Wednesday, February 15, 2017
046 - The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant: A Case History, 1972, Germany. Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
When was the last time you watched a movie for its wigs?
Or for its dresses.
Or for the drama caused by its brilliant, complex, ridiculous, tragic, petty protagonist.
Welcome to the world of Petra Von Kant.
A world composed entirely of a bedroom. With its step-down extension.
The building is built on wooden beams. Wrapped in window panes. Allowing sunlight to spill in from all sides.
With a view in through two windows from around the corner.
The carpet is as deep as a snow bank.
Mannequins stand in every area.
The mural fills the wall above her bed.
It may not be every frame a Poussin, but there is a Poussin in every frame.
Specifically, the 17th-century Baroque painting, Midas and Bacchus by Nicholas Poussin. Influenced by the Venetian Renaissance.
With Bacchus' hanging (hanging) always above the women, the only male image in a world of women.
All action occurs in the bedroom.
Chamber drama.
Filmed in long takes. With much dialogue. From interesting angles. And intelligent camera movement.
Petra is a great artist. A fashion designer. From the upper class.
And like Midas, everything touches turns to gold. And like Midas, she should not be touching people.
Kant is Germany's most rational philosopher.
Von Kant is all emotion.
She keeps a servant, Marlene. From the working class.
Marlene never speaks. She stands. She obeys.
She looks with longing at Petra. Loving her from afar. Aching with desire.
She is just as statuesque and beautiful as any model with whom Petra works.
But she is invisible to Petra. A servile puppy to a distracted master.
She expresses herself in her pounding of the typewriter keys.
Marlene is played by Irm Hermann, who played Irmgard in yesterday's The Merchant of Four Seasons. She is a member of Fassbinder's company, and she has a range as an actress.
The film begins, quietly, with cats eating on the stairs. All begin at the top of the stairs. One walks down the stairs, and eats at the bottom of the stairs. We hear their chewing, licking, smacking. We are about to enter a feline world. The world of a catty woman.
Marlene enters the bedroom and opens the blinds.
Petra is asleep and hung over. Thirty-five and without make-up. Looking her most vulnerable.
The light blinds her. She complains.
Her mother calls, and she lies to her, smiling falsely, ingeniously, through her teeth.
She telephones Joseph Mankiewiz--the writer-director of All About Eve, another film about the drama caused by the emotions and drinking of a great female artist--to tell him she does not have the money to pay him what she owes him.
A letter arrives from a great fashion house. They want Petra's designs. Three years ago they ignored her. Today, they grovel. She is on top.
Her friend drops in. Sidonie! They have not seen each other in three years.
Marlene is jealous. Sidonie and Petra talk about their husbands. Sidonie has one. Petra has had two. One died. The other she divorced. Sidonie explains that Petra should have known from the beginning, that she entered into a bad relationship in a bad way. Petra is right-brained, passionate, impulsive. She follows her feelings. And they may change throughout the day. Sidonie suggests that Petra use her feminine wiles to get what she wants. Petra says she hates doing that, that it is like cheating, like playing tricks. She prefers honesty. This may come back to haunt her.
"I think people are made to need each other," she says. "But they haven't learned to live together."
For sure.
Throughout this act Petra puts on her wig and make-up. She transforms herself. The actress, Margit Carstensen, is putting on a master class of theatrical acting, remaining always alive in behavior, physically grounded, while delivering reams of dialogue. Her artistry in applying make-up is as accomplished as her artistry in acting. Carstensen herself is a work of art, tall, thin, statuesque, beautiful, with the ability to transform herself into many different appearances and personalities.
Sidonie has invited a girl to meet Petra. Her name is Karin.
This is a mistake.
It is morning. Sidonie has asked for coffee. Karin requests cognac. Karin is young, from another generation. For an aspiring model, she lacks height, stature, beauty, grace, and poise. For an aspiring protégé she also lacks ambition, wisdom, discipline, focus, common sense, tact, and manners.
It is not clear why Sidonie has introduced her to Petra.
It is not clear how Karin could be a model.
If Marlene is unworthy of Petra's attention, then what has Karin to offer?
Petra falls for Karin instantly, and hard. With the obsession of Anna Karenina. But for no apparent reason.
Except this one: "I'll make a top model out of you."
Oh, the hubris. Oh, the horror. She is all too human.
The next few acts will follow Petra's decline as she follows this foolish path. In each act she will wear a different wig, a different dress, and a different face. She will always look ravishing. She will behave irrationally.
Her conversations with Karin reveal that Petra has values in her work. Accountability. Discipline. A work ethic. She is not successful for nothing.
She tries to advise her as a model. "You drink too much. Don't forget your figure is your fortune." Petra herself is in fabulous shape.
So she is baffled that Karin wants to spend all day lying in bed reading graphic novels. Petra offers Karin the world. They could travel together, see art, go to concerts, watch movies, experience life. Everything that Marlene wants but which Petra has withheld from her.
Karin is cruel to Petra. She takes advantage of Petra's generosity, makes her jealous for her own amusement, toys with her heart. Her husband Freddy calls. She demands that Petra fly her to Frankfurt, that Petra buy her plane ticket.
Petra is devastated.
Eventually, we will see Sidonie again, and Petra's daughter, and Petra's mother. All arrive for her birthday. Petra has been lying on the floor, drinking gin from the bottle, hovering over the telephone, waiting for Karin to call. The others will enter the room in succession, each disappointing Petra that she is not Karin. She is so distraught that she crushes her drinking glass into shards with one squeeze of her hand.
Petra's daughter is going through an unrequited love of her own, and wants to share it with her mother, whom she loves, and wants her mother's advice. She loves a boy who does not even know she loves him. "He is so obstinate." Just like her mother.
Interestingly, it is 1972 in Germany, and she likes him because he moves like Mick Jagger!
But Petra is too consumed with herself to notice. She is too consumed to see that here are three women who love her, who are here for her, on her birthday. Well, actually, four. Marlene is here too, just as invisible as ever.
This film is as Baroque as the painting that hangs above the bed. It is mathematically measured in its narrative structure--in five acts, with five outfits, with five wigs (four wigs and one with natural hair). Restrained in emotions just as it is in environment--even with its melodrama, even with the Dionysian outburst that occurs in the end. It is replete with symbolism, masterful in its camera work, precise in its compositions, elegant in its production design.
Petra will awaken the morning after the drama with her mother still there for her. Petra will be contrite.
"I didn't love her. I wanted to possess her. That's all over. I've learned my lesson."
In the end, without her wig, without her make-up, without a fabulous dress, standing in her bathrobe, looking like herself, she will see Marlene for the first time.
She will apologize. She will offer Marlene what Marlene has wanted all this time. How will Marlene respond?
The Platters play in the background, the operatic coda of this bedroom opera, "Oh, yes, I'm the great pretender."
Petra goes back to bed.
She ends as she began. But wiser for what has happened.
Lesson learned.
No comments:
Post a Comment