Film Katzelmacher
Based on an earlier stage play by Fassbinder and dedicated to the Bavarian folk dramatist Marieluise Fleißer, this early black and white film has us watch the social rituals and relational dynamics of a group of 8 men and women living in featureless suburban housing in Munich. We see them meet in the street, at the pub or in their flats and in different constellations, as lovers or friends, sometimes wordlessly having sex or getting ready for it, but mostly talking and gossiping about other absent members of the group. Though relatively young, they display a high degree of bourgeois narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy. Acting upon their longing and desires, they constantly cheat and exploit one each other, but then hide or deny it, while incriminating others and holding up what’s right in their conversations. All their frustrations, jealousies, and anxieties become more salient and turn into outright xenophobia and violence when a Greek guest worker, played by Fassbinder himself, enters their circle and becomes a new object of desire and aggression.
All this unfolds in a sequence of rigorously staged short scenes in which the characters are lined up within one visual plane, either against a wall or crammed into a small internal space, while the camera doesn’t move. The actors’ performances, their facial expressions and speech display no emotional involvement. They talk as if they were conversing about the functioning of an electrical appliance, the alienating effect of which is heightened by their use of local and at times old fashioned expressions.
All this keeps us at a distance from the characters and lets us observe them as one may observe a different species, which may have inspired Greek director Athina Rachel Tsangari to use some of these stylistic devices to undercut the emotional weight of the story she tells in her film Attenberg and to find an equivalent for her protagonist’s alienated attitude to her fellow human beings.
West Germany, 1969, b/w, 88 mins. With English subtitles. Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With R.W. Fassbinder, Hanna Schygulla, Lilith Ungerer, Rudolf Waldemar.