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Fans of the prodigiously gifted Rainer Werner Fassbinder will find Beware of a Holy Whore the German director's most revealing look inside his filmmaking process. A kind of neurotic backstage comedy, the movie details the struggles of a film crew in Spain: the jealousies, tantrums, money problems. He doesn't spare himself in this process, as the movie's director (played by Lou Castel) is a petulant manipulator given to screaming fits. RWF himself plays a long-suffering production manager; the great pock-marked star of French B movies, Eddie Constantine, plays himself (looking somewhat bewildered by the deadpan jokes and frequent lulls). If the slack pacing and Warholian weirdness limit the movie, it nevertheless looks very vivid, thanks to future Hollywood cinematographer Michael Ballhaus. Fassbinder made around 40 features in his brief life, and this self-portrait gives hints about the maddening, mercurial personality that could pull off such a feat. --Robert Horton

Review
Movies about making movies are usually concerned with the frantic desperation of a shoot, with crises popping up by the minute and everyone rushing about madly. Not so in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film, allegedly about his experiences making Whity on-location in Spain. The first quarter of the film is taken up with a long scene in a hotel lobby which might have been directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. The lassitude and sense of sexual longing is almost suffocating, as members of the film within a film's cast and crew down drinks, break glasses, nuzzle on couches, or stare blankly into space. With the arrival of more money to continue the production and of the film's director (Lou Castel playing a handsome version of Fassbinder) and the film's star (Eddie Constantine more or less playing himself -- there is even a reference to his Lemmy Caution character), the energy level picks up -- especially when the director begins throwing hourly tantrums. And Fassbinder's narrative becomes more fragmented, featuring short snippets of conversations among the various characters, most of them complaining about someone else on the crew screwing things up. In one long and very funny scene, the director carefully reads a newspaper containing an article about him while a half-dozen other characters around him drift away. There is some witty use of music, too; three Leonard Cohen songs from his first album drone on during the long opening scene in the lobby, and later, a party scene plays out to Ray Charles' "Let's Go Get Stoned." This is all likely to be more amusing to those in the know about Fassbinder and his methods; less informed viewers are likely to see it as so much navel-gazing. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

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Most helpful customer reviews   Unfocused Fassbinder, Mar 23 2004 By  M. Innocenti (Sherman Oaks, CA United States) - See all my reviews    In the early seventies, director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was making an incredible four or five movies a year. But not even the Wizard of Babylon was capable of making four or five GOOD movies per year, and although Fassbinder apparently considered "Beware of a Holy Whore" to be one of his important films it has not aged well. Obviously a diehard Fassbinder fan will want to see or own this movie. Wellspring and the Fassbinder Foundation have done a great job in making these films available on DVD and the transfers are excellent - although the original audio could use some work in places. For me, however, the film is important for two reasons. Firstly, because Eddie Constantine is in the cast - although the iconic actor seems to be wondering what he got himself into. Second is the fascination of watching Fassbinder himself in a self-parodying role that is fun, albeit bitter-sweet. That said, in subtitles, it's hard to get the humor that is intended, and I strongly disagree with those that claim this film is on the same level as more mature introspections on the moviemaking process - like Truffaut's "Nuite Americaine". If you're new to Fassbinder, viewing early classics such as "Ali: Fear Eats The Soul", "The Merchant of Four Seasons" or "Fox and his Friends" may give you a better idea of how striking and important a filmmaker he was. Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)   One of Fassbinder's best, Aug 22 2003 By  J. Clark (metro New York City) - See all my reviews    Don't let the tongue-in-cheek title, which refers to cinema, deter you! Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) looks even better - and more complex - than when I first saw it theatrically several years ago; and Wellspring's DVD transfer is gorgeous (you can also choose either the original mono or new Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack). Fassbinder himself ranked this his best film on the list he made, shortly before his death, of "The Top 10 of My Own Films." Not only is this knowing satire - part screwball comedy, part existential pseudo-documentary - one of his two out-and-out comedies (1976's Satan's Brew is the other), it is also a probing, wickedly funny, yet celebratory film about filmmaking. Although some will heartily disagree, for me it ranks with such classics of this rarefied subgenre as Godard's Contempt and Fellini's 8-1/2 (both 1963), and seems more illuminating, and even entertaining, than Truffaut's wonderful Day for Night (1973). But there is much more of interest than its behind-the-scenes peek at dysfunctional moviemaking. There are its autobiographical layers (Fassbinder not only appears in a crucial supporting role as the harried production manager Sascha, he parodies himself wickedly through the central character of the tyrannical director, Jeff); a brilliant use of rhythm, both within scenes and in the overall flow of the film (Fassbinder was also the co-editor); some of the most beautiful, subtle and complex visual design - and camera movement - of any of his films up to that point (the great Michael Ballhaus was the cinematographer; he now shoots Scorsese's films); an ecelctic, brilliantly deployed soundtrack ranging from Peer Raben's haunting original score to songs from Leonard Cohen, Ray Charles, and Elvis Presley to a haunting Donizetti aria; a superb ensemble cast (it follows about a dozen major characters - although it focuses on Jeff - and looks ahead to, say, Altman's Nashville); not to mention psychological insight, and some surprising yet on-target character revelations. Fassbinder delves into extremely dark and tangled emotions in this comedy; and although there are many laughs, they often stem from violence. When a character asks Jeff what type of movie he is directing, he replies, "It's a film about brutality. What else would one make a film about?" Fassbinder was an enormously complex artist, and man, who understood from personal experience the cruel power plays, and blindness, of people in love. He admitted that he was capable of oppressing the people close to him (often his crews and cast were also his friends and lovers), yet he showed enormous compassion - in his life and work - for