MovieChat Forums > Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972) Discussion > [Spoiler!!!] - - - - - Why Marlene left ...

[Spoiler!!!] - - - - - Why Marlene left in the end:


I wonder, did everyone understand that Marlene was in love with Petra and that she left Petra in the end because she WANTED to be oppressed by her? She wanted to be "owned" by Petra. And the irony about it is that she left her just after Petra learned she should NOT want to own her beloved.

This perfectly shows that no matter what you think you've learned, 5 minutes later you can be proofed wrong.
And that there are hardly any rules. Different people want different treatment.

Rate this Film General favorite 10 - http://imdb.com/title/tt0017619

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Re: (Spoiler) Why Marlene left in the end:

by Aizyk (Sat Apr 29 2006 02:06:50) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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Yes, I just finished watching the film and although it was a pretty bad ending for Petra, who I often sympathized for, I thought it was quite satisfying on a subversive, misanthropic level. This was my first Fassbinder film, and when Petra begins to talk about how her mistake was wanting to possess Karin and how she finally learned her lesson, I was thinking "Oh God, so that's the kind of director Fassbinder was: People ultimately learning pseudo-poignant life lessons at the very end of the film... ugh". But then there was that great twist. Marlene was basically Petra's gimp, and that's how the former wanted it. When Gaby asks how Petra can treat Marlene so horribly, Petra replies that Marlene likes it that way. And we know that she's only lying, to herself and Gaby, to justify her mistreatment. But it turns out that the lie actually just happens to be true.

Too bad Petra couldn't have had Marlene in Karin's body, I suppose.

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Re: (Spoiler) Why Marlene left in the end:

by Systematicer (Sat Apr 29 2006 05:23:53)


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Finally a response.
Thanks, Aizek.

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Re: (Spoiler) Why Marlene left in the end:

by the_Poppuns (Wed Feb 7 2007 20:32:42) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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I just saw this movie today and that's not what I thought at all. I thought she left because Petra didn't need her anymore. But I guess you guys are probably right.

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Re: (Spoiler) Why Marlene left in the end:

by Systematicer (Thu Feb 8 2007 02:16:28)


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I also guess we are right.


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Re: (Spoiler) Why Marlene left in the end:

by CodeKnown (Sun Feb 18 2007 16:40:56) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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Yeah, i always thouught Marlee loved her in a masochistic fashion. Marlene's existence, through love, had come to be defined by her subservience to Petra. once Petra opened up her cold oppressive shell to humanity there was nothing for Marlene to stay for, that brutal coldness she craved was gone and thus she flew the nest.

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Re: (Spoiler) Why Marlene left in the end:

by hakopt (Wed Mar 21 2007 19:13:13) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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A man's point of view....

I think she was waiting all this time for her to experience the sort of love she had for petra (obssesive) and thought then she would realize how Marlee felt about her.....

but once Petra revealed she was only interested plotnically, she saw that there was no hope....

She was like a realistic Petra...

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Re: (Spoiler) Why Marlene left in the end:

by tgwolfe911 (Mon Mar 26 2007 01:07:05) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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Huh... It makes sense, but I got a totally different read.

True, Marlene's romantically obsessed with Petra, to the point that she's willing to put up with Petra's domineering nature and tolerate her lovers. Remember, Marlene has been with Petra for 3 years, meaning that she was there throughout her second marriage and watched it go from happiness to disgust. When Petra talks to Sidonie about what finally did it in, Marlene stops and listens very carefully, which I took at the time as her intense interest in what, if anything, Petra "learned." But when Petra confronts Karin, Marlene (at best) eavesdrops, continuing to work on the mannequin as if she's seen this scene before (with the husband). I took this as Fassbinder's signal that Petra probably inverted her story to Sidonie--it was she, not Frank, who tried to dominate the marriage. Old habits die hard...

I don't think Petra learned she should not want to own her beloved at all. Her cool response to Karin's call and "I'm fine, mother, you can go now" shtick is just another manipulative ruse. She knows she's lost Karin--she's been beat at her own game--but she's still "The Great Pretender." She knows only how to own, not to love. Marlene has been holding on for years (it happens with some people), waiting for someone like Karin to teach Petra a lesson, hoping then Petra will return her love in earnest. When Petra offers what seems like heartfelt apologies for misusing her, Marlene's gentle, subservient hand-kiss seems to suggest--in that moment--she believes Petra can love her. Undoubtedly, the relationship's power will belong to Petra, which is how Marlene wants it. But she doesn't want to be "owned" like Frank and Karin. She wants to be loved.

So why does she leave? Because Petra responds to the kiss with: Not like that. (Pause, then...) Tell me about your past.

This is the exact line she used on Karin! Who better than Marlene recognizes Petra's starting the same thing all over again? I think Marlene leaves because, in that moment, she realizes the futility of her hope. They've been together for three years and all of a sudden Petra's interested in her past--instead of their future? And her leaving with the "Karin doll" seemed to me to reinforce this. Karin may have been a manipulative user, but she wasn't crazy.

If Marlene is going to give her love and devotion to someone, she'd prefer Karin over someone who's too delusional and self-absorbed to give something back. She leaves Petra to herself, to learn a real lesson--maybe who she really is, instead of a front person for Marlene, who does all the work (including the sketches, which she re-designs) in the first place. (Who's going to come in and wake Petra up tomorrow morning?) Marlene's the one with the real talent and the drive. She'll find love on her own terms.

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Re: (Spoiler) Why Marlene left in the end:

by pavel-pospech (Mon May 28 2007 16:55:43) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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Good point. Anyone has an explanation for the gun ? When Marlene is packing her suitcase she drops - with a little hesitation - a gun in it ... ???

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Re: (Spoiler) Why Marlene left in the end:

by paris_texas (Fri Jun 22 2007 20:32:20) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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I noticed the gun. It's funny because this is the kind of movie that you expect to see an ending where one possessive, opportunistic, or mistreated lover kills the other partner, like a sponteneous crime of passion sort of thing, and here Fassbinder shows us the gun at the end but it is never used for its intention. Maybe he wanted to show that Marianne at some point in her 'relationship" with Petra thought of killing her and went out and bought a gun, or that she had the strength or capacity to do it but never did, or maybe it was for humility, which petra said to karin she thought was an important virtue, maybe she was ready to put petra out of her misery if her despair escallated further. Do any of you think Petra and Marianne had an affair before karin came in, I thought it was hinted at with the dancing, but that might have been petra just teasing her.

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Re: (Spoiler) Why Marlene left in the end:

by bthomps (Fri Sep 14 2007 21:10:35) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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It's to keep Petra from using it on herself.

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Re: (Spoiler) Why Marlene left in the end:

by MrHulot (Mon Oct 29 2007 10:39:55) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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I just watched the film for the first time and I think that is a good interpretation. However, I thought that when she tries to "not own" Marlene that she then contradicts herself and says something along the lines of "not like that" or "not that way" and it was THAT which broke the camels back, so to speak, and caused her to finally leave Petra.

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Re: (Spoiler) Why Marlene left in the end:

by ldziub 32 minutes ago (Fri Feb 8 2008 07:18:13) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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Interesting responses. I was confused by Petra's expression when she sits on her bed watching Marlene pack her bags. The print I saw was not very clear and it was hard to distinguish where she was anguished or resigned regarding Marlene's departure.

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... Marlene's romantically obsessed with Petra, to the point that she's willing to put up with Petra's domineering nature and tolerate her lovers. Remember, Marlene has been with Petra for 3 years ...


Did anyone else notice what seemed to me striking parallels between the movie and real life?

Irm Herman, the actress who played Marlene, was hopelessly in love with Fassbinder for over a decade. Her silence, her long-sufferingness, her persecution, even the remark about "she likes it that way" were apparently all signatures of the real relationship between Herman and Fassbinder.

...or am I making up something that's not really there???

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That is a surface interpretation, the deeper interpretation is the persona-merging interpretation.

Petra and Marlene are the same personality, a split personality, a personality eventually merged, a theme similar to Bergman's Persona.

Marlene is a projection of Petra herself, Petra herself allowing herself to be dominated (which she adamantly refused to be with her second husband, but by adamantly refusing, she ironically became dominated), Petra herself being the dominator and the dominated, Petra herself acting out what she perceived as the traditional roles of husband and wife.

Petra is stoical and feigns her feelings to simultaneously control (dominator) whatever situation she is in and to appease others (dominated) and to not allow others to know her (dominator) and to not be alone (dominated).

Marlene is Petra who feels the emotions Petra refuses feel - the scared Petra, the confused Petra, the loving Petra, the yearning Petra, the frustrated Petra, the compassionate Petra.

Petra's alcoholic epiphany breaks through the stoicism, and she is able to feel again. She welcomes re-merging with her emotions (Marlene) - in the future, we'll really work together), and she finally wants to engage in self-introspection to find her identity (tell me about yourself), a method of emotional healing she had been avoiding since the dissolution of her marriage, a marriage which caused her to be someone she was not, and wrecked her self-identity.

As Marlene packs the suitcase (goodbye record, goodbye black dress, goodbye doll, good bye gun - I will not commit suicide, goodbye self-pity, goodbye pain), Petra basks in joyful afterglow: she is finally merged with her emotions, and can sleep at ease, alone, with just herself. She is once again whole.

Poussin, whose lavish painting Midas And Bacchus (the myth has symbolic meaning as well, be careful what you wish for, you may get it, and it will not be what you thought) drapes the wall, was heavily influenced by Stoicism, which includes the belief that every human emotion could be divided and placed into separate categories.

Poussin was so intrigued by this, he predominantly crafted his paintings to present stoical figures overcoming emotions (like Petra and her mannequins), and he imposed rigourous order (repetition of geometric shapes) on the natural scenery he painted to represent man's place in the order and structure of the natural world. Nature is controlled, therefore man must be in control of himself.

Fassbinder imposed the same structural order in the misé en scene of the film (squares, ovals, bars), Petra was controlling her emotions, and at the end of the film, Petra smashed that order, smashed through her stoicism, bedeviled her mannequines, and allowed herself to emerge with her other suppressed self, Marlene.

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Great interpretation, TemporaryOne-1 cheers!

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God-like analysis TemporaryOne-1 . All the time I was trying to place the context of the painting, but could not find what the painting was. I did not even think Marlene would have such a big prominence. Great work.
http://theseventhart.wordpress.com/

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aha, the revelation of the gentile!

"Petra is stoical and feigns her feelings to simultaneously control (dominator) whatever situation she is in and to appease others (dominated) and to not allow others to know her (dominator) and to not be alone (dominated). "

"allowed herself to emerge with her other suppressed self, Marlene."

she kept calling Karin "mean". cause karin did what she wanted, couldn't be appeased, couldn't be controlled. karin was genuinely open and honest and was loved by her kin.

then petra was mean to her family. does petra's "suppressed" self really loathe her daughter? were the cruelties that accompanied petra's epiphany part of her truth or part of the Wall being knocked down?

"be careful what you wish for, you may get it, and it will not be what you thought"

i thought about this idea when, during the movie, petra says "i want to be happy", when karin suggests that petra revels in turmoil. petra wished for happiness with karin. she got karin. so technically if you wish for something, and it's not what you thought, then either you didn't know what you were wishing for or you didn't really get it. so it's either a lack of information beforehand or the inability for life to deal out perfect cards. wait, i think i get it now. so petra was trying to "fix the deck".



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I like your interpretation but I understood it differently. Slavery is better than possessive love and living a lie. Petra had not learned anything even though she sais so. She was about to repeat the same thing all over again and Marlene (who could put up with almost anything) was not willing to sink so low.


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Brilliantly put.
I completely agree with you.

As well as Persona this film also very much reminded me of Altman's 3 Women; both visually and thematically.
All three films then seem to have subsequently informed the work of David Lynch.

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The ending has been read as Marlene leaving Petra, yet Marlene placing the gun in her suitcase and taking the doll which resembles Karin raises questions for me. What if Marlene was leaving to kill Karin in revenge of Petra? Since Petra had reinstated her admiration for Marlene, it might have caused Marlene's feelings to strengthen. Therefore killing Karin would be beneficial for Marlene as it would remove any potential flaws in Petra's future behavior, so that their relationship would be filled with commitment.

"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not".

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As Marlene packs the suitcase (goodbye record, goodbye black dress, goodbye doll, good bye gun - I will not commit suicide, goodbye self-pity, goodbye pain), Petra basks in joyful afterglow: she is finally merged with her emotions, and can sleep at ease, alone, with just herself. She is once again whole.

Brilliant. The Marlene/mannequines/dolls symbolism is so fascinating to me. The film is obviously a careful study about three female personalities.

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Okay, so I'm about seven years late. This may very likely be falling on deaf ears.

However, I would still question the extent of this analysis. Can Marlene be said to be a reflection of Petra in a two sides of the same coin sort of way? Undoubtedly. However, I'm not as convinced (which is not to say that I'm completely against the idea) that they are representations of the same character.

Perhaps to the extent that Fassbinder wrote the play/film as autobiographical, and self-analytically (the co-mingling of dominant and submissive seems to fit his own psyche rather neatly). But unless I am misreading you, I interpret you as saying that in the context of the film itself Marlene is a projection of Petra's, rather than a true existent character unto herself, and so her leaving is a representation of subconscious and not the exit of the character itself. Her leaving would further be said to produce a happy ending of sorts for the character as, as you put it, a merging of disparate identity. In this regard, I cannot agree so readily. First of all, Fassbinder is notorious for not letting his characters off that easily, and psychological resolution seems something directly opposed to the remainder of his filmography.

Further, in context of the film itself, other characters interact with Marlene: so, she therefore must be as real or as unreal as the remainder of the characters that circle Petra von Kant. I think saying all the characters are manifestations of the psyche is possible, but also problematic - some of the figures are too alike to be said to be various manifestations, and would thus be superfluous. In fact, I would say Gabriele, Sidonie, and Valerie could all be manifestations of a similar character simply across age gaps, which is again, not an impossible reading, but stands in contradiction to the distinct dialect that would be crafted with Petra/Marlene or Petra/Karin.

In Persona, save for the opening jumping off point, Elisabet Vogler and Alma are removed from any other interaction to an isolated environ, whose only other interaction is Gunnar Björnstrand as a fairly self-evident conjuring/imagining. There are no outsiders to acknowledge the simultaneous existence of Elisabet and Alma. TBToPvK does not provide this remove, unless you, again, place the remaining characters also into the cerebral. Although I suppose they could also be read as conjurings similar to Elisabet's husband...

Lord, this movie is enigmatic. And in case it wasn't clear, I would just like to say that I'm not actively opposing your theory so much as questioning it with certain issues that I personally find with regards to application as existing within the context of the narrative as well as outside it.

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Yes but...

... the context of the film itself Marlene is a projection of Petra's, rather than a true existent character
I didn't read it that way.

I don't think the interpretation "is a symbol of the other side of Petra's personality" justifies the assumption "isn't real". The character can be a "real person" and a symbol of a part of some other character.

Bergman's "Persona" is itself a great example: The visual merging showing that Alma and Elisabet are in a sense the same person centers the film. But that interpretation does not at all imply that either Alma or Elisabet are somehow not "real".

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nice

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