533 - The American Soldier, Germany, 1970. Dr. Werner Rainer Fassbinder.
There was an elephant in Belgium. Everyone loved it, especially the kids. But it became quieter and quieter. And one day, it attacked its keeper. It trampled him to death and smashed up the elephant house. It broke through an iron door and trumpeted terribly. The police came, and the fire department, and shot the elephant dead. The vet said it had been lonely.
Richard von Rezori is talking to Rosa von Praunheim.
Or to put it more simply, Ricky is talking to Rosa as they stroll down a gravel path along the lake.
Maybe it is one of these lakes: Speichersee, Ammersee, Worthersee, Pilsensee Fischbach, Starnberger See.
They are in Munich.
And he is sharing his heart with her.
Ricky wears a gray fedora with a black band, a cream-colored double-breasted suit with a white shirt and a colored tie, with creased slacks, folded cuffs, and black shoes.
Rosa wears a ground-length floral-print dress. Her blonde hair covers her sleeved shoulders. She is barefoot.
The sage grass ruffles in the breeze. Dead sapling stumps thrust up from the water, cut off before reaching their prime. A moth flits behind them.
He walks with his toes pointed out, his arms at his side, his back erect but his shoulders slumped, his head tilted down. His brim covers his eyes.
She walks as if one with the earth, her feet used to the gravel, lifting them for the stalks. She pulls at a stem in her hands. Until she is done with it and tosses it away and picks another one.
She looks down and up and out and back. She observes the trail and the tall grass and the water and the horizon. And the stem in her hands.
He observes nothing but the ground in front of him as he inhabits his story.
And their relationship.
This is the most important moment of his life, and the one in which it will change, if it will change.
Everything is on the line.
He asks her to come to Japan with him.
She says, Yes.
He says Japan is beautiful. He says they will meet on Friday at the station.
The Hauptbahnhof.
She finally turns and looks at him. And says, Okay.
We can see that Ricky means it. And that he loves her.
And that he intends to take her to Japan. And to start a new life. Away from Munich. And the rest of Germany. And America. And Vietnam.
Maybe he discovered Japan when he was in Vietnam. Maybe it represented the one place where he could take a woman, if he ever were to love a woman, to get away from the only life he knows.
As a killer.
It is clear the story that Ricky tells to Rosa, the one about the elephant, is about himself. That he is a wild animal. That he is loved. Or was loved. By everyone. Especially the kids. But got lonely.
Because maybe actually he was not loved by absolutely everyone. Maybe he was not loved by at least one person. His father. The American. The American soldier. The true American soldier. Who met Ricky's mother while in Germany and then returned home. And left him.
Alone.
He seems to want to share this story with her. About the elephant. Before it is too late.
Before the police have to come. And the fire department. And shoot him dead.
If only someone can love him. And help him no longer to be lonely. Then maybe he can escape this caged life and the death that will come of it.
If only.
It is too bad that they are entangled in this web already. That she is the girlfriend of Ricky's boss. The man who hired him to be a contract killer. The man who is the leader of the corrupt cops. Who won at poker in the beginning of the movie, and who sent his own girlfriend to the killer when he first came to town, simply so that the killer could have a girl that the cop could trust. So that if he blabbed his mouth to the girl, it would not be a stranger who might then go and tell the police.
Or maybe what is really too bad is that the corrupt cop, Ricky's boss, Rosa's boyfriend, has to walk in on her while she is packing for the station. And ask her what she is doing. And demand to know the answer. So that she is forced to say, "I'm leaving you." And that she likes him. The killer? Yes.
So that the corrupt cop gives his employee Ricky one last job to do. The name and address of which is someone Ricky does not recognize. Until he arrives at the address. And is greeted at the door by someone he never expected. And enters and sits on the couch, stalling, to orient himself to his new situation.
He looks around.
He realizes it.
He resigns himself.
He drinks straight from his bottle of Ballentine's to steel himself.
Is this your apartment?
Yes.
Are you _____?
Yes.
She comes to him. Sits. Looks him in the eyes. Says his name. Her face flush with love. As if to ask, What is going on?
He fixes his face. Removes all flush. Hides behind his mask.
She stands. Confused. Walks around behind him. Looks back. He rationalizes. Takes a another swig. No. A deep drink.
He stands. Walks around. Approaches her. She goes to him. Reaches up to him. Takes his cheeks in her hands. Kisses him.
He kisses her.
Retrieves his gun from his breast pocket.
Does his job.
He drives his 1962 Chevy Impala to the pay phone on the wet cobbled streets. The man tailing him parks behind him. Ricky places a phone call. Talks to his friend Franz. Franz Walsch. Yes, that Franz. The character who has been in every one of Fassbinder's movies so far. Played twice by Harry Baer. And twice now by Fassbinder himself. Ricky tells him he will be leaving from the train station tonight. That there might be trouble. And that he would like Franz to meet him there in about an hour to help him. Ricky exits the phone booth, gets in his Impala, and drives away.
The man tailing Ricky calls Ricky's mother. Tells her what he overheard. Ricky will be leaving from the train station tonight. In about an hour. And she might want to meet him there in order to help him. The man tailing Ricky was not hired by the corrupt cop, but by Ricky's mother herself. She loves him. She wants to help him.
People treat one another in shockingly brutal ways.
Sometimes for hire.
Sometimes for pleasure.
On the surface, Fassbinder is celebrating the American crime dramas of the 1930s and 40s. As they were repurposed by the French New Wave of the early 1960s. And now, in the early 1970s, this arbiter of the New German Cinema is making something uniquely German.
While one could go through and identify the many allusions in this film to its film noir predecessors, it also stands separately from them and becomes something different. Fassbinder is more influenced by Jean-Luc Godard than the American directors, and he subverts the crime drama genre--on the one hand pushing audaciously beyond the bounds any American film might have observed, even if it had been without the Hays code, and on the other hand moving into self-aware parody.
It is Fassbinder's fourth film, and his cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann has found his stride. The compositions and lighting are sophisticated and artful. And the casting is the best he has had so far. It is nice to see in a Fassbinder picture a suit worn by a man and not a boy. Speaking of which, our boy, Ulli Lommel, who played, read played, Bruno in Fassbinder's first film Love is Colder than Death (1969), does return here as Zigeuner, the gypsy, in a fascinating smaller supporting role. Margarethe von Trotta also returns, this time as Zimmermadchen, a Chambermaid who serves Ricky at the hotel, and who delivers her own story towards the camera while strangely sitting on the bed inhabited by Ricky and Rosa.
This is not a mainstream movie by any means, and Fassbinder's continued expression of violence towards women comes across as troubling, especially in light of today's sensibilities. But it is also the most advanced display so far of his rapidly developing gifts.
As he has now released four films. In 16 months.
And one quietly wonders if in Ricky, who was speaking lines written by Fassbinder, that perhaps Fassbinder was speaking of himself. His feeling like an elephant. Who was loved. But who destroyed. And who was ultimately killed.
Because he was lonely.
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