เมื่อ 3 ปรมาจารย์หนังเกย์เยอรมันตบกันแหลก
ตบกันแหลก ในปี 1979
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บางคนพูดถึง Werner Schroeter แล้วเพื่อนบางคนก็ระบุว่า
Rainer Werner Fassbinder น่าจะได้รับแรงบันดาลใจมาจาก Schroeter
เราก็เลยไปค้นหนังสือ WEST GERMAN
FILMMAKERS ON FILM: VISIONS AND VOICES ที่เคยมีให้ยืมในห้องสมุดสถาบันเกอเธ่
แล้วก็พบว่า มันเป็นอย่างนั้นจริง ๆ เพราะ Fassbinder เคยเขียนบทความลงในหนังสือพิมพ์
Frankfurter Rundschau ในวันที่ 24 ก.พ. 1979 แล้วบอกว่า
ตัวเขาเองได้เรียนรู้อะไรมากมายจาก Schroeter และก็มีผู้กำกับหนังเยอรมันตะวันตกอีกหลายคนที่ได้รับแรงบันดาลใจจากชโรเตอร์
โดยเฉพาะ Daniel Schmid, Ulrike Ottinger, Walter Bockmayer (ผู้กำกับหนังเรื่อง
JANE IS JANE FOREVER ที่มีเนื้อหาเกี่ยวกับหญิงชราที่คิดว่าตัวเองเป็นเมียของทาร์ซาน),
Eberhard Schubert (LYDIA) และ Hans Jürgen Syberberg โดยในกรณีของ Syberberg นั้น ฟาสบินเดอร์มองว่า
ซีแบร์แบร์ก “ขโมย” หลายสิ่งหลายอย่างไปจากหนังของชโรเตอร์ 55555
เนื่องจากเราเองก็ชื่นชอบ Werner Schroeter
อย่างรุนแรงสุดขีด เราก็เลยถือโอกาสนี้ คัดลอกบทความเกี่ยวกับ Schroeter
จากหนังสือ WEST GERMAN FILMMAKERS ON FILM: VISIONS AND
VOICES มาลงให้เพื่อน ๆ อ่านด้วยดีกว่า โดยบทความที่เราคัดลอกมานี้มีอยู่
2 บทความด้วยกัน บทความแรกเขียนโดย Rosa von Praunheim ซึ่งเป็นปรมาจารย์หนังเกย์ชื่อดังของเยอรมนี
โดยในบทความนี้เขาบอกว่า เขาชื่นชอบหนังยุคแรก ๆ ของชโรเตอร์มาก ๆ
แต่เขาเกลียดหนังเรื่อง THE KINGDOM OF NAPLES (1978, Werner Schroeter) อย่างรุนแรง ซึ่งจะด้วยเหตุผลอะไรนั้น ก็เชิญเพื่อน ๆ อ่านได้ในบทความ With
Fond Greetings to Champagne-Schroeter (1979)
ส่วนบทความที่สองนั้น เขียนโดย Fassbinder
เพื่อด่า Rosa von Praunheim 55555 คือ Fassbinder
ชื่นชอบชโรเตอร์และหนังเรื่อง THE KINGDOM OF NAPLES มาก ๆ และเขาไม่เห็นด้วยกับ Rosa von Praunheim อย่างรุนแรง
ฟาสบินเดอร์ก็เลยเขียนชมชโรเตอร์และเขียนด่าฟอน เพราน์ไฮม์ลงหนังสือพิมพ์
เราว่าสองบทความนี้มันคลาสสิคมาก ๆ
เพราะเราเองก็ชอบผู้กำกับหนังเกย์ทั้ง 3 คนนี้มาก ๆ ทั้ง Werner Schroeter,
Rainer Werner Fassbinder และ Rosa von Praunheim และเราก็ยกย่องให้ทั้ง 3 คนนี้เป็นผู้กำกับภาพยนตร์ระดับ “ปรมาจารย์” ทั้ง
3 คนเลย การได้เห็นหนังของชโรเตอร์ส่งผลให้ฟอน เพราน์ไฮม์กับฟาสบินเดอร์ออกมาเขียนด่าทอตบตีกันอย่างรุนแรง
ก็เลยถือเป็นปรากฏการณ์มาก ๆ สำหรับเรา นึกว่าเห็น ตงฟางปุ๊ป้าย, เหมยเชาฟง
กับลี้มกโช้ว ออกมาปะทะกัน
แต่เราเองก็ยังไม่ได้ดู THE KINGDOM OF
NAPLES นะ เราเคยดูหนังของ Werner Schroeter ไปแค่
5 เรื่อง แต่ก็ยกให้ชโรเตอร์ถือเป็น ONE OF MY MOST FAVORITE FILMMAKERS OF
ALL TIME และเราก็ชอบเขามากกว่าฟาสบินเดอร์ กับฟอน เพราน์ไฮม์ คือในบรรดา
3 คนนี้ เราชอบ Schroeter เป็นอันดับหนึ่ง, ฟาสบินเดอร์เป็นอันดับสอง
และ von Praunheim เป็นอันดับสาม
เราว่าประเด็นที่ฟอน เพราน์ไฮม์กับฟาสบินเดอร์เขียนด่ากันนี้
มันน่าสนใจและน่าคิดดีด้วย เพราะฟอน เพราน์ไฮม์เหมือนไม่ชอบวิธีการนำเสนอตัวละครเกย์และคนจนในหนังของชโรเตอร์
เหมือนเขามองว่าตัวละครเหล่านี้ถูกนำเสนอในแบบ depressing เกินไป
และฟาสบินเดอร์ก็โต้กลับว่า ฟอน เพราน์ไฮม์ไม่มีสิทธิ “ผูกขาด”
วิธีการนำเสนอตัวละครเกย์
แน่นอนว่า ผู้กำกับทั้งสามคนนี้ต่างก็เป็นเกย์
และถ้าหากเราจำไม่ผิด ทั้งสามคนนี้เคยตบตีแย่งผู้ชายกันด้วย 55555 แต่ตอนนี้เราหาหลักฐานอ้างอิงไม่เจอ
ที่บอกว่าทั้งสามคนเคยตบตีแย่งผู้ชายกัน เราก็เลยไม่แน่ใจว่าเราจำผิดหรือเปล่า
พอเราอ่านบทความเหล่านี้ เราก็เลยเข้าใจว่า
ทำไมเราถึงชอบหนังของฟอน เพราน์ไฮม์น้อยที่สุดในบรรดา 3 คนนี้นะ ซึ่งสิ่งนี้ไม่ได้เป็นเพราะว่า
หนังของเขา “ด้อย” กว่าของอีก 2 คนนะ แต่เป็นเพราะว่าสไตล์หนังของเขาเข้าทางเราน้อยกว่าของอีก
2 คน
คือเรารู้สึกว่า หนังของ Rosa von
Praunheim มีความเป็น ACTIVIST มากที่สุดในบรรดา
3 คนนี้น่ะ คือหนังของโรซ่ามันเหมือนทำออกมาเพื่อ “ขับเคลื่อนสังคม” เพื่อ “ผลักดันสังคมให้ก้าวหน้า”
เพื่อ “กระตุ้นให้สังคมเกิดการเปลี่ยนแปลงไปในทิศทางที่ถูกต้อง” เป็นหนังเพื่อเรียกร้องสิทธิเกย์และชี้ให้เห็นปัญหาสังคมต่าง
ๆ ที่ควรได้รับการแก้ไข อะไรทำนองนี้
เพราะฉะนั้นหนังของโรซ่าหลาย ๆ เรื่อง ก็เลยเหมือนถูก
“ครอบงำ” ด้วย MESSAGE และ “จุดประสงค์ทางการเมือง” ซึ่งในแง่หนึ่งมันก็เป็นหนังที่ดีสุด
ๆ และเราก็ชอบมันอย่างสุด ๆ แต่อาจจะน้อยกว่าหนังของอีก 2 คนในกลุ่ม
ส่วนหนังของ Fassbinder นั้น
เรามองว่า มันแตกต่างจากหนังของโรซ่าในแง่ที่ว่า ในขณะที่โรซ่ามองว่า “เกย์เป็นผู้ด้อยโอกาสในสังคม”
(ซึ่งเขาก็มองได้ถูกต้อง โดยเฉพาะในทศวรรษ 1970 และ 1980) และโรซ่าก็ทำหนังออกมาเพื่อช่วย
“ขับเคลื่อนสังคมไปในทิศทางที่ถูกต้อง” หนังของฟาสบินเดอร์กลับ “มองทั้ง
gay and straight” ในแง่ลบอย่างเท่าเทียมกัน 55555
คือเราว่าฟาสบินเดอร์เป็นคนที่ “เข้าใจกิเลสมนุษย์”
หรือเข้าใจ “ความชั่วร้ายของมนุษย์” อย่างลึกซึ้งมาก ๆ น่ะ เขาเข้าใจด้านลบของมนุษย์มากๆ
และเขาก็ถ่ายทอดมันออกมาได้ดีสุด ๆ ในหนังของเขา และเขาก็ treat ตัวละคร queer and straight อย่างเท่าเทียมกัน
ตัวละครไม่ว่าจะเพศอะไรในหนังของเขา ต่างก็ “เหี้ย” อย่างเท่าเทียมกันหมด
ซึ่งเราก็ชอบตรงจุดนี้อย่างรุนแรงมาก ๆ
ส่วน Schroeter นั้น
ถ่ายทอด “โลกจินตนาการ” ออกมาได้อย่างงดงาม เพริศแพร้ว พิลาสพิไล มไหศวรรย์ มหัศจรรย์
พันลึกที่สุดน่ะ เราก็เลยชอบหนังของเขามากที่สุดในบรรดา 3 คนนี้
หรือเปรียบเทียบง่าย ๆ ก็คือว่า
Rosa von Praunheim เข้าใจปัญหาสังคมการเมืองที่รายล้อมรอบตัวเรา
Rainer Werner Fassbinder เข้าใจ “ด้านมืด”
ที่แอบซ่อนอยู่ในจิตใจเราและผู้คนต่าง ๆ รอบตัวเรา
Werner Schroeter เข้าใจ “ความฝันและจินตนาการ”
ของเรา (หรืออาจจะเข้าใจ “จิตใต้สำนึก” ของเรา)
แต่เราก็ชอบสุด ๆ ที่ “ปรมาจารย์หนังเกย์ทั้ง 3
คน” นี้ ทำหนังที่มีคุณค่าแตกต่างกันออกไปนะ และเราก็สนับสนุนให้มีการทำหนังแตกต่างกันออกไปหลายรูปแบบ
ไม่ใช่แบบที่เราชอบสุด ๆ เพียงแบบเดียว เราสนับสนุนให้มีการทำทั้ง “หนังสะท้อนสังคมการเมืองได้อย่างหีแตกสุดขีด”
แบบหนังของ Rosa von Praunheim, หนังที่ “สะท้อนความเหี้ยห่าของมนุษย์ทุกเพศ”
แบบหนังของ Fassbinder และหนังที่ “พาเราเข้าสู่โลกจินตนาการที่งดงามที่สุด”
แบบหนังของ Schroeter
ขอคารวะและกราบตีนปรมาจารย์หนังเกย์ทั้ง 3 คนมา
ณ ที่นี้
Rosa von Praunheim
With Fond Greetings to Champagne-Schroeter (1979)
บทความนี้ตีพิมพ์ครั้งแรกในนิตยสาร FILMKRITIK
ฉบับเดือนม.ค. 1979
The criticism of friends does not only show a lack of solidarity;it can, I
think, be productive and stimulating. To go public with such criticism should
help us to find a way out of this moribund and false cultural situation.
Wolfgang Limmer took a first step in this direction with his devastating review
in Spiegel of Edgar Reitz's film, Der Schneider von Ulm (The Tailor from Ulm).
I would have expected a much better film from Edgar and I hope he won't despair
about the review, but instead gather energy for new and better films, the kind
of work he has done in the past. (I thought Die Reise nach Wien [The Trip to
Vienna] was a great and sensual film about women.) I think it was justified
that he got clobbered because the three million marks he threw away on this
production could have financed a whole bunch of films by newcomers. Werner
Schroeter and I usually only had no more than 50,000 to 80,000 for our films
and some of these run over two hours.
How many young people in Germany would be more than pleased to have 100,000
marks to make their first feature film? (I don't mean the film academy students
who often make things too easy for themselves.)How much energy and intensity
they would invest in this first opportu-nity, in contrast to the old hands who
have played themselves out? (Film history shows us how directors' first films
are often their best ones.)
The Kuratorium and the Ministry of the Interior are not enough.They usually
only support people one already knows, people who have established themselves
in the cultural scene.
The newcomers have to get organized or we oldsters should encour-age these
young people and make them realize that the árrogant medium of film also
belongs to them.
Two years ago we, that is, a producer friend of mine and his wife,had the idea
to make ten films for 100,000 marks each. Entirely new people were to be given
a chance to direct their first film, five men and five women. The directors'
names were not to be given at the films'premieres, just the titles that were
going to run-each film was to play for a week, every week a new premiere, and
this in ten different German cities. The first film in Berlin was to be the
second one in Hamburg, the third one in Cologne, etc.
We imagined that all of this would cause something of a sensation.
The producer wanted to get the necessary amount of a million marks in part from
exhibitors (rental fees paid upfront) and from subsidies, etc.
We started writing people, encouraging them to write scripts from which we
would choose. We wanted to be certain that the scripts would be close to
reality and easy to understand, i.e., of use for the cinema. We wanted to form
a group that would not leave the author alone, but would rather help him
communicate his thoughts.
Work on this plan made the producer so sick that he has to this day not
completely recovered.
This said in passing as an important impetus for the support of newcomers,which
in my mind is more important than supporting a new film by Herzog or
Fassbinder.
You have no idea how happy I was when I learned that Werner Schroeter had the
money to make his first flm in 35mm.
In the past he had fascinated us with his dreamlike beautiful world of images
and music, which nonetheless was not understood by mass au-diences. I hoped he
could now put his talent to work to make a film that would not just please the
culturally chic fringe.
While teaching with me in San Francisco during the summer of 1977, he finally
showed me the script he had written together with Wolf Wondratschek, about whom
he seemed to be ashamed.
He wanted to make the film in one of the largest slums in Europe, in Naples, a
fortune teller predicted he would have a bad accident, he proceeded with work
on the production bravely, nonetheless.
Then, once again, I was proud to hear about his great success in Cannes, about
the grand prize in Taormina, the Silver Hugo in Chicago,etc. I could hardly
wait and finally, two weeks ago, I saw the film Die neapolitanischen
Geschwister (Kingdom of Naples) in a private screening.My joy quickly turned
into pure horror and forces me now (as perhaps the only one amongst the joyous
throng of Teutonic critics) to react nega-tively.
The film follows the history of Naples from the Second World War up to today
concentrating on a pair of siblings. An Italian version of the Buchhol: family,
consciously trivial and kitschy. The pseudo-documen-tary commentary is
irritating, it feigns a realism which the film as a whole lacks.
In contrast to other Schroeter films, this one is without
humor, it takes itself dead seriously. It deals with suffering and death in
Italian families,constantly we see the funeral hearse, one woman dies in the
midst of opera arias, others are shot, one mother goes crazy. The whore dies in
the end, her scream is Schroeter's great revelation. She is damned reminiscent
of Fassbinder: everything is in vain, we're all done for.
This makes me really furious. I refuse to believe that we can't summon up
energy and courage to resist those powers that oppress us. I find the sobbing
throes of Fassbinder's transvestite in [In einem Jahr mit] 13Mordlen (In a Year
of 13 Moons) every bit as nauseating and self-pitying as Schroeter's
sentimental masochism. Especially the poorest of the poor constantly evince an
energy and joy which I fail to see in the overweight and lethargic middle
class. Naples is a particularly good example of this.
Didn’t one quote Werner Schroeter in this regard in Spiegel, that he “so very
much admired the courage and the energy of the poor brave people in Naples?”
What an outrageous thing to say. Champagne-Schroeter, who
lies around after finishing his shooting with champagne and caviar, admires the
courage of the poor people.
Especially the scenes with homosexuals in Schroeter's film made me angry. The
Christian Democrat naturally has to be fat and disgusting. As evidence of his
incredible decadence, he stands in front of an aquarium and, with trembling
hands, tries to fondle a little boy. With cutaways,appropriately enough, to
slithering slimy fish. Why didn't Herr Schroeter play this role himself as a
demonstration of his homosexual self-hatred?
When I recently asked him to sign a coming-out statement by homosex-uals for
the magazine Stern, he turned me down with the smug reply that Stern wasn't
serious enough for him. He much preferred the tidbits of gossip in the same
periodical.
Another scene where an exploitative female director of a factory is the
incarnation of calamity, with red hair and too much makeup. She talks with a
young employee (Viktoria). The music suggests all the evil in the world as the
director sets out to seduce the young innocent. Lesbian intentions become
apparent. At the moment when the pure child is later just about to be seduced
by a rich friend of the family, she flees; the director, her eyes rolling in
front of a blazing fire in the fabric hall,reminds one of the evil Cruella in
the Walt Disney film, 101 Dalmatians.Herr Schroeter, with his decadent charm,
would have been the appropri-ate person to play this role. Hasn't one learned
in the meanwhile that it's not always the innocent children who get seduced but
rather that usually just the opposite is the case?
Viktoria, one of the pale siblings with whom one cannot
identify,in a marvelous phrase, says to her mother: “You ruined my life with
this Negro” (the mother had fixed her up with him).
When one of the mothers goes insane, we see her in an asylum that is so
hackneyed that one looks in vain in world literature for something so stupid.
Of course the crazy woman has to sing with little flowers between her legs.
Some other inmates, looking as insane as possible, accompany the brother and
sister to the door.
Herr Schroeter might perhaps have done some research before he made the film.
He would have found out that Italy in fact has one of the most progressive
policies toward psychological disorders. The insane asylums have been shut down
and, instead, one gives patients a chance to live in open communes.
If I were insane I would feel discriminated against by this scene.
But it is the hooker who has the largest cross to bear; she is repeatedly given
the opportunity to stick out a leg exotically behind a red curtain. For her
remain only the night and death and old age and ugliness, as she is made to
formulate it so idiotically.
Cliché after cliché, like everything else in this film, and that without any
thought and with no intention to undermine stereotypes.
Doesn't one know that hookers in our society are often a
much more vital (and in any case more honest) possibility than the dull likes
of a totally administered uncreative job?
Schroeter has a hard time with matters of content; when he
tries, he is all too banal. Those on the right are fat and gay and redheaded,
the simple people on the other hand are brave communists, but the party lacks a
sense of reality and can't help them either. All that remains is despair.
There is for instance not a single reference to the Mafia in his film.But he
was only able to make the film because he had the support of the Mafia, and
isn't the Mana the most vital and important force in Italy?
Of course one is thankful that Schroeter is at least capable
of telling a story (is it the stupid script that caused his failure?).But I
would rather see him stick to his outstanding lyrical collages which made his
old films so honest and fascinating. It makes me angry that the film dupes the
spectator with its entertaining diversions and makes one overlook its many acts
of discrimination. That is the only way I can explain its success.
Even the camera in his Naples film is impersonal, gray and blue. It passes on
very little information and only helps the plot take its course (Thomas Mauch).
The jubilation that Werner finally had enough money to put his camera on tracks
led to one of the worst scenes in the film, the wedding scene. It is too arty
and theatrical. In Schroeter's other films,where he did the camera work, he is
a master of light and color and composition. He is personal, precise, and
brilliant.
Even the music in his film is flat and used stupidly-and yet he has a
reputation for being a master at finding just the right music.
One hears that Werner Schroeter plans to make an Italian
trilogy.Italy has many more clichés just waiting for him.
The film demonstrates just how little personal contact he
has with people living in Naples, even if the local color antics of certain
actors often lead one to think differently. The acting is devoid of love and
cold.The actors have no depth, neither formally nor in terms of content. Is
this because the artist Werner Schroeter has become increasingly ego-centric
and out of touch with others? Anyone who knows him realizes how hard a time he
has understanding himself and others. He seems to be driven by hysteria and
hecticness and aristocratic pretensions which are amusing when they parody
themselves. His recent acclaim has paralyzed him. He takes himself seriously
and unfortunately also the things that he used to quite rightfully make fun of.
He deserves fame and fortune, he earned them with more than twenty cutstanding
films. It's just a pity that critics only start to sing praises and award
prizes at the point where his work is at its worst and most superficial, but
that is of course nothing new in the culture scene.
++++++++++
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Homage to Werner Schroeter* (1979)
บทความนี้ตีพิมพ์ครั้งแรกในหนังสือพิมพ์ Frankfurter
Rundschau ฉบับวันที่ 24 ก.พ. 1979
Werner Schroeter was for over a decade-a long time, then, almost too long-the
most important, the most exciting, the most influential as well as the most
resolute director of an alternative film, a sort of film generally referred to
as “underground" film, a well-meaning gesture that delimits, diminishes,
and in the end suffocates this kind of film in a tender embrace.
In reality there is no such thing as an “underground" film. That only
exists for those people who can neatly distinguish between an above, a below,
and a place on high. In reality there are only films and they exist in the
midst of a gray entirety. And there are also the people who make these films.
And in the same way these people and their films differ from each other, so too
of course do the reasons for making films. And many people simply cannot desist
from making films until they finally have the one or the other silly
credentials that prove they are professionals, these people wich their
devil-may-care attitude about making films, no matter if it's 35mm or 8mm.
The culture scene, however, in many regards perhaps more
powerful here than in other countries, has simply divided filmmakers into those
it calls "professionals" and those it calls "underground,"
and insists on strictly maintaining this clear-cut distinction. If a person has
been dubbed an “underground” director, he should, for simplicity's sake,
re-main one, preferably forever. For that reason it is hardly ever the case in
the FRG that a director can break out of the ghetto he has been stuck into
and-this should not go unmentioned-one of course makes oneself more or less at
home in such cubbyholes. And that makes a person quite easily become lazy or
even cowardly, depending on your perspective. But the resistance to the move of
a filmmaker from the “underground" to “mainstream cinema” in the German
culture scene is strangely stubborn and unanimous, making many people
discouraged and ruining for certain a great deal of talent.
Werner Schroeter,who will in years to come assume a place in
film history similar to one I would describe in literature as somewhere
be-tween Novalis, Lautréamont, and Louis Ferdinand Céline, was for ten years an
“underground" director, a role one did not want to let him slip out of.
The great filmic vision of Werner Schroeter's world was con-strained,
repressed, and at the same time ruthlessly exploited. His films received the
quite useful “underground” pedigree, which rendered them in a flash as beautiful,
but nonetheless exotic plants, ones so far away which blossom in such a strange
fashion that one in the end could not really deal with them. And ultimately,
that goes without saying, also did not have to deal with them. And precisely
that is just as simple as it is wrong and stupid. Because Werner Schroeter's
films are not far away; even if they are beautiful, that still does not make
them exotic. On the contrary.
The director Werner Schroeter, whom they tried to make into
a miniature, whom they tried to imprison in tiny, foolish cubbyholes and to
call his films, I'Il say it again and again, “underground" films, the kind
of things which exist somehow, but only in the lower reaches, and besides,
these films are too cheap to be important, especially in the minds of those
people unwilling to grant them more money-this Werner Schroeter, anyway, has
been graced with a much clearer and more comprehensive gaze onto this globe
that we call earth than anyone else who produces art, no matter what kind. And
just a little bit, it seems to me, this fortunate and privileged soul has
access to strange and marvelous secrets of the universe.
If it is not self-evident, let me say in passing that
this fortune and this greatness I have been describing of course in no way mean
that the person I have depicted in this manner stands above everything and is
satisfied, as a living being, as a physical body. On the contrary. Outside of
myself, I do not know anyone else who chases so desperately and persistently
after a most probably infantile, idiotic utopian vision of something like love
(these words, ladies and gentlemen, make things painfully clear, do they not?)
and constantly stands helplessly before the small brutal experiences. But:
experience makes you grow stupid. Both of us will probably carry on in this
fashion.
Back to matters at hand. Werner Schroeter, this was our starting point, has
managed to do something which hardly ever happens. What exactly? Ten years
“underground," supported by the department “Camera Film" at ZDF for
years as a dependable fool whose work, you could bet on it, consistently
brought the department hymns of praise from domestic and foreign observers,
something that no doubt raised the self-estimation of these would-be midwives,
but at the same time allowed them to look on blindly as just about every film
by Werner Schroeter ended up costing a lot more than Schroeter was paid to make
it. But for a long time this situation did not move them to generous, fresh
ideas, why bother, anyway, when someone is in debt, they have no choice,
they're almost dependent, so let them carry on like this. For a pittance. And
anyway. Werner Schroeter, longer than many others, was stuck in this vicious
circle, of course harboring the whole while a strong, indestructible hope that
he might break out of it some day. To make films for the cinema.
Films for people, the more the better. But nothing seemed to change,nothing at
all.
In the meanwhile there were only a very few people who had chances to make
films who didn't borrow from Schroeter. I learned decisively from his films,
that must be said or written in all clarity.Daniel Schmid is unthinkable
without Schroeter, as is Ulrike Ottinger; Walter Bockmayer was able to learn a
lot from Schroeter's films. There are a large number of students at the Film
Academy in Munich whose films are fundamentally experiments influenced by
Schroeter, from Eberhard Schubert to Bernd Schwamm. There are young colleagues
in France for whom Schroeter's films are at least as important as Sternberg's.
With good reason ultimately.
And a quite resourceful Schroeter-imitator has come forward,who,while Schroeter
was waiting helplessly, skillfully marketed what he had pilfered from
Schroeter. In Paris people for a good while actually believed this trafficker
in matters of plagiarism, Hans Jürgen Syberberg. It was pretty exhausting to
tell people in France that it wasn't we who were the epigons of the more
slippery Syberberg, but that we had been the victims of a brutal ripoff, in
part of our most personal wares. But even Syberberg, independent of the great
desire to be able finally to let things surface,represents the great
opportunity to make "great films" with Werner Schroeter's own
personal discoveries, an opportunity denied the original talent.
Then, at a time when many, even Schroeter's friends,had slowly but surely begun
to resign themselves to the fact that Schroeter would most likely never make a
great feature film, that now after all the years of shyness, hesitation, and
lacking opportunities, he would not put it together, the kind of situation in
which quite a few despaired or simply gave up and others, after an unsuccessful
attempt, like for instance Rosa von Praunheim's Berliner Bettwurst (Berlin
Roly-Poly), became unjust and sad-now, in this situation, Werner Schroeter made
the film Die neapoli-tanischen Geschwister (Kingdom of Naples). A great,
significant film.In-credible, after all these terrible years of waiting, always
on the verge of simply drying up. A film that one can place without hesitation
among films like Visconti's Ossessione, Fellini's La Strada, Pasolini's Mamma
Roma, Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers, Chabrol's Les Bonnes Femmes,Bresson's
Le Diable probablement, Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel,among others.Germany
thus does not only have three or five or tenfilm directors to offer, Germany
now has one as well who has certainly been absent. A great breath of fresh air.
A great one, plain and simple.
Finally, because this culture page is surely being read by
many people who also read Filmkritik, a periodical referred to here on occasion
with a
measure of enthusiasm, permit me to mention a repugnant and repulsive article
that Rosa von Praunheim wrote there about Werner Schroeter's last film. One
needs to air private matters to explain things here: Rosa von Praunheim and
Werner Schroeter were very close a long time ago.While Rosa was already making
films meant for a wider audience,Werner Schroeter began slowly to make films as
well. But Schroeter made these early films for his friend, out of
"love" for him. Rosa von Praunheim thanked him with mockery and
derision. Played out precisely with the sorry superiority enjoyed by people who
love less than their partners.Werner Schroeter's honesty and his unconditional
objectivity toward Rosa von Praunheim sometimes had an almost debilitating
effect.
Rosa von Praunheim, someone so progressive, whose mind is so
much freer of our middle-class longings that he actually thinks he alone has
the right, a monopoly of sorts, to use the medium film to reflect his own or
whoever else's homosexuality: Werner Schroeter always obeyed this decree. Now,
in Kingdom of Naples, Rosa von Praunheim thinks he has come across the one or
the other supposed homosexual element. Reason enough, apparently, to disguise
his own, God knows, justifable despair at still never having made a great film
or never having had a chance to do so, to disguise his despair, even in front
of himself.
Things are that bad, the kinds of things filmmakers in the FRG suffer, and I
say this completely free of irony, things are so bad, that in order to ward off
this pain, this fear, and this sorrow, they betray perhaps the only friend they
have.
ภาพประกอบมาจากหนัง 4 เรื่องดังต่อไปนี้
1. THE DEATH OF MARIA MALIBRAN (1972,
Werner Schroeter, West Germany, A+30)
2. WILLOW SPRINGS (1973, Werner Schroeter, West Germany)
3. FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West
Germany, A+30)
4. IT IS NOT THE HOMOSEXUAL WHO IS PERVERSE, BUT THE SOCIETY
IN WHICH HE LIVES (1971, Rosa von Praunheim, West Germany)
