georges Moustaki
Heimweh, Freddy
Blaue Nacht am Hafen, Lale Andersen
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, The Platters
Capri Fischer, Rudi Schuricke
Dream Lover, Bobby Darin
Just Walking in the Rain, The Prisonaires
Lonely Boy, Paul Anka
Problems, The Everly Brothers
Vaya Con Dios, Les Paul & Mary Ford
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