Katzelmacher

The perfect mastery of a not very commonly used cinematographic procedure - film combinatorics. Fassbinder completely deconstructed the film world into a series of individual elements: constantly recurring locations, within whose boundaries the precise behavior of the film characters unfolds. The film itself is created precisely by combining these elements - the regularity of sequences and expectations are deliberately built up in the first half to be restructured into a slightly different pattern with the arrival of an unknown element, a foreign migrant worker, and thus the very skeleton of the film process stands out. Given that the essence of the plot changes are not changes in the characters' personalities (except for one), but rather their relocation from one predefined location to another, i.e., again a form of combinatorics, although not in space (but let us not forget, as we have seen, that space defines the characters' actions, so it is an integral component of the story), but rather personal (especially the mutual cheating by the couples - their changes in partners substitute for the immutability and stereotyping of their lives). (18.05.2015)

A few settings without buildings that would attract attention. A static camera. Only occasional use of direct causality. Shots ending with the simple exit of one or more characters from the frame (thus creating the impression that their hollow existence is limited to being in the picture – they do not exist outside of it). For Fassbinder, this radical rejection of the aesthetics of narrative film is not an end in itself. Formal economy serves the content – a cold look at the icy nature of the German middle class. The director is just as merciless towards his rootless peers as he is towards the married couple whose communication is progressively degraded to the point of comprising curt messages and violent physical outbursts. Fassbinder draws attention to the aggression and prejudices behind the laxly constructed façade with such matter-of-factness that the film verges on absurd comedy. It is also obvious from the absence of gradation that this wait for Godot will never end because of the attitude of the characters, whose inability to get on with their own lives culminates in herd aggression. 85% (05.02.2021)