535 - Eight Hours Don't Make a Day, Part 1--Jochen and Marion, Germany, 1972. Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Eight Hours Don't Make a Day.
A Family Series.
Part 1--Jochen amd Marion.
Maybe all good hearts are sick.
Jochen will wonder this about his supervisor, the foreman Fritz Kretzschmer.
Kretzschmer had a good heart. A sick heart but a good heart. His blood pump was sick. His soul was good.
And Fassbinder seems to single out the good hearts in this, his first foray into television.
It is, as it says, a Family Series, a chamber drama. With a more optimistic outlook and a bit of hope.
Our protagonist Jochen is presented as a good man. Loving of his grandmother. Loyal to his workmates. Faithful to his family. And from the outset he will be rewarded with love at first sight. With a good woman. Who will be good to him. And the relationship between the two of them will be a joy to watch.
Fassbinder shows us the foils as well.
Harald, the cruel brother-in-law, married to Jochen's sister Monika.
Aunt Klara, the dour sister of Jochen's mother Kathe and other daughter of Grandma Kruger.
And Volkmar Gross, the factory boss where Jochen works. He pushes performance quotas to human limits. To keep costs down. To keep efficiency high.
Rainer Hauer plays boss Gross fairly. He does not make him out to be sniveling, but on the contrary, he is polite towards his employees. He just happens to demand a lot from them and make decisions that are in the best interest of the company rather than them.
Jochen works at a factory machining parts for other machines.
He also lives at home. With his father Wolf, his mother Kathe, and his grandmother "Oma" Kruger.
Things are a bit crowded in the home. Grandmother is a free spirit, like Jochen, but she must navigate the crowded spaces that belong to someone else, namely, her son-in-law Wolf.
One of the great scenes of this episode involves that challenge. In a tightly choreographed physical farce, Grandma attempts to enter their only bathroom, first waiting for Jochen, and then getting sneakily beat out by Wolf. Grandma is outside the bathroom trying to get in. She complains to her daughter and claims Kathe sides with her husband. Then she gets Wolf back so that he is outside the bathroom trying to get in. He complains to his wife and claims Kathe sides with her mother.
The camera glides back and forth between the hallway and the kitchen at one end, as Grandma and Wolf move back and forth between the hallway and the kitchen at the other end. The action also dips into Jochen's bedroom. It is a small, humorous, and effective Noises Off kind of moment.
Today is Grandma's birthday. She turns 60. And they are here for her. So she would like things to go well.
They are indulging in a bottle of Napoleon Schaumwein. Champagne. Birthday bubbly.
Wolf and Kathe and Grandmother Kruger sit around the table, along with Jochen's sister Monika, her husband Harald, their daughter Sylvia, Aunt Klara, and Jochen's best friend Manfred Muller, whom Sylvia refers to as "Uncle Manfred."
Jochen walks by holding the champagne bottle.
He pops the cork and it explodes onto Aunt Klara's new dress. The one she just bought yesterday for 8 marks 40. She stands and slaps the tall Jochen.
My good dress!
He responds: The good bubbly! One doesn't do that, Aunt Klara.
Both Grandma and Wolf tease her.
Sylvia laughs at their jokes and her father Harald slaps her.
Forty seconds in and already two slaps. We are in a Fassbinder film.
Sylvia leaves the room. Aunt Klara sides with Harald. "A little slap has never harmed anyone." And we can see that they have their own bond as outsiders in this family. Not relaxed as the others are. Uptight.
Manfred goes to check on Sylvia. She calls him "Uncle Manfred." Hint One. She says she loves him better than her own father. Hint Two. He tells her she should not say that, as it will make her father sad. However, when he emerges from the room, he shares a private wink across the room with Monika. Hint Three. And we wonder if the seeds of a future relationship have already been planted. We will learn later that the pretty brown-eyed Monika is afraid of the dumpy and irritable Harald. We do not know if there is anything to these three hints. They might not be hints at all. Monika might never go with Manfred. But she is not happy with Harald.
Grandma puts on her pink wig. She has Jochen put on a record, and she stands and dances with him. Then she has Harald and Klara, right for each other, dance together. Wolf stands to give a toast but forgets his words and feels humiliated.
Grandma goes to the kitchen to find another bottle of wine--and most likely to get out of the room.
Then she sends Jochen on an errand that will change his life.
Forever.
Go get two more bottles of bubbly. He goes to the automat. To get the bubbly. And when he arrives he meets Marion. Who is trying to get pickles. He teases her that she must be pregnant. Because pregnant women want pickles at 9:30 at night.
His face lights up when he learns that she is not pregnant. And not attached to anyone.
They "argue" and make up, exchanging banter, and both know what they are doing.
They fall for each other. Immediately. And he takes her home to introduce her to the family.
He forgot the bubbly but at least he brought home some pickles.
And a new girlfriend.
Grandma gets it. Not knowing Marion, she immediately calls her Gabi and welcomes her into the home. She tells the disapproving Aunt Klara that she asked Gabi to get the pickles for her.
Jochen and Marion will work towards becoming boyfriend and girlfriend.
Their relationship will go through bumps along the way but get stronger.
She will encourage him and help him with ideas for how to solve problems at the factory.
The mini-series was filmed in 16mm color by Fassbinder mainstay Dietrich Lohmann. He keeps the camera mostly still, except for the occasional crash zoom to a character's extreme close-up--a Fassbinder staple. We often look at faces, and other body parts, through other objects, such as the plastic flowers that cover the table.
There are gorgeous romantic shots of Jochen and Marion in the field (with plastic flowers, but we do not think about that in real time) and in the home.
Look what Fassbinder can do when he has money and the restraints of assignment.
Gottfried John, who plays Jochen is tall and large and gangly, with long limbs and large hands and a large face. As he dances with his Grandma, his legs seem to go on forever. One imagines him as Richard Kiel playing Jaws in the James Bond Series. Then one discovers that twenty-three years after this show John did in fact play a Bond villain, as Colonel Ourumov in Goldeneye (1995).
Although Fassbinder uses this series to deliver his economic agenda, he does so in a humanizing way, and he seems, for a moment, to have a positive and hopeful outlook on life. Perhaps he tapered his feelings in this work-for-hire for a wide television audience.
And he affirms fidelity in relationships.
Imagine in what other Fassbinder film do you expect to hear one person say to another, without irony--
I love you from here to the North Pole.
And mean it.
* * * *
But I send you forth into my vineyards as laborers. Go and do what I have instructed you to do. You shall then receive your wages.
The Apostle Paul proclaimed, in his First Epistle to Timothy, that the laborer is worthy of his wage.
Lord, our God, give him eternal peace, and let eternal light shine upon him. Let him rest in your peace. Amen.
May God's blessing fill your soul. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. May the Lord eternal bring joy to your heart and grant you peace. You are dust, and to dust you shall return. Though the Lord, you shall rise to eternal life. Be marked with the sign of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Under this sign he has delivered you. Amen.
These are the words of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Written by him. Spoken by the priest who lays to rest a foreman caught in the middle of a power struggle at the factory where Jochen Epp works.
Jochen has contributed to the struggle. Partly by inventing a new device which makes their work more efficient and will enable them to meet their quota ahead of schedule. And partly by participating in a strike-threat that has restored the performance bonuses they were originally promised but which were going to be eliminated upon the implementation of his invention. Jochen himself was initially rewarded a 1,560-mark bonus for his invention--which he immediately spent on a night out with his workmates--but this in turn cost the others their 1,400-mark performance bonus--which initially turned Jochen into the scapegoat.
The problem with the strike-threat is that it is not a work stoppage but the actual destruction of company property with an adverse material effect on their bottom line. Fassbinder has Marion refer to the elimination of their bonuses as "immoral," but he does not treat the expensive scrapping of material as unethical.
* * * *
(The deer in the painting is spewing river water into Aunt Klara's ear.)
Grandma Kruger (Luise Ullrich)
sister Monika (Renate Roland)
brother-in-law Harald (Kurt Raab)
father Wolf Epp (Wolfried Lier)
mother Kathe Epp (Anita Bucher)
aunt Klara (Christine Oesterlein)
"uncle" Manfred Muller (Wolfgang Zerlett)
A child should be able to laugh.
But not at adults.
Then what else does she have to laugh at?
There's many a slip twixt cup and lip.
You see? That's what people die of. Of not being able to do what they want to do. - Grandma.
And I love you from here to the North Pole.
Speeches are really just for the dead.
Everyone loves to hear something nice.
That was a beautiful speech. There were so many things I could imagine that you wanted to say.
We have to drink to that.
It seems women do rule the world after all.
For today is a day full of smiles and joy. Even if you have no clue what joy is, Klara.
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