“Whose business is it what I do?”
One begins to get the distinct impression that the decadent, melancholy, hedonistic Franz is a portrait of the artist as undesirable in this fourth section. Like his director, at least in his own eyes, Franz is a barely tolerated outsider, lashing out against German society while making occasional clumsy attempts to appeal to its prejudices (viz. the scene where he drunkenly insists on his patriotism to a shirtless worker). As in his later adaptation of Jean Genet’s Querelle, I think it’s the link between criminality and bohemianism which interests Fassbinder here, alternatives to honest work which he half-glorifies, half-shares the bourgeois contempt for. (The third side of this cultural triad, homosexuality, is left out, though perhaps hinted at by Franz’s failure to consummate his flirtation with a passing woman -¬†she calls him “limp-dick” and goes away disgusted – and by his curiously tender relationship with his flophouse neighbor Baumann.) Meanwhile, just to underscore how unpleasant real marginality can be, RWF adds a few extra layers of nightmarish sonic and visual density to what was already a pretty claustrophobic frame, and many, many bottles of alcohol to the mise-en-scène.
by Evan Kindley | Source: Criterion Collection DVD
30 Jun 2008 11:32 PM | Submit Comment
