Beware of a Holy Whore (1971)
(Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte)
Country: GER/IT
Technical: col/1.33:1 103m
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cast: Lou Castel, Eddie Constantine, Hanna Schygulla, Marquard Bohm, Margarethe von Trotta
Synopsis:
A film crew somewhere on the Spanish coast collapses under the accumulated weight of the director's bullying and self-pity.
Review:
Two Weeks in Another Town, this ain't. Le Mépris, maybe. With apparently as little to go on in terms of script as the film within the film, it is a wonder Fassbinder managed to raise the million Deutschmarks needed. The dialogue sounds as though it has been written by a pretentious jilted schoolboy, and when the pace becomes overly torpid we get Castel or Fassbinder (playing the Assistant D in an alleged self-parody) ranting like Klaus Kinski losing his shirt, and for no clear reason. The film essentially divides into two halves: the first scene, which lasts about 54 minutes and has the camera follow the various characters around the hotel lobby during an evening's revelry; and the second half, a series of inconsequential pools of despondency like so many outtakes. Typifying the worst of self-indulgent 'personal' cinema of the 70s, the most that can be said is that the camera work, focus-pull and lighting are unfailingly top-notch. Of the rest, enough ink has been needlessly spilt. Warhol-inspired drivel.
(Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte)
Country: GER/IT
Technical: col/1.33:1 103m
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cast: Lou Castel, Eddie Constantine, Hanna Schygulla, Marquard Bohm, Margarethe von Trotta
Synopsis:
A film crew somewhere on the Spanish coast collapses under the accumulated weight of the director's bullying and self-pity.
Review:
Two Weeks in Another Town, this ain't. Le Mépris, maybe. With apparently as little to go on in terms of script as the film within the film, it is a wonder Fassbinder managed to raise the million Deutschmarks needed. The dialogue sounds as though it has been written by a pretentious jilted schoolboy, and when the pace becomes overly torpid we get Castel or Fassbinder (playing the Assistant D in an alleged self-parody) ranting like Klaus Kinski losing his shirt, and for no clear reason. The film essentially divides into two halves: the first scene, which lasts about 54 minutes and has the camera follow the various characters around the hotel lobby during an evening's revelry; and the second half, a series of inconsequential pools of despondency like so many outtakes. Typifying the worst of self-indulgent 'personal' cinema of the 70s, the most that can be said is that the camera work, focus-pull and lighting are unfailingly top-notch. Of the rest, enough ink has been needlessly spilt. Warhol-inspired drivel.
(Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte)
Country: GER/IT
Technical: col/1.33:1 103m
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cast: Lou Castel, Eddie Constantine, Hanna Schygulla, Marquard Bohm, Margarethe von Trotta
Synopsis:
A film crew somewhere on the Spanish coast collapses under the accumulated weight of the director's bullying and self-pity.
Review:
Two Weeks in Another Town, this ain't. Le Mépris, maybe. With apparently as little to go on in terms of script as the film within the film, it is a wonder Fassbinder managed to raise the million Deutschmarks needed. The dialogue sounds as though it has been written by a pretentious jilted schoolboy, and when the pace becomes overly torpid we get Castel or Fassbinder (playing the Assistant D in an alleged self-parody) ranting like Klaus Kinski losing his shirt, and for no clear reason. The film essentially divides into two halves: the first scene, which lasts about 54 minutes and has the camera follow the various characters around the hotel lobby during an evening's revelry; and the second half, a series of inconsequential pools of despondency like so many outtakes. Typifying the worst of self-indulgent 'personal' cinema of the 70s, the most that can be said is that the camera work, focus-pull and lighting are unfailingly top-notch. Of the rest, enough ink has been needlessly spilt. Warhol-inspired drivel.