FREE ON YOUTUBE Das Leben ist eine Baustelle

On the first of May 2020, the very, very, very-first-First of all May, in which all of Berlin is hooded (by order of the Senate!!!). And who knows, maybe there will be something this year, too, because for more than a month police controls have been crossing the city, monitoring the quarantine of Berliners during the Corona epidemic. Do you think the Berlin autonomists approve of this? When Wolfgang Becker staged Life Is All You Get, Berliners were used to the fact that May Day means war. Burning streets. Every year the Senator for the Interior had to answer for not having had the first of May under control again. It's about the same as we are used to today, that the Berlin airport will never be finished. But back to Life Is All You Get. Which film really shows the Kohl era after the fall of the Berlin Wall? I think it's this one! Wolfgang Becker's film has the unofficial subtitle "Love in the times of the Kohl era" and that's in the early 90s! Life Is All You Get is the first anti-German comedy, not from Munich, but from chic Berlin. He, Jan, a Kreuzberg casual worker, she, Vera, an artist, probably from the new east of the city, but also penniless. The love of both offers us a journey deep into the lower class, into rented flats where sex parties take place and the children are strangely brought up (vegetable eaters are the unemployed of tomorrow!). But Wolfgang Becker's drama also offers some almost surreal sequences and an endless wealth of beautiful ideas. A journey back to the Berlin of the 90s! Jürgen Vogel plays Jan Nebel, who works as a temp in a slaughterhouse. On the first of May in Kreuzberg he meets a hooded man who is being chased by plainclothes police. Jan intervenes, pulls a policeman to the ground, believing that he is attacking a woman. She shouts to him that he has just knocked down a cop and they are both fleeing. Into a Kreuzberg apartment, where a family man and his children are training to assign the death cries from various horror films. He is wearing white ribbed underpants, his wife looks as if she has been smoking chain for 100 years. Jan is caught and convicted, but now he knows Vera, the hooded woman. But their first date is anything but romantic... By the way, Kreuzberg is still Kreuzberg here, a prolo district without cafés, only with bars. Vera is played by Christiane Paul. She floats through life and helps herself to congress buffets uninvited. Jan, on the other hand, fights his way through and yet is always thrown back. He does not understand Vera. She is not tangible for him and is actually not accessible. Wolfgang Becker wrote the film together with Tom Tykwer. The common idea: Here the man should not be an architect for once and the woman a journalist. We don't see fancy Munich lofts, either, but Berlin bays. When Life Is All You Get came to the cinema, all this was still quite unusual. We had a lot behind us, like the bad German relationship comedy of the 90s, and Becker and Tykwer wanted to fight against that. Life Is All You Get features great supporting characters like Jan's sister Lilo (Martina Gedeck), who organizes nude shopping parties at home instead of taking care of her daughter. In the next room her husband Harry (Armin Rohde) lurks in bed, who grumbles during the whole movie. I remember Ricky Tomlinson as Buddy the longest. A not quite young man who lives in his memories. Jan makes friends with him and maybe there is even something like hope in this tender film...

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FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Rainer Werner Fassbinder - Fear Eats The Soul (engl. subt.) 

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Already the opening scene gives the theme: They against us. An elderly woman, simply dressed and somewhat plump, walks into a bar and sits down at the table in the corner. She's ordering a Coke. A group of guests stares over at her. The camera shows us the distance between her and the group. The blonde bar waitress asks an Arab customer to dance with the lady. He grants his wish while the others stare... Angst essen Seele auf is a film about these two people: Emmi Kurowski (Brigitte Mira), an approximately 60-year-old widow who works as a cleaning lady and whose children she avoids. Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) is a "guest worker" around 40, a mechanic from Morocco. With five men he lives together in one room and can simply describe his life: Always work, always drunk. Ali is not even his real name, but in Germany 1974 probably all dark-skinned guest workers are called Ali (and today?). Rainer Werner Fassbinder tells her story in a nutshell - he shot the film in two weeks. Inspired by Douglas_Sirk, whom Fassbinder always admired. Fassbinder, however, omits all the ups and downs of classical melodrama and takes over only the quiet despair (he thought Hollywood films were fantastic, but dishonest). Angst essen Seele auf is so powerful because the movie works quite simply. Although the two main characters are different because of their age and origin, they have one thing in common: they like each other - in a world that is cold and indifferent. Shyly, Emmi admits that she is a building cleaner and that many would therefore look down on her. Ali only replies: "German gentleman, Arabian dog. In many Fassbinder films sex plays a certain cynical role and serves for mutual exploitation. In fear eat soul on but everything relies on tenderness. Often the Moroccan accompanies the cleaning lady home. It rains and she invites him for coffee. His journey home by bus takes a long time. She asks him to spend the night with her. He can't sleep, he wants to talk. She suggests he sit at the edge of her bed. When I saw the film again, I noticed that it was the first time he held her hand and stroked her arm in this scene. The next day she looks at herself in the mirror. Of course Emmi knows she's old. We experience an excerpt from their world. The colleagues gossip about how dirty the "guest workers" are. Emmi defends indirectly and draws attention to the fact that they are at least working. Just by being together, Emmi and Ali enrage everyone who sees them. The grocer on the other side of the street behaves foul towards Ali, the waiter in the restaurant is distant. The most memorable scene is when Emmi tells her children that she remarried. Shocked looks, finally her son Bruno hits his TV. Emmi and Ali live happily together, but within a poisoned society. Finally, the other cleaners start to no longer insult Ali. Emmi lets the women touch Ali's strong muscles. The neighbours are happy that Emmi's new husband helps carry furniture. When the new Yugoslavian cleaning lady starts work, Emmi and her colleagues turn their backs on the new foreigner. Ali, in turn, drinks in the "Arabic Bar" and walks upstairs with the blonde waitress (because she can cook cous cous). Fassbinder himself was also an outsider: small, chubby and gay. One may notice a lot of self-reflection in eating souls in fear, but also self-criticism: especially when Emmi simply takes over again the prejudices of society towards foreigners (it lives itself in a more peaceful and easier way). In many places fear eating soul is also ironic: Emmi Kurowski's first husband was after all Polish. Finally, Emmi, a grocer, flatters Emmi again to come into his business (after all, he needs her as a customer). Ali's fling with the bar service also has a sad rather than passionate touch: he misses the cous cous of his homeland. Fear eating soul on is an expression of Arabs living with fear in foreign land. Emmi finally realises that the two must be nice to each other as long as they are together. I think Fassbinder instinctively understood the meaning of the title and therefore shot the film so quickly to show us the truth.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Werner Herzog - Fitzcarraldo (engl. Version)

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Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo is one of the greatest visions in the history of cinema - and also one of the greatest madness. Both complement each other splendidly and the one would probably not be possible without the other. Fitzcarraldo is the story of a madman who wants to build an opera in the jungle and therefore pulls a ship over a mountain. Werner Herzog had to do exactly the same for the film and succeeds Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, whose story inspired Herzog. Fitzcarraldo is a daring epic (after all, Herzog could have arranged it all with special effects). But - "This is not a plastic boat" (Herzog). Fitzcarraldo (Klaus Kinski) drives a group of Rainforest Indians to pull the ship over the hill and we feel right in the middle! If you want to know more about it, watch "Burden of Dreams" (1982) by Les Blank and Maureen Gosling, a documentary about the production of Fitzcarraldo. After watching the documentary you feel that this shoot did not leave any of the participants untouched. All are connected by the reverence for the jungle, which God (if there is one) must have created in anger... (Duke). We experience Fitzcarraldo and his lover (Claudia Cardinale) approaching from the emptiness of the jungle in a boat. Both come too late, they want to go to the opera! He has earned money with an ice machine and knows his future: He will indulge in wealth, build an opera in the jungle and Caruso will perform there. Fitzcarraldo buys a piece of land that is not connected to the river. It can only be reached by those who can cross a ship without water! It is this image of the ship being pulled over the mountain that Herzog inspired for Fitzcarraldo. The rest of the script just had to be adapted. The production story reads like a chain of accidents. The first location was on the border between Peru and Ecuador and could therefore not be used in 1982. At first Jason Robards and Mick Jagger were to be cast, but both jumped off (luckily, because who could imagine Jagger in Fitzcarraldo?). Klaus Kinski is the better choice for the same reason as for a real ship: Kinski is really crazy and doesn't have to play. His anger seems almost demonic - how could anyone do that? Contrary to plan, Herzog and his team had to film in the rainforest - several kilometres away from the next town. A member of the crew only survived a snake bite by amputating his own foot. Meanwhile, Kinski Herzog is yelling at him most of the time (we see this in Herzog's documentary My best fiend. Fortunately, Fitzcarraldo hasn't become a perfect movie, but an overwhelming one! Herzog doesn't even try to push his story; he is looking for pictures! The scene, as the ship breaks loose, would have degenerated into a noisy action sequence with another director. With Herzog it slips slowly, enormously and all the more fox-influencing. Is there even a more passionate and adventurous director than him? In every big Herzog movie a passionate man challenges the wilderness. Over and over again! Producers asked Herzog if it wasn't wiser to drop the difficult project. Herzog was echauffierten over the question: A man, who dropped a project like this, he would have to live on as a man without dreams. He would rather die than exist like this! Not only the ship and Kinski are real, but Herzog is also a true Fitzcarraldo! Over and over again!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE City Of Men

The other day there was a report on the Corona crisis in Rio on the radio and my colleague Luanny became sad. It's a virus that mainly affects the poorest people.

 A classic mafia movie starts with the hero telling us about his dream: To become a gangster. City Of Men (just like the role model from the cinema "City Of God") dives into the slums of Rio de Janeiro, where the gangs of children assert themselves. Just like the classic mafia thrillers, City Of Men urgently deals with the individual characters, traces their path with great passion. But: Do these kids want to be gangsters? Is that their dream? No. They simply have no other choice. The slums in Rio serve a single purpose: They were built to separate the poor from the rich. At the moment my colleague Lua from the video store is sadly watching how the poorest people in the slums become the most tragic victims of the Corona crisis. No one is trying to help them. They live isolated. From this situation they once created living places; full of life music, but above all full of danger. Invisible lines exist everywhere. This gang on one side, that on the other (the police is the most powerful gang). The kids in City Of Men seem like para-military. Equipped with machine guns and walkie talkies. They work in an organized way, just like people who do their jobs. The camera whirls around them, while the streets empty out as soon as the kids arrive. City Of Men is able to show everyday life in the favelas much more clearly than the cinema film. A life with values - but without any chances. This life leads nowhere and the film knows that. Sometimes you think that the film also leads nowhere. Everyone seems to be stuck at a certain point. A feeling of grief and loss is spreading. But the favelas are not a place where only crimes are committed. The ghetto is mainly inhabited by hard-working people who want to get by somehow. They struggle to exhaustion, then return home where more work awaits them. We can guess how difficult it is to raise children in this situation. Maybe you recognize the actors Douglas Silva and Darlan Cunha from the movie? Acerola and Ace (Douglas Silva) is now the involuntary father of a child. This in turn is already being passed around among the children's gangs. Ace today is forced to deal with the subject of education. Wallace (Cunha) tries to establish a belated relationship with his father, who was in prison. Then a turf war breaks out and both find themselves on opposite sides. Co-produced by Fernando Meirelles Paulo Morelli takes over the direction. City Of Men is a TV series, not a feature film. It tells episodes of loss and resistance based on the story of Ace and Wallace. It is important that we are clearly shown how the Brazilian state denies the most basic comforts to all those people who move from rural areas to Rio to find work. Instead, these people in the favelas are being demonised. But the real violence comes from poverty and murderous police invasions alone.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Das Weisse Rauschen

Our "Corona TV" is also there to present German indie films from time to time.

"When you see The White Sound, you immediately go insane. Unless he is already insane. Then he becomes normal." - A nice quote that Tobias Amann brought to mind the other day when he had a beer at our video store. Actually he doesn't like to talk about The White Sound, because his partner Hans Weingärtner didn't want to share the fame. Anyway, after the conversation I wanted to watch The White Sound again and remembered the dawn of German film back in the early 00s, the x-filme distributor and of course Daniel Brühl. He embodies Lukas, who is new in the big city and moves into his sister's flat share. Lukas knows that this is where real life begins! He immediately throws himself into the night. He takes chemical substances that he doesn't really know. I always find that remarkable. An experiment on his own body with an uncertain outcome. Most of the time the feeling of having successfully challenged the body prevails. But sometimes you hear voices, like Luke. What a horror! Lukas feels persecuted. "Paranoid schizophrenia", the doctors call it. Lukas has to fight against himself, against his own perception. A fight that drives him all the way to the Spanish Atlantic coast. There he finds something that could save him: The white noise... The scolded Weingartner himself never understood his film as a study of schizophrenia. For him, Lukas is a young man with problems of adaptation, who acts psychotically at times. Schizophrenia may well be considered the worst nightmare. One feels persecuted, betrayed by one's own perception. The contact to reality gives way to indescribable fear. This clinical picture is presented here almost like a "dogma" film. Thanks to the blurred camera, we have no choice but to watch with great effort. And that's how it should be, because The White Sound challenges us! A stroke of luck, which two film students together are responsible for. Even though one of them stole the show from the other...

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Jean Eustache - La Mamam Et La Putain (engl. subt.)


Today is the right day to approach the greatest (and rarest!) unknown classic of the Nouvelle Vague. Imagine sitting in a Parisian café, reading Proust and not really knowing what to do with yourself. Small alternative to: I sit at home and outside it's Corona time...

If you want to rent the DVD of La Maman Et La Putain from us, you will be disappointed. It only runs with French original sound. There have been geeks like Sulgi who simply used the dictionary to understand Eustache's classics. What a job! An epic dialogue film! The problem: Still no adequate DVD version exists. Even worse: You don't get the masterpiece as a silver disc at all. But: Today (26.4.2020) during my daily YouTube check I found out that we can enjoy La Maman Et La Putain in good picture quality with English subtitles at the moment! Let's go! Here comes THE unknown classic of the Nouvelle Vague! Eustache's by far most famous film came to the cinemas in 1973 and a whole generation embraced this permanently lamenting lazybones who prefer to have endless conversations in Parisian cafes. Jean-Pierre Leaud mimes Eustaches idol Alexandre. He lives with one woman and tells another that he loves her. Then there is the one who rejected him and various other women. Marie, played by Bernadette Lafont, lives with Alexandre and also supports him as he is usually "between jobs". Veronika (Francoise Lebrun) is Alexandre's blind date in a cafe, to whom he presents his not really high-flying thoughts (while his looks follow other women in the immediate vicinity). Alexandre is not stupid, but not intellectual either. He makes no significant progress in his self-discovery. He likes to babble about movies and life (although he often gets confused). He wears a dark coat and a scarf that reaches down to his knees. His friend wears the same. Alexandre spends his days in cafés holding Proust in front of him, but not reading in it. Just like the guys in the state library who "forget" the classics in their reading place when pretty girls are around. I think that even though Alexandre seems to be at the center of La Maman Et La Putain, Eustache's film is more interested in his female characters. Couldn't it be that the women just circle around him because they are curious about what strange things he will tell next? What kind of idiocy do you think he's about to unload? Leauds best role was that of the young Antoine-Doinel, since then he varies this as a childish side in the actually already grown up man. While Alexandre struts like a puppet through the Parisian cafes, the real drama takes place in the figure of Veronica. Veronika should know that Alexandre only talks to her about love while Marie is absent. When Veronika talks about herself, we recognize the deep and unadulterated knowledge of herself. The portrait of a childish man exerted enormous influence from his time - but it is time to see Eustache's film in a different light for once

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Jacques Rivette - La Belle Noiseuse (engl. subt.)

It was in a hot August afternoon. I was, I think, in 7th grade and had rented La Belle Noiseuse from the Videodrom on VHS. The long version, over six hours. My mother told me that it was impossible to watch TV in this weather. No? I just wanted to have a quick look - and I couldn't stop. That's how fantastic this film is!

Frenhofer, the great artist, hasn't painted anything for ten years. He threw everything away while working on his masterpiece, which he wanted to call La Belle Noiseuse. His model: his own wife Elizabeth, the inspiration for the most successful part of Frenhofer's career. At first, according to Elizabeth, Frenhofer painted her because she loved him. Finally, she explains, because he loved her. Then he stopped, fearing that the work would destroy that love. Frenhofer does not see the outside, he depicts the inside of his models. Bones, sinews, the soul. One day three visitors knock on the door of the chateaus where Frenhofer still lives with Elizabeth in seclusion. A collector, a young painter and his friend Marianne. Marianne is distant, unapproachable and of strong will. During dinner together, Frenhofer looks at Marianne - and this look describes their entire relationship. Marianne senses this, she wants to get away from him, because she is aware of the feelings behind Frenhofer's gaze: he will start painting again. Jacques Rivette's film La Belle Noiseuse is the best film I have ever seen about the creation of art! It is also the greatest film about the painful relationship between an artist and his muse. Rivette's film has a running time of over four hours. He also edited a shortened divertimento version - but what for? The great thing about La Belle Noiseuse is that it spends time creating art - and the sprouting, and eventual destruction, of passion. Frenhofer is played by Michel Piccoli, whose eyes can penetrate other actors. With his high forehead he seems intelligent, but we sense; it is a terrible intelligence. Emmanuelle Béart is a perfect beauty with deep eyes, full lips - and impressive willpower. We can understand what Frenhofer sees in Marianne. His wife Elizabeth (Jane Birkin) understands it too. She warns Marianne not to let Frenhofer paint her eyes. The painting could deprive the model of her vitality (We notice a touch of Oscar Wilde in this idea). So much for the plot, but it doesn't bother us as such. The strongest scenes of the film, they concentrate entirely on creating a work of art. In his brick hall, his studio, Frenhofer begins to sketch Marianne. We look over his shoulder (which Rivette allows us to do in very long takes). A physical process, how he obsessively sorts his pencils, brushes and paints. The first strokes, then oil. Frenhofer assigns Marianne a wardrobe; she understands, takes off her coat and will be naked for the next four hours. First we consider Emmanuelle Béart as a woman, then as a model. Slowly we see what Frenhofer means: her innermost being, her essence, her being. He moves her arms and legs like those of a doll. She complains about her legs falling asleep and asks for a cigarette. Frenhofer takes it away from her and bends it back into position. Does it sound boring just to watch a man painting? Not at all! Tension is slowly built up. A fight for the stronger will develops. Marianne is an imposition, a nuisance. Elizabeth translates "noiseuse" as "nutty". Marianne is crazy. This is what Frenhofer wants! She begins to understand and agrees to her determination. Now it is Marianne who drives the work. The day La Belle Noiseuse is finished, we don't get to see it. Marianne describes how she saw something in it, cold and dry - herself. That must be enough for us. At night Elizabeth sneaks into the studio and realizes: she marks the painting with a cross. It marks Frenhofer's death. Now imagine this atmosphere with the sounds Rivette uses in the old castle. We hear the wind in the woods outside and in the old walls, kicks, the slamming of an old door. It's no coincidence that La Belle Noiseuse seems like a haunted movie. Elizabeth mentioned that the old walls are haunted. We hear the scratching of the pencils on the paper (and increasingly loudly). During one scene we see Marianne bent under a cross. At first she cries softly, then she starts to laugh - more and more. The scratching of the pencils, we think we can still hear it, although Frenhofer has put it aside. It is said that the nouvelle vage took place only because of him: Jacques Rivette. He himself was never as famous as his companions. Rivette's films turned out to be too long and complicated for that. But in La Belle Noiseuse I don't see the slightest difficulty! I wish the film to be as long as it is - not a minute less! I sympathized with the struggle in the studio, with the bond that was created. Piccoli embodies exactly Frenhofer's Vorst Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)