Katzelmacher
This movie is so German! It’s like a German Godard! XD
It seems that Fassbinder’s films were compared to the Nouvelle Vagues a lot. Elga Sorbas kind of looks like Anna Karina when she dances, the well-composed black and white shots look like Truffaut’s, and nobody actually truly loves even though the films are all about it.
In general though, I’d say that the Neue Deutsche Welle is completely different. People in the Nouvelle Vague look awfully attractive even though they look somewhat awkward, and the people in the Neue Deutsche Welle look awfully awkward when they are actually very nicely dressed. In Nouvelle Vagues, nobody is in a relationship but there’s always some passionate obsession. In this film however, everybody is in a relationship but passion doesn’t seem to exist. There is sex everywhere but no eroticism”… it’s somewhat fascinating. I feel like I am reading a Horváth book. “Eine Liebe und so, das hat immer etwas mit Geld zu tun.”
“Der ist kein Italiener nich.” Even this pseudo-Bavarian is surprisingly amusing to hear, it makes me think of Horváth even more.
Oh yeah, so apparently h i s father has known Fassbinder personally, and whenever you actually know somebody, you feel completely different about his films. So I can see h i m being completely, completely bored with “Katzelmacher”. (It’s so slow too!) But I’m different. While I’m still wondering about whether it was a good idea to see “Katzelmacher” before any other Fassbinder, I am inexplicably fascinated and intrigued by this film.
a fantastic one to start with. i love this film, and I think it is stylistically indebted to Straub/Huillet above all, something which he has said so himself in some random interview I read ages ago xD you should watch “Martha” next, which is as much of an extreme opposite to Katzelmacher as you could possibly get.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsxSOa-TLpU
This is so amusing because I have already watched another Fassbinder at this point (two others, in fact). I totally want to see “Martha” now although I haven’t been as interested in its description the first time I saw it. Plus I’m pretty sure I have “In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden” and “Angst fressen Seele auf” somewhere… Fassbinder just made too many movies. XD