Katzelmacher (Fassbinder, 1969): Prince Charles Cinema, 12.45pm
This screening is part of a Reiner Werner Fassbinder season at the Prince Charles. Details here.
Time Out review: Fear and loathing in the mean streets of suburban Munich, where all
behaviour obeys the basest and most basic of drives, and fleeting
allegiances form and re-form in almost mathematically abstract
permutations until disrupted by the advent of an immigrant Greek
worker (played by Fassbinder himself; the title is a Bavarian slang
term for a gastarbeiter, implying tomcatting sexual proclivities) who
becomes the target for xenophobic violence. Fassbinder's
sub-Godardian gangster film début, Love is Colder than Death,
was dismissed as derivative and dilettanté-ish; this second feature,
based on his own anti-teater play, won immediate acclaim. It
still seems remarkable, mainly for Fassbinder's distinctive, highly
stylised dialogue and minimalist mise-en-scène that
transfigures a cinema of poverty into bleakly triumphant rites of
despair. Sheila Johnston
No comments:
Post a Comment