Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)

Note des utilisateurs:

7.4/10   

Réalisateur:

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Writers:

Rainer Werner Fassbinder (play)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (screenplay)

Release Date:

5 octobre 1972 (West Germany)

Genre:

Drame

Accroche:

Sex is the ultimate weapon.

Plot:

Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary...

Plot Keywords:

Model | Love Crime | Obsession | Girlfriend Girlfriend Relationship | Lesbian

Awards:

3 wins & 1 nomination

Avis des utilisateurs:

Key Film From The German Master

Ensemble

Margit Carstensen	...	Petra von Kant
Hanna Schygulla	...	Karin Thimm
Katrin Schaake	...	Sidonie von Grasenabb
Eva Mattes	...	Gabriele von Kant
Gisela Fackeldey	...	Valerie von Kant
Irm Hermann	...	Marlene

Autre(s) titre(s):

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (USA)
Les larmes amères de Petra von Kant (France) [fr]

Durée:

124 min

Pays:

West Germany

Langue:

Allemand

Couleur:

Couleur

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Son:

Mono

Classification:

Singapore:PG | Hong Kong:I | Singapore:R(A) | UK:15 | West Germany:16

Emplacements De Pelliculage:

Worpswede, Lower Saxony, Germany

Company:

Filmverlag der Autoren

Anecdotes:

Film was shot in ten days.

Guillemet:

Petra von Kant: It's easy to pity, Sidonie, but so much harder to understand. If you understand someone, don't pity them, change them. Only pity what you cant understand.

Movie Connections:

References The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

Soundtrack:

The Great Pretender

Key Film From The German Master

Claustrophobic, talky and highly inventive – The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is a key film in the development of R.W. Fassbinder's art. According to longtime colleague Ulli Lommel, Fassbinder wrote the entire work (which also became a play and, posthumously, a modernist opera) during an 11 hour plane journey from Germany to LA. Excited by this flush of creativity, Fassbinder ordered his entourage to head straight back home and shot the entire film in a extraordinary 10 days.

Set wholly within one room in the home of successful fashion designer Petra Von Kant, the film deals with the destructive love affair Petra (Margit Carstensen) begins with aspiring model Karin (Hanna Schygulla). As one of Fassbinder's early forays into the reexamination of 1950's Hollywood melodrama, the film has the tendency to polarise audiences with it's highly stylised and almost stagy approach. Even the lack of incidental music may jar with those not familiar with the director's work. Rather than using a swelling score giving cues to the emotions the audience is meant to feel, Fassbinder opts instead for selective natural sound (a typewriter endlessly clacking away in the background during an important scene, for instance) and records from Von Kant's (i.e. Fassbinder's) record collection. Without this trapping, we watch Petra's self-destruction with a certain ambiguity and a more considered response is elicited from the viewer. More space is also given to the magnificent dialogue and inventive camera-work (shot in long, winding takes) which allows the fine ensemble cast to to plunder the depths of emotional despair, all the while dressed in Von Kant's wonderfully outrageous designs.

This is all the more fascinating when read as a thinly veiled confession of Fassbinder's domineering ways with those in his inner circle. As also pointed out by Lommel, the film's exclusively female characters were actually all based on men. Fassbinder, however, mostly preferred to work with women as he felt they were freer to express extreme states of emotional truth and more open to the requirements of high melodrama. As a primer for the great director's work, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is an excellent example of Fassbinder's over-riding theme: how the hunter can quickly become the victim and that the universality of desire and need within all human relationships is a constant, regardless of status, sexuality or age.