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Simply A Masterpiece

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Never released commercially, 'Whity' remains one of Fassbinder's least seen films, and when spoken of it is usually with mild incredulity since the thing is reportedly a western. Naturally it's a western the like of which English-speaking audiences have never seen before (or at any rate since 'Red Garters'), but one that would look less eccentric to a German audience used to the popular Karl May adaptations of the sixties in which men are men and women are German. Although there are nods towards Sergio Leone - notably with Peer Raben's score - it plainly owes more to Gillo Pontecorvo's 'Queimada!' (1969) and to the 'slavery' genre of the seventies that began with Herbert Biberman's 'Slaves' in 1969 and reached its apotheosis with 'Mandingo'. Sumptuously designed by Kurt Raab and fluidly shot in widescreen and Eastmancolor by the late Michael Ballhaus, visually it anticipates the saturated colours of Fassbinder's final extravaganzas like 'Lili Marleen' and 'Querelle' with the cast resembling waxworks. It effectively does for westerns what 'Der Amerikanische Soldat' did for gangster movies, but is far less fun; although Fassbinder's own appearance as a macho, whip-wielding cowboy is as funny as anything to be found in 'Carry On Cowboy'.

In 1970 the German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote and directed a German language American Western film that, unlike the Spaghetti Westerns of that era- also filmed in Almería, Andalucía, Spain, was not played straight, but more like a silent era Expressionistic film, replete with melodramatic music, cartoonish face makeup, and over the top acting, especially in the physical movements of the actors' bodies. It's one of those films that is so highly stylized, so earnestly trying to be deep and/or profound that it is instead really, really bad; but in the best possible sense of the word bad. It's so bad a film that it is often hysterically funny. This starts from the very notion of Old American West gunslingers sprechen in Deutsch, as well as having them speak German even though all of the signs and Wanted Posters are in English. It's absurd, but wonderfully so.To say that it is absurd or bizarre is, however, an understatement, yet the film is obviously a satire; unlike, say, Werner Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small or Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. In a sense, this film also reminded me, in terms of lighting and stillnesses, of Kubrick's 1975 costume epic Barry Lyndon, crossed with some of the manifestly fake Western sets in American television shows of that era, especially those that were not Western based shows, but those that had Western themed special episodes, like Star Trek or The Prisoner. Then, added to that, there is mental retardation, transvestism, homosexuality, prostitution, racism, Ku Klux Klan hoods- wholly displaced in the Old West (something a German likely did not know, thinking it merely the American equivalent of the swastika), incest, bestiality, bleached eyebrows, green-white cake makeup, and sadomasochism. Yet, what makes this film so uproariously funny is that Fassbinder's camera and style seem to be oblivious to how truly and uniquely bad and funny the film is. One might even believe that he was a German version of Ed Wood, if this film is any indication of his talents, for true camp comes unwittingly, when an artist is being serious and is oblivious to the worst aspects of his work.Whity was filmed in garish color, in Cinemascope, where the palette leaps out at you, and this is in keeping with the rest of the over the top nature of the film, and suggest Fassbinder must have known he was making a Carnivalesque romp, if not an outright burlesque. This gaudiness includes the art direction of Kurt Raab, which also won a German Academy Award. While a bit too much, there is no denying that the color palette used by Fassbinder sears into the viewer's head, on an emotional level, and the film seems almost like an Impressionist painting- especially a Monet watercolor, come to life, with its rich reds, ripe oranges, sensuous yellows, burnt browns, and other lesser colors that texture the film like some narcotic fantasy. Also, Ballhaus provides some interesting camera movement that makes the ill written and acted scenes at least interesting to watch, if nothing else; and since film is a visual medium, this is worth noting, even if there's no intellectual reason behind it. For example, in the scene where Ben Nicholson reads his last will and testament, the rest of the actors are standing still, as if composed out of something from one of Ingmar Bergman's hyper-composed 1960s filmic experiments. The camera slowly sweeps over all of them for minutes at a time, while weird music by Peer Raben, who scored the film, and remanent of the just passed psychedelic era, drones on. Some critics contend that this is meant to allow the viewer to ponder the psychological bonds between all the family members, but really it's a funeral dirge for any remaining health the clan might have had, and the filmmaker taking stock of the coming body count.Thankfully, Whity does not push its tenuous humorous likability by being too long. It's only 95 minutes, and its manifest flaws lead one to believe that part of the problem was that Fassbinder probably did not spend enough time crafting the film, which was shot in only thirty days. Before he overdosed in 1982, at the age of thirty-seven, he would make forty-three films, direct fourteen plays, write four radio plays, and direct twenty-four television projects. It is interesting to note these flaws and compare them to the flaws that followed him across the films of his career. As for Whity, it's simply a bad, bad film, but more in line with Robot Monster or Plan 9 From Outer Space good bad than with The Hours or Brokeback Mountain or Crash bad bad. As for whether Fassbinder realized he'd made a camp classic, a film that is funny enough to give Blazing Saddles a run for its money? I don't know. Nor do I care, just as I so not care how one labels this film- satire, camp classic, Neo-Expressionist masterpiece, black comedy, melodrama; for funny is funny, and the hour and a half of laughs I got from this dreadful little film was worth something. Perhaps even what little I paid for it.

When is a Western not really a Western? When it’s directed by Fassbinder! WHITY is only my sixth film from the so-called German wunderkind: I admire Fassbinder for his prolific and versatile output, though I’ve yet to be won over completely by a film of his; frankly I was hoping this would prove to be the one – but, as it turned out, I couldn’t have been more wrong! For the record, I’ve got four more titles from him to watch: still, considering my dismal experience with WHITY (especially since I had fully expected it to be the most accessible of the lot!), I don’t know when I’ll muster the courage to get to them now…even if DESPAIR (1978) is a reasonably enticing title, given the participation of Dirk Bogarde and the Vladimir Nabokov source.To be fair, the Western ambiance is delivered in spades throughout. The film was stunningly shot in Widescreen – by Michael Ballhaus (later a valued collaborator of Martin Scorsese) – in Almeria, location site of many a Spaghetti Western. It generally has the right feel for time and place with regards to settings and wardrobe, while the all-important score is highlighted by a decidedly infectious riff. Even so, the repertoire of English-language ballads (the bulk of the film, of course, is in German) allotted to chanteuse/prostitute Hanna Schygulla – not to mention her own affected delivery – is inappropriately modern and comes across as unintentionally laughable! Schygulla was a fixture in Fassbinder’s work; the film also features Ron Randell (best-known, if at all, for playing Christ’s attorney[!] in Nicholas Ray’s KING OF KINGS [1961]) and Ulli Lommel (who later graduated to directing himself, notably TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES [1973] and THE BOOGEYMAN [1980]).The overriding pretentiousness at work here is palpable above all in the film’s lethargic, indeed deadly, pace (never have I seen a movie in which the characters moved more s-l-o-w-l-y!). Besides, it isn’t helped by unsympathetic (even annoying) characters – mostly members of a dysfunctional family (and particularly the pasty-faced, frizzy-haired sons of landowner Randell) – indulging in all manners of transgressions (from such commonly-depicted capital sins as greed, lust and murder down to nymphomania, masochism, interracial relationships and incest!). In the midst of all this is an unsavory gay subtext which, inevitably, seems to be on the agenda of virtually all directors so inclined in real-life (but becoming obviously more pronounced in the liberalized modern cinema)! The plot, for what it’s worth, is reminiscent of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s THEOREM (1968) – coincidentally another gay parable – as the life of everyone involved is influenced in some way by the household’s black manservant (the character bears the ironic titular nickname but is also curiously underwritten and inexpressive), who’s actually the fruit of Randell’s illicit affair with his frumpy colored maid! The fact that each, in turn, pleads with him to slay the other could have turned this into a pointed black comedy – but the film is simply too labored and deliberately self-conscious for the subtlety intrinsic to such refined treatment... In the end, one should note that 1971 saw a boom of arty Westerns with other such offerings as Alexandro Jodorowsky’s EL TOPO, Peter Fonda’s THE HIRED HAND and Robert Altman’s McCABE AND MRS MILLER. As for WHITY (whose shooting, by the way, inspired Fassbinder’s own BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE [1971]), I had owned the Fantoma DVD – which includes an Audio Commentary from Ballhaus and Lommel – for quite a while before actually sitting down to view it. I’d purchased the disc through the company’s own website during a sale but, as I said, could only manage to find a slot for it in my hectic/eclectic schedule after having enjoyed a couple of equally stylized (but far more satisfying) Spaghetti Westerns – DEATH SENTENCE (1968) and YANKEE (1966) – earlier this week.

Rarely screened, forgotten by even the most devoted admirers of Fassbinder, _Whity_ is nonetheless a crucial film in Fassbinder's own development as a film-artist. For one, the style of the film marks Fassbinder's turn away from his earlier, Neo-realistic efforts (notably _Katzelmacher_ and _Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?_) and turn towards the flamboyant, melodramatic form favored by him until his untimely death in 1982. Melodrama turns out to be the best possible style for the film's story, which chronicles the fall of the seigniorial Nicholson family in the Mexican 19th century. Indeed, this film should be seen for no other reason than the inescapable weirdness one feels in watching German actors play Mexicans in the Old West. It's like seeing Peter Lorre playing John Wayne: ridiculous, if only it weren't so creepy. "Decadent" and "dysfunctional" are words redefined by the Nicholson family: the patriarch, Ben Nicholson, is remote and cruel, the wife a nymphomaniac, the older son a flaming homosexual, and his brother a severely retarded adolescent. Then there's Whity, the ironically named mulatto slave of the Nicholson family, an inadvertent focus point of each family member's perverse obsessions. It is this mutual obsession with Whity (an obsession shared by the viewer by film's end) which allows Fassbinder to explore the themes which were to comprise his greatest contribution to film's development as a medium, including: dominance and submission, the role of the Other, sexuality, the doppelganger, the economy of familial relationships, and the obstacles fate puts in the way of consumating love. These issues gain complexity when one considers that the slave Whity is played by Fassbinder's then-lover, Gunther Kaufmann. Given this, what is the viewer to make of such stylistic scenes as when Whity is disciplined by his master, while the other family members garrulously look on--knowing that Fassbinder himself is also watching from his director/dictator's chair? (The complex inter-relationships of Fassbinder and the actors during the filming of _Whity_ were later chronicled by Fassbinder in his film _Beware of a Holy Whore_, which is based on the real-life melodrama that occurred _off_ the set of _Whity_.) If nothing else, _Whity_ deserves to be included in with the other Fassbinder films, such as _Despair_, which are so justly celebrated for their psychological depth and complexity. Beyond this, two aspects of Fassbinder's technique in making _Whity_ deserve special mention. The first is that in _Whity_, one of the first of his films to employ a half-way reputable color process, Fassbinder shows himself to be a great colorist in the tradition of Delacroix, bathing the eyes with the lushest oranges, browns, and reds to be seen this side of a sunset. The palette is one that seems to have existed in film only in the late 60s and early 70s, finding similarly gorgeous expression in Truffaut's _Fahrenheit 451_, Boorman's _Point Blank_, Godard's _La Chinoise_, and Nicolas Roeg's early efforts (_A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to The Forum_ , _Performance_, _Walkabout_, _Don't Look Now_, _The Man Who Fell to Earth_). The second aspect of noteworthy technique is a camera movement that truly has no precedent in film history--a fact which makes the obscurity of _Whity_ among film scholars all the more remarkable. The best example of the technique occurs in a scene in which Ben Nicholson reads his last will and testament to the silent family members surrounding him. During an unbroken ten-minute take, the actors remain virtually motionless, as if posed in some Rembrantian tableaux (and in this way recalling Dreyer's _Day of Wrath_). Against this stasis, the camera pans slowly from one family member to another, following their own sight-lines, as if the camera were recording the trace of their attention. For ten minutes the camera repeats this zig-zag path with methodical precision, while psychedelic, trance-inducing music drones in the background. The greatest merit of the technique (seen also in an equally static scene between Whity and the retarded son in the horse barn) is that it allows the viewer time enough to meditate on the relationships among the characters involved in the tableaux--in this case most profoundly on the relationships of power among family members. It's as if Fassbinder, using film technique, took a snapshot of the family, and then spent ten minutes tracing out with his finger exactly who is dominated by whom, who resents the domination, who is perceiving whom and how, and so on. The technique, which to my knowledge Fassbinder never used again to such great effect, can only be seen as the great innovation that it is, and as such, a powerful tool for the revelation of psychological truth. However, let none of these deeper concerns eclipse the enjoyment to be had watching this bizarre, Teutonic _Dallas_ unfold. Like the best moments in a Warhol film, the high camp of _Whity_ is very, very funny to watch--certainly because it is absurd, which is not to say it is without profound meaning.