this is the first film from rw fassbinder. it's much more accessible than i expected it to be. the review compared it to band of outsiders or breathless and godard. that's exactly what i was thinking when i was watching it. if i had to compare it to another fassbinder film of that time frame, i'd rate it much better than say, beware of the holy whore or the american soldier.
shareFassbinder's debut is probably my favorite among the dozen or so features he made between 1969 and 1970. It was a film that was completely financed by an admirer of RWF, who loved his theater output and believed in his lifelong dream of being a film director. The blankness and banality of small-time hoods in this movie has a strange nouvelle-vague-meets-Brecht attitude that plants us inside of the mood of these lovelorn, dead-end characters.
The score from Peer Raben (his debut as well) shimmers, the actors all have presence, and the low-budget minimalism heightens the intimacy required for the love story. Whether these crooks steal sunglasses, do other petty crimes or do nothing at all, Fassbinder's cool vision remains fascinating for every one of its 88 minutes.
it's not a fav fassbinder but it was interesting. it reminded me a little of godard and melville films but still with fassbinder's style.
shareThe film does some interesting things; mostly the idea of taking a crime film plot and exaggerating the moments of boredom and longing that occur between what would ordinarily, in a Hollywood movie at least, be the more important stuff (the robbery and betrayal).
Of course Godard had already done this to some extent with Bande à part, but Fassbinder's film is much colder and more austere. There's a more palpable sense of desperation, emotional manipulation and alienation in the way Fassbinder films his characters; with long, fixed-camera shots that make the viewing of the film as uncomfortable as possible.
The main flaw is that it feels like a short film dragged out to feature-length; there's also less of the complex psychological analysis of his characters and their motivations that would be a feature of later Fassbinder projects, from 1972-on.
In general, I liked this a lot more than The American Soldier, which I consider to be one of Fassbinder's worst films, but thought it was largely inferior to the similar Gods of the Plague.
I thought that was Rainer! How splendid, I'd forgotten how much I missed him.
Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.
The main flaw is that it feels like a short film dragged out to feature-length
here's another comment: it sucks
shareBreathless is a pretty good analog, though I would say that this movie has more in common with French crime movies like Godard's Pierrot le Fou, or Melville's Le Samourai or Bob Le Flambeur (a little less so with Bob, where concepts of loyalty receive a bit more fanfare than in other movies). Like the characters of these crime movies, the characters of Love is Colder are undeniably cool. They also feel very comfortable outside the confines of society. While this is true of the characters of Breathless, Breathless is a bit more about style than it is about existential questions, a situation that is reversed in the crime movies that I listed.
The trio in Love is Colder make for an interesting bunch. Bruno and Johanna are glad to bend the rules (both legal and social) of how they should live their lives. They are unconcerned about treating anyone else well, except Franz. Bruno and Johanna are very different from Franz, though. When Franz tells the syndicate leader that he wants to be free above anything else, he is telling the truth. Bruno is not that principled. He doesn't mind immorality, but what he really wants is power. His loyalty can be bought, and it has been bought by the syndicate. Johanna is a dabbler. She doesn't mind living outside of social convention, but in the end, she wants to be able to return to polite society when she is bored of rebellion. Hence, she expresses the desire to settle down with Franz and have children, and she asks the police (polite society personified) to help stop the robbery.
Franz, on the other hand, is loyal only to his friends and to his desire for freedom. He turns up his nose at the syndicate, even though he has no problem with murder, theft, prostitution, etc. He approves of free love (so long as he is paid when others sleep with Johanna), yet he is too dissatisfied with order to live with peace-and-love hippies and their strictures, however minimal. Though Bruno, Johanna, and Franz are all against society, Franz is the only true believer in a life without restrictions.
Franz is devoted to freedom, if by that we mean the freedom to exploit others (women) as he sees fit. He's also a suppressed homosexual.
I like that TCM said it was rated "G" and then I see all the nasty violence and one healthy set of bare boobs.
🇺🇸 Liberty • E Pluribus Unum • In God We Trust 🇺🇸share