BREMEN FREEDOM aka BREMER FREIHEIT

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972

Starring: Margit Carstensen, Wolfgang Schenck, Wolfgang Kieling, Lilo Pempeit, Ulli Lommel

A woman in early 1800s Bremen, Geesche Gottfried, is oppressed by those around her, particularly her parents and her husband, who treat her without love or respect. One day, she snaps, and decides to liberate herself from the constant humiliation. She poisons her first husband, but soon finds happiness with a second man. It seems that she made the wrong decision, because her new husband is soon equally cruel and rejects her sexual and emotional advances. She disposes of him as well, and is determined to run her family business by herself, until her father objects and insists that she remarry, as the business is only fit for a man to run. But the newfound freedom she discovered at poisoning her first two husbands soon encourages her to dispose of anyone in her way, including her father, mother, children, brother, and best friend.

Bremen Freedom, a made-for-TV adaptation of one of Fassbinder’s plays, is concerned with two of his main themes: social oppression and emotional cruelty. Geesche, a real-life historic figure who was beheaded for her crimes in 1831 in Bremen’s last public execution, is a normal woman. She is perhaps a bit hysterical, but she is driven this way by the coldness and cruelty her husbands and boyfriends exhibit, as well as her parents’ controlling and demeaning attitudes towards her. Even her young children (never depicted on screen) are not a source of comfort, and a baby’s cry is a source of frustration and anxiety.

Though much about this film is blackly comic, there is a never-ending stream of oppression that foreshadows some of Fassbinder’s bleak films about women, including Veronika Voss. Though Geesche is able to find temporary liberation from her acts of murder, there is always a new oppressor to immediately replace the last and there is the sense that she will never escape this cycle. The murders themselves are less important than Geesche’s state of mind; she desperately tries to better herself through love and kindness, which is rebuked by all the men in her love, and some of the women (her mother and her best friend). Instead of living a life of happiness and triumph — she is not afraid of hard work and desires to see more of life — she can only struggle against the tide with acts of violence that move her neither up or down stream, but that keep her firmly in a place of oppression and loss.

While the thematic elements of Bremen Freedom anticipate some of Fassbinder’s future films, the style is more akin to his early films like Love is Colder Than Death and Das Kaffeehaus, a slightly earlier made-for-TV dramatic adaptation. The movement is sparse and stagey, set on a plain stage with only a few pieces of furniture. In the background, there are projected images of the beach and the ocean in red and pink hues. Again, like Das Kaffeehaus, the action is limited and purposefully exaggerated. The play was original produced with the Bremen Schauspielhaus ensemble, but some of the cast — including Fassbinder regulars Margit Carsetensen and Kurt Raab — reprise their roles for the screen.

Bremen Freedom is not available on region one DVD, but you can find it on Youtube with English subtitles. It only comes recommended to seasoned Fassbinder fans, but still has a lot to offer. It’s yet another of his examinations of personal cruelty, social oppression, and loneliness. Carstensen is wonderful here, as always, and is able to transcend the flat, staged quality of the production. Her films with Fassbinder, including The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and Fear of Fear, are among his finest and most human.

THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT aka DIE BITTEREN TRÄNEN DER PETRA VON KANT

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972

Starring: Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Irm Hermann, Katrin Schaake

Petra von Kant, a well-known fashion designer, is introduced to a beautiful young woman named Karin. Despite the fact that Petra’s live-in assistant and design partner, Marlene, is in love with her, she begins courting Karin and invites Karin to move in. She falls desperately in love and turns Karin into a successful model; meanwhile she becomes increasingly cruel to Marlene, who is essentially her slave. When Karin abruptly leaves her to return to her estranged husband, Petra begins to have a breakdown and is desperate for Karin’s return.

Based on Fassbinder’s play of the same name, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is one of Fassbinder's most beautiful films and marks another turning point in his career. This was his first true melodrama and the first concerned chiefly with the agony of love. It is also the first to loosely remake or be inspired by a classic film. While this is reminiscent of Joseph L. Mankiewicz All About Eve (1950) — Mankiewicz is even referenced in the dialogue — Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) is Fassbinder’s reimagining of Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955), and Lola (1981) is his 1950s West German version of The Blue Angel (1930). In all of these, a main character is driven to despair and nearly insane because of a difficult romantic relationship.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant also boasts one of Fassbinder's strongest casts. Made up entirely of female characters surrounding Petra — her assistant, lover, mother, daughter, and cousin — some of these were career-making performances, particularly from Margit Carstensen (Fear of Fear) as Petra. While Fassbinder-regulars Irm Hermann and Hanna Schygulla also appear, Hermann, for the first time in her career, nearly steals the film despite the fact that she has no dialogue whatsoever. Her presence is heavy and oppressive, despite the fact that she’s basically Petra’s slave and is treated with great cruelty.

In many ways, this film provides an interesting counterpoint to Fox and His Friends, which is all about the complicated relationships between a gay man (played by Fassbinder) and his lovers. Fassbinder received some criticism about his depictions of lesbian women when this film was released, but like his body of work as a whole, he is depicting the general experience of emotional pain, rather than pain specific to one type of person. Petra’s relationships with men — two marriages — ended in an accidental death for her first husband, and a divorce for her second. Though men are mentioned, this is a world entirely of women and the action never leaves Petra’s apartment.

Petra is a fascinating, Joan Crawford-like character who dons a rotating series of wigs to express her changing identity. She begins as a brunette, when she is at her most confident and superficial. After she’s fallen in love with Karin, she wears a red wig the same color as Marlene’s hair, signifying her association with submission, victimization, longing, and suffering. After Karin leaves her, Petra’s hair (and makeup and clothing) match Karin’s. Finally, when all is stripped away, she is shown without a wig, with her natural auburn locks lying lank and unwashed. Petra’s suffering — and her obsession with sex, beauty, and the naked body — is also expressed through her visually fascinating apartment, which is adored with dolls, mannequins, figure drawings, and paintings of nude figures (namely a wall-sized reproduction of Poussin’s “Midas and Bacchus”).

The color palette of red, orange, brown, gold, and black, suggests richness, fertility, and warmth, but also decay. Fassbinder’s director of photography, Michael Ballhaus, captures the detailed rooms with an almost dizzying splendor and there is never a dull scene — a true achievement considered the film is made up of six scenes. The apartment also highlights another of Fassbinder’s favorite themes: class tensions. The working class Karin is constantly contrasted with Petra’s well-off, bourgeois background and lifestyle, and it is clear that — much like in Sunset Boulevard — Karin is attracted to Petra because of her fame, success, and inherent vulnerability. 

Even the way the two women express emotional pain is connected to their financial situations and different upbringings. Karin has a had a life of real pain, including an abusive husband and parents who died in a murder-suicide similar to that in Fassbinder’s earlier Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? But she is unable to focus on this due to the very real need to focus on survival and employment. She tells Petra that her parents’ story usually turns people away, but for Petra, Karin’s poverty is a source of attraction, a window of easily manipulated vulnerability. Petra’s pain, on the other hand, is represented by more superficial traumas, including a truly Joan Crawford-like scene where her female relatives show up for her birthday party and she smashes an expensive china set by stomping on it, all while her mother discovers that she’s bisexual and is pining over a woman.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant comes highly recommended and is perhaps more accessible than Fassbinder’s earlier films. It is also somewhat representative of his career as a whole, with themes like cruelty, manipulation, suffering, loneliness, and willing victimization. Criterion will release a two-disc, special edition version of the film on January 13 of 2015 with plenty of new interviews and a documentary; you should wait the two and a half weeks, because this will undeniably be the best way to see this work of brilliance on region one DVD/Blu-ray.

THE MERCHANT OF THE FOUR SEASONS aka HÄNDLER DER VIER JAHRESZEITEN

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972

Starring: Hans Hirschmueller, Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla, Klaus Löwitsch

Hans, a fruit-peddler in 1950s West Germany, lives a life of quiet misery. He was in the French Foreign Legion during the war, but his mother lamented his return. His wife, Irmgard, despises and mocks him. One night he drinks himself into a stupor, because he laments that his mother forces him into the profession of fruit-seller, when he wanted to become a mechanic, and the love of his life married someone else due to this lowly profession. He returns hime and beats his wife in front of their young daughter. Irmgard takes their child and flees to the home of Hans’ mother, where his family — who also despise him, all except his sister Anna — sides with her. She intends to file for divorce, but Hans collapses and almost dies. During his recovery, Irmgard is kinder, though unfaithful, and his business takes off, but he sinks deeper into a hopeless depression.

Though Fassbinder was incredibly prolific throughout his career, generally making four or five films per year plus theatrical production, 1971 was perhaps strangely devoted to only one film: Merchant of the Four Seasons. This marks a major transitional phase in Fassbinder’s career, where melodrama inspired by Douglas Sirk, a German director who moved to Hollywood, began to have a bigger affect on his output and he moved away from early influences like Godard, the French New Wave, and American film noir. In a certain sense, this film is more accessible than his earlier works, but also crueler and more nihilistic. It’s not true melodrama, but remains a creation unique to Fassbinder. 

Like some of his later works, such as Fox and His Friends or Fear of Fear, this has a relatively simple and mundane-sounding basic plot: the horror of suburban life. Fassbinder’s typical themes, such as hatred, prejudice, cruelty, manipulation, and self-destruction are all present, and Hans’ only nemeses are his loved ones. Through Hans, Fassbinder explores the pain of isolation, the need for love, and the thoughtless cruelty of friends and family members who emotionally exploit Hans without a second thought. In some ways, this foreshadows In a Year With 13 Moons, a much more crippling account of the same themes.

This also marks a departure for the visual space and cinematographic themes of Fassbinder’s work. One of his regular collaborators, Dietrich Lohmann, acted as director of photography and provides the film with a look new to Fassbinder’s catalog. The palette is bright and colorful, but flat, oppressive. Fassbinder and Lohmann capture the despair and claustrophobia of the crowded, closed-off rooms of Hans’ apartment or the staged-looking domestic spaces of his mother’s house that feel staged, rather than comforting or lived-in. There is the never-ending sense that people build the structures of their own misery, though Hans’ downfall is that he has let his life be shaped by manipulative, loveless women.

Merchant of the Four Seasons also introduces some new talent to Fassbinder’s roster of actors. Though regular stars Hanna Schygulla, Kurt Raab, and Ingrid Caven all appear in small roles, this is the first time Irm Hermann was given a starring role in one of Fassbinder’s films. She’s excellent as Hans’ caustic, often cold wife, a dramatic character of complex emotions. Hans Hirschmueller (Alice in the Cities) is subtly powerful as Hans, a man sinking slowly and inevitably into despair and death. The handsome Klaus Löwitsch appeared as Harry, Hans’ only friend, and would return for Fassbinder’s World on a Wire, The Marriage of Maria Braun, and Despair.

Merchant of the Four Seasons comes recommended and is a great place to begin if you’re new to Fassbinder’s work. There’s a great Arrow DVD, which includes a number of special features. This nuanced film balances an examination of mundane, every-day human cruelty and a critique of German society and the financial boom of the 50s. Devices like close-up shots of Hans in the family apartment and flashbacks of his encounter with his mother and his dream woman build a pervasive sense of his enduring misery. Fittingly, the film ends with its earliest chronological flashback, where Hans is saved from death during the war, but instead wishes that he could have died — a sentiment we horrifyingly realize he has felt since.

BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE aka WARNUNG VOR EINER HEILIGEN NUTTE

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971

Starring: Lou Castel, Eddie Constantine, Marguard Bohm, Hanna Schygulla

At the beginning of a film shoot in Spain, the cast and crew are waiting the arrival of the director. They spend most of their time drinking, doing drugs, and having affairs with one another. The director finally arrives, but terrorizes everyone from his former girlfriend to his set designer and producer. He has moments of kindness or brilliance, but the majority of the time he runs around the set berating his friends or having affairs with their girlfriend. The production is beset with location and financial troubles, while the film’s star, Eddie Constantine playing himself, disagree with the decisions being made about his character. Will the production ever be completed?

Based on the shooting of Fassbinder’s film Whity, this autobiographical, comedic work is one of the best films of his early period and one he considered to be one of the finest of his career. Beware of a Holy Whore is perhaps the strongest example of Fassbinder’s undeniable impulse to make his art autobiographical and his tendency towards intense self-criticism. For while the cast and crew of the film in progress are flawed — selfish, immature, lazy, greedy, and more — the blame for the failure of both the production and the group environment is placed on the director, Jeff. Though Fassbinder acts in the film, Lou Castel (Fists in the Pocket) stars as an idealized version of the director — blonde haired, blue-eyed, “Aryan” looking, and physically fit, he speaks to Fassbinder’s life long frustrations and insecurities with his physical appearance. 

But Jeff repeats many of Fassbinder’s real life behaviors, including numerous bisexual affairs, possessiveness, terrorizing his cast and crew, physically abusing girlfriends like Irm Hermann, and so on. His regular Anti-Theater cast of misfits appear, several of them starring as themselves, including Hanna Schygulla as the lead actress, New German Cinema director Margarethe von Trotta as Jeff’s lover, Ulli Lommel, Kurt Raab, and more. The cult European actor Eddie Constantine appears as himself, as the star of Jeff’s movie. While Constantine got his start playing Lemmy Caution, a hardboiled detective in a series of French films, he was also the star of Godard’s Alphaville. Though by Beware of a Holy Whore, Fassbinder was beginning to move away from early influences like Godard, there’s an undeniable link to the French New Wave director both with the presence of Constantine and in the fact that Beware of a Holy Whore is a counterpoint to Contempt (1963). The latter was Godard’s melodramatic meditation on movie making, which combines a failed marriage with between a young woman and her screenwriter husband, just while his career is finding success.

But while Godard focuses on a disintegrating marriage, Fassbinder’s film examines the failure of group collaboration. Beware of a Holy Whore is one of his funniest films and combines a blend of satire, caricature of Fassbinder and his collaborators, and is a successful work of existential comedy. Something of an advanced version of Katzelmacher, the drama of Beware of a Holy Whore comes from the fact that the group as a whole is bored and dissatisfied. This ennui and aimlessness is further aggravated by being trapped in the villa with drugs, alcohol, sex, and emotional drama. The hotel/villa becomes a claustrophobic prison, which the camera paces anxiously, peering around corners and ceaselessly spying. Like many of Fassbinder’s other films, it balances the drama (in this case comedy) with moments of uncomfortable violence and cruelty, where a vicious slap or an inappropriate sexual encounter is played out before the eyes of all.

One of Beware of a Holy Whore’s greatest achievements, which extends to the early work of Fassbinder in general, is that it both is and isn’t a “gay” film. Fassbinder has many gay or bisexual characters — this extends to nearly all the men in Beware of a Holy Whore — but writes them into the film without calling attention to their sexual orientation or promiscuity. There is something far more natural about the sexual atmosphere of this film than some of the works by his contemporary (or later directors identifying as gay). The mechanism with which he presents the film’s numerous affairs is akin to sleight-of-hand: you see it and it is present, but it also disappears within the film’s larger themes of emotional cruelty, selfishness, and despair. Fassbinder was truly a pioneer in queer cinema, because he refused to elevate typically victimized characters (the later In a Year of 13 Moons is the culmination of this) and sought to prove that gender, race, sexual orientation, and class do not predispose — or hinder — a person from being cruel and manipulative: it is simply part of being human.

This is one of Fassbinder’s most accomplished works to date and comes with a very high recommendation. His long time collaborators Kurt Raab, as art director, and Michael Ballhaus, the cinematographer, began to reach new heights with this film and the previous Whity, both of which mark turning points in Fassbinder’s career. To see the trajectory from Katzelmacher to In a Year of 13 Moons, you need look no further than Beware of a Holy Whore, which clearly shows Fassbinder’s development and burgeoning genius. It’s available in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 39: Early Fassbinder with Love is Colder Than Death, Katzelmacher, Gods of the Plague, and The American Soldier.

WHITY

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971

Starring: Günther Kaufmann, Hanna Schygulla

Whity, the illegitimate, African American son of the wealthy, white Ben Nicholson, loyally serves the family as a slave. Nicholson’s other two sons are physically and mentally deficient, but beg Whity to the kill their father, as does his beautiful young wife. In an elaborate ruse, Nicholson has convinced the entire family that he is dying of a terminal illness and they will soon receive their inheritances. Whity’s girlfriend, meanwhile, a local prostitute and saloon performer, tries to convince him that he is being mistreated at home and they should run away together. Whity dutifully ignores her, until some alarming evidence comes to light.

Whity is arguably Fassbinder’s most beautiful film of his early period, thanks to contributions from Kurt Raab (who also appears uncredited as a saloon piano player), and cinematography from Michael Ballhaus. This was Fassbinder and Ballhaus’ first film together, though they would go on to collaborate for the next few years. Whity is technically Fassbinder’s only western (it’s amazing how many genres he covered throughout his prolific, but too brief career), and it does have many similar musical and visual themes as spaghetti westerns by Sergio Leone and other Italian auteurs. But, like Fassbinder’s other exercises subverting genre, there is far more at work here.

First and foremost, there’s a Brechtian feel, particularly with the radical examinations of racism, emotional cruelty, and victimization. Using Brecht’s alienation effect in a particularly daring move, Fassbinder has his actors wear white face (the white family) and black face (Whity’s mother), while some of the cowboys in the saloon wear a sort of light brown face, possibly intended to be a weathered looking tan. This immediately brings to mind Fassbinder’s career-long theme that underlying racism/prejudice is an inherent element of society: not only in 1890’s American culture, but also in modern-day German and Europe. The film’s landscape — set in that particular Fassbinder world that effortlessly blends different eras and locales — includes a German cast, director, and language, the Spanish setting, an Italian cinematic genre (this is essentially a German version of a spaghetti Western), and American characters and elements of U.S. history.

The contradictory search for freedom and the refusal to be free found in Whity (and many of Fassbinder’s other films) contrasts two iconic American figures: the cowboy and the slave. The cowboy as white and domineering, whip in hand, is used as a symbol for American freedom and geographical expansion — interestingly, the only figure truly outfitted as a cowboy is played with a seductive sneer by Fassbinder himself. The slave, black and submissive, is a particularly controversial figure here because Whity essentially choses to be a slave and thrives on humiliation and punishment. This relationship between roles is complicated due to the fact that Whity — and actor Günther Kaufmann — is at the center of a complex web. Kaufman was at the end of a passionate but abusive, explosive relationship with Fassbinder during the making of the film. He is a saint-like repository for an outpouring of the other characters’ cruelty, violence, and sexual psychosis.

At its heart, Whity is a family melodrama masquerading as a western. As with some of his earlier films, many of the characters — particularly Whity and the family — move throughout the film as if they are sleepwalking or hypnotized. As the drama progresses, the family members begin to take on a greenish cast and vampiric attributes, sucking more and more from Whity and each other. Thanks to the this, and the increasingly perverse home atmosphere, the film has elements of Gothic horror, with themes of incest and S&M. The prostitute, Whity’s would-be girlfriend, is the only truly moral figure in the film, and other only one who speaks out against his exploitation at the hands of his family, which includes brutal whippings. Fassbinder’s regular star, Hanna Schygulla, is excellent in this role and casts an unforgettable shadow over the film, despite the fact that she is not the protagonist. The family members — Ron Randell (King of Kinds) as the twisted, controlling head of the family, Ben Nicholson, Katrin Schaake (What’s New Pussycat) as his sex-crazed, sadistic young wife, and Fassbinder regulars Harry Baer and Ulli Lommel as the disturbed sons — all are incredibly memorable and give some great individual performances.

Whity is a challenging, controversial film, but it comes highly recommended. It’s available on DVD from Fantoma, with cooperation from the Fassbinder Foundation. As I mentioned earlier, it’s probably Fassbinder’s most beautiful early film and is worth watching on this account alone. This marks a breakthrough for the director’s career and helped him break away from the uncertainty of The Niklashausen Journey and Pioneers in Ingolstadt and forge a path toward the gripping, bleak melodramas that would make his career just a few years later.

PIONEERS IN INGOLSTADT

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971

Starring: Hanna Schygulla, Harry Baer, Irm Hermann

Alma and Berta, two young women in the small town of Ingolstadt, are excited by the presence of handsome young soldiers, who have arrived to build a bridge. The soldiers become somewhat bored and restless, as they would rather be fighting a war than building a small bridge, and pursue affairs with the women of the town. The more practical Alma has sex with several of the men, some just out of sympathy, while other affairs are in exchange for payment. The more idealistic Berta falls in love with a handsome, but illusive soldier, Karl, and becomes agonized when Karl doesn’t return her feelings.

Based on a play by Marieluise Fleisser, a protégé of Brecht’s (he directed the original production), Pioneers in Ingolstadt was originally written in 1928, but adapted over the years and revised in 1968. It was one of the few films not based on material of Fassbinder’s own, though it contains his themes of people’s inherent selfishness and cruelty. In some ways, this is similar to Michael Haneke’s later The White Band, a film about immorality, cruelty, and corruption within a small town, which acts as a microcosm for humanity on the brink of fascism and war. Fassbinder’s made-for-TV film does not make quite the same powerful statement, but exists in a world constantly on the verge of Nazism.

Like The Niklashausen Journey, this film is made up of a blend of elements from different time periods – Nazism, nineteenth century villagers, Weimar, and contemporary Germany. Despite the film’s flaws, Fassbinder succeeds in building the sense that something horrible is about to happen and violence will explode on the screen at any moment. There is the sense that the soldiers would rather be fighting a war than building a bridge, though it’s a shame that none of their characters are really developed. Multiple soldiers revolve around the two primary female characters. Fassbinder regular (and his long-time partner) Irm Hermann appears as Alma, the protagonist who trades sex for money and cooly, confidently struts from man to man.

Berta – Fassbinder’s most frequent star, Hanna Schygulla – is her opposite in nearly every way and yearns for love. This is a continuing theme of many of the characters Schygulla played for Fassbinder throughout her career from her first film with him Love is Colder Than Death, to his made-for-TV film before this, Rio das Mortes. The general plot outline is that she loves a man and tries to achieve commitment, but he leaves her for a close bond (occasionally homosexual) with another man. Here, she is responsible for some early melodramatic elements, which would possess Fassbinder’s later work. Her character also seems obsessed with victimization and she becomes a willing martyr, sacrificing herself on some sort of romanticized ideal of love.

Berta’s would-be lover is a soldier named Karl, played by Fassbinder-regular Harry Baer. He is a similar character to various men found in Love is Colder Than Death, Katzelmacher, Gods of the Plague (also played by Baer), The American Soldier, Rio das Mortes, and more: an aloof man uncertain of his purpose in life and almost pathologically desired by a woman. He does not openly reject her, and perhaps cruelly encourages her feelings, but prefers the company of men.  This battle of the sexes includes class tension, but is ultimately more frustrating than Fassbinder’s other films from this period. Like Love is Colder Than Death, Katzelmacher, and even more so, Rio das Mortes, little actually occurs in Pioneers of Ingolstadt. The characters sleep walk through their love affairs, squabbles, and building the bridge. Fassbinder uses the bridge as a bit of black comedy, an ironic metaphor for alienation, a symbol of the gaps rather than connections between characters.

Frustratingly, Pioneers in Ingolstadt presents a number of interesting themes, but fails to fully develop any of them. The film is available on DVD, but is only recommended to seasoned Fassbinder fans. This is a minor work created between more interesting projects, such as Whity (1971), which marked the dramatic end of his relationship with Günther Kaufmann, who co-stars in Pioneers in Ingolstadt; and Beware of a Holy Whore (1971), which captures the stress and insanity of Whity’s set. Watch it if you’re interested in Fassbinder’s development, particularly in his use of Hollywood melodrama.

RIO DAS MORTES

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971

Starring: Hanna Schygulla, Michael König, Günther Kaufmann

Hanna, a beautiful, but aimless young woman, wants to get married to her boyfriend Michael. Unfortunately, he reunites with a childhood friend, Günther, and the two begin obsessively planning a trip to Peru. They’re convinced that they will manage to find the legendary treasure of the Rio das Mortes (which they think is in Peru, but is really in Brazil); Michael just coincidentally happens to have a map. They scrimp, save, and sell belongings, much to Hanna’s chagrin, and finally manage to secure the funds they need. But will Hanna really let them go without her?

Fassbinder’s third made-for-TV film after Das Kaffeehaus and The Niklashausen Journey is one of his lesser known efforts and probably for a good reason. This somewhat sloppy work has almost no character development whatsoever and feels even more improvised than Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? It’s no wonder that one of his films from this period would seem a little slapdash: he directed 12 feature-length films in less than three years. His fellow New German Cinema director Volker Schlöndorff is credited with the story, which could have been an interesting tale of two young men on a preposterous search for treasure – while Fassbinder was filming this, another colleague, Werner Herzog, was off shooting Aguirre, the Wrath of God, about another search for treasure in Peru.

Unfortunately Michael König (The Niklashausen Journey) and Günther Kaufmann (Gods of the Plague), whose characters share their names, are almost unforgivably dull. They have the same close male bonding and implied homosexual desire that marks Love is Colder Than Death, Katzelmacher (briefly in the form of a male character and his john), Gods of the Plague, The American Soldier, and The Niklashausen Journey. But their characters – and important plot points -- are simply undeveloped. The treasure map, for example, is barely mentioned and it’s certainly not given any dramatic emphasis. Michael simply mentions that he has one and it will lead them on their search for wealth and far-off dreams.

Fassbinder’s regular star Hanna Schygulla carries the film in her role as Hanna. Her near-homicidal jealousy is not really explained in this film, outside of frustration that Michael would rather run away to Peru than marry her, but seems to be a culmination of her roles in Fassbinder’s previous films. She is abandoned in Love is Colder Than Death, Gods of the Plague, and The Niklashausen Journey, while in Katzelmacher she feels a romantic longing for an impossible love. Her sense of need, longing, and abandonment builds on her roles in these earlier films and feels like a rehearsal for later entries, such as The Marriage of Maria Braun and Lili Marleen.

Schygulla’s repressed sexuality nearly explodes at several moments, namely in the film’s best scene. She and Fassbinder share a dance – with Fassbinder wearing his traditional black leather jacket – while Schygulla is clad in a lingerie-like red dress that bunches up her waist as they dance to Elvis. It has little to do with the rest of the plot, but it is the most captivating scene in the film. Her uninhibited dancing perhaps speaks to a sense of unfulfilled sexual longing; indeed Michael and Günther are sitting at a table, deep in conversation about their trip, and are ignoring her.

She is also the locus for the film’s larger discussion of marriage. Rio das Mortes opens with Hanna talking on the phone to her mother, who is nagging her with questions about when Hanna and Michael will be married. After this, she meets up with a friend who is excited to be getting a divorce. In another early scene, she attends the meeting of a Marxist group she’s joined (another common theme in these early Fassbinder films). With her sexy black lingerie, glamorous fox stole, and carefully applied makeup, she is sorely out of place at the radical feminist group (called USSA – a combination of USA, USSR, and the SS) who claim that women’s behavior leads directly to their own repression. Later, Michael and Günther stop at a gas station (the owner is played by a bumbling Kurt Raab) who discusses travel and vacation destinations through the lens of his wife and their experience as a married couple.

Michael and Günther are also involved in this interplay about marriage, as they move in together and combine finances to go on a trip that is framed as a honeymoon by Michael’s mother, who says she’s been saving some money for his marriage. Though many things are left unresolved, they get to go on their trip because they find a woman who will simply give them the money. This search for wealth is also expressed in every single of Fassbinder’s earlier films, though it generally results in discord, disappointment, arrest, or death. Here, Michael and Günther are simply able to board the plan while Hanna watches them from a distance, heartbroken and ready to shoot.

I can’t help but wonder if the confusion of Peru and Brazil (the actual location of the Rio das Mortes, the River of Death) was intentional, or is just another example of the inherent sloppiness of Rio das Mortes. The film feels rushed and unfocused and I can’t really recommend it. But fans of Fassbinder and Schygulla will at least want to check it out for the excellent dance sequence. If you’re interested, you can find it on DVD from the wonderful Raro Video as a two-disc release with The Niklashausen Journey.