THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (GERMANY/1972/RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER)

Perhaps the most acclaimed film in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s inimitable oeuvre, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant deals with issues of obsession and jealousy. The titular Petra von Kant is an esteemed fashion designer who surrounds herself with objects of decadence in a house she shares with her reticent assistant Marlene. Still bearing the pain of her recent divorce, Petra takes out most of her frustration on Marlene, whom she frequently commands to continue sketching designs. When she is visited by a young dilettante named Karin, Petra finds herself unexpectedly smitten, and her obsession grows to sinister proportions when Karin is called away to Switzerland to reconnect with her husband.

Fassbinder spells out the film’s personal relevance from the very beginning by calling it a ‘case history’ and identifying an unnamed male as the inspiration for Marlene’s character. The all-female cast is perfectly selected, all faces that will be familiar to fans of Fassbinder. Margit Carstensen is marvellous as the lead – uncomfortably rakish in appearance, she portrays the predatory Petra with aplomb. Irm Hermann as Marlene is a ghostly presence throughout the film – in one scene, her teary pale face suddenly vanishes into a blur, underlining her comparative insignificance once Karin has entered the frame. The fashion motif in the film suggests a theme of deception, the two women dressing competitively in a bid to convince the other of her feelings. Though it carries the relics of a low-budget seventies production, Petra von Kant is fundamentally timeless and classic.

BLIND SHAFT (CHINA/2003/LI YANG)

Shot on location in the aggressive confines of a mineshaft, Li Yang’s debut narrative feature follows the exploits of Song and Tang, two mine labourers who con young aspirant workers in the city. The men’s scheme involves them claiming that they and their nephew have secured well-paid jobs in a coalmine, but pretending the nephew has failed to turn up. Offering the open spot to a naïve sixteen-year-old boy named Yuan Fengming, they lead him to an illegal mineshaft with the plan of killing him after a few days and making it look like an accident in order to claim compensation. Song is unexpectedly touched by the boy’s childlike appearance and demeanour, and the scheme hits a snag as the two men argue over Yuan’s fate.

Buoyed by strong performances and subtly intrusive sound design (see the opening five minutes for a fine example), Blind Shaft acts simultaneously as an exposé of a shocking practice which has become far too commonplace, and as a universal statement on financial greed. Li himself has stated that the film should not be seen specifically as an indictment on the Chinese work ethic, but its ban in China suggests that the content hits closer to home than expected. Comparisons to the films of Wang Bing, particularly his marathon documentary Tie Xi Qu, may be reductive, but both directors work towards the similar goal of offering an unabashed insight into the ‘real’ China, and as such one could never overstate the importance of Blind Shaft.

TONKA OF THE GALLOWS (CZECH REPUBLIC/1930/KARL ANTON)

Having made the big move to Prague, a young woman named Tonka becomes a prostitute in order to earn her keep, and quickly becomes integrated into the ways of brothel life. She returns to her countryside home with expensive gifts for her mother, but is evasive about how she acquired the money for them. She also rejoins her lover Jan who proposes marriage, an offer which has clearly been hanging over their relationship for a while. Tonka struggles to deal with her duplicitous lifestyle, and when she agrees to spend the night with a murderer who is condemned to be hanged, she is rejected even by her fellow prostitutes.

From the first moment we see Tonka, she is already a tainted woman, her reputation scuppered by her brothel connections, and as such it is difficult to know which part of her story we are to learn from. If anything, the film appears to tell us, as in Mikio Naruse’s later Morning’s Tree-Lined Street, that the bright lights of the city are a misleading augury. The scenes with Tonka in the countryside are beautiful, pleasant, summery – when the story returns to the city however, we are greeted by nocturnal shadows and noxious smoke. Slovenian actress Ita Rina, best known for her role in Erotikon, does a great job of portraying the protagonist trapped in the evil shadows of Prague. Director Karl Anton employs tropes of German Expressionism and French Impressionism in his visual arsenal, creating a melodrama with surprising emotional reach.

PERFUMED NIGHTMARE (PHILIPPINES/1977/KIDLAT TAHIMIK)

Partly autobiographical, this peculiar independent film from the Philippines reflects on the American influence during the occupation, suggesting where it has benefited his town and where the illusion of goodness is soon to give way. Director Kidlat Tahimik plays a version of himself, a young jeepney driver obsessed with his transistor radio. An avid follower of the Voice of America broadcasting service, Kidlat is heavily seduced by this voice of an apparent higher power, and occupies himself with the dream of being part of the developed world. When he is offered the opportunity to move to Paris, he accepts almost instantly, and soon learns that the Western world operates on more than the icons he had grown up with.

Unapologetically experimental in his storytelling, Tahimik works without any strong semblance of rhythm or pace – pieces of music begin and then are abruptly stopped before the next scene. Dubbing is similarly amateurish, with Tahimik’s character providing a partly diegetic commentary which brings to mind underground filmmakers. This is not to simplify Tahimik’s intellectual goal – if anything, the uneven shooting style and use of bricolage clarify his point, implying that his cinematic voice is an imbalanced compromise as a result of colonialism. Tahimik makes frequent use of visual and verbal puns – the motif of chewing gum plays a metaphorical role, painting the American influence as a fleeting fancy. Perfumed Nightmare lacks the rigour of other post-colonial films such as Soleil Ô, but the personal angle makes this film all the more charming.

A LOVE LETTER TO MY COUNTRY (RWANDA/2006/THIERRY DUSHIMIRIMANA)

Set in post-genocide Rwanda, A Love Letter To My Country follows the burgeoning romance between a Tutsi girl and Hutu man, whose lives have undergone vastly different changes as a result of the senseless mass murder. After a particularly impassioned performance in the local choir, Martha is singled out by choirmaster Rukundo, who hopes to get to know her better through a series of dates. When the couple finally get a chance to talk intimately, each reveals their background. Martha has lost almost all of her family to the genocide, while Rukundo was a conscientious objector to his family’s participation in the murders. The relationship endures tribulations as the pair’s families revive old prejudices.

The strength in the film is in not revealing the differences between Martha and Rukundo immediately – on face value, the two are able to get along without issue. Themes of unity prevail throughout the film, although often these are presented as illusions, and the open ending serves only to suggest that there are still repercussions of discrimination. The film is utterly absorbing at moments – some great acting in the scene where Rukundo’s family express their distrust of Tutsi makes for compelling viewing – but there are several flaws which keep the film from achieving its goal fully. Martha and Rukundo’s relationship happens quicker than the audience can fathom, and the film suffers from a few distracting technical shortcomings. Nonetheless, A Love Letter To My Country has great intentions and hopefully augurs well for the Rwandan film industry.

THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS (GERMANY/1971/RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER)

Freshly returned from a stint in the French Foreign Legion, Hans takes on a lowlier job as a fruit merchant, working under the constant henpecking of his sensible wife Irmgard. An incident involving a past love spurs Hans into a sad routine of nostalgia and self-destruction, punctuated by frequent trips to the bar where he tells anyone who will listen about his former career as a policeman. When Irmgard pushes him too far one night, Hans flips and attacks her with a chair, and the subsequent argument leads to Hans suffering a violent heart attack. The relationship is turned on its head as Irmgard has an affair during Hans’ hospitalisation, raising the ugly issue of trust once again.

The Merchant of Four Seasons marks an evolution in Fassbinder’s style, although vestiges of his sarcastic sense of humour are still palpable. Neither Hans nor Irmgard is a particularly sympathetic character, but their tempestuous relationship is what holds the film together. On the surface the film could be Fassbinder’s twist on the fairy tale, Hans playing a stubby ogre to Irmgard’s svelte princess – at one point Irmgard amuses herself by telling Hans she only really fell for him because of him comical appearance. Indeed the film itself works best as an awkward comedy, despite its serious themes and depressing dénouements. The Merchant of Four Seasons is somewhat reminiscent of Fassbinder’s earlier Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? in its impatient editing, but occasional flashbacks and stronger characterisation allow the viewer enough access.

THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA (PORTUGAL/2010/MANOEL DE OLIVEIRA)

Isaac works as a photographer whose role it is to take the ‘final’ pictures of people’s loved ones. Having been hired by a particularly wealthy family to photograph the body of the recently married Angélica, Isaac finds himself inappropriately fixated on the resultant images. As he attempts to return to normality, heading to vineyards to photograph the local workers, Isaac is constantly haunted by the image of this beautiful woman he never knew. His behaviour grows more erratic, and an unfortunate episode during one of his photography expeditions confirms the extent of his manic infatuation.

This being the latest film of many by prolific 102-year-old director Manoel de Oliveira, The Strange Case of Angelica is evidence of a well-lived career in film. De Oliveira establishes mood magnificently, the first ten minutes of the film dominated by the sound and presence of nighttime rain, and a plot about photography gives a great excuse for some superb images of the Douro countryside. With the collaboration of cinematographer Sabine Lancelin, who has lensed several of his productions, de Oliveira composes each scene like a tableau, restricting movement to maintain the illusion of a painting come to life. Disappointingly, as with several of the director’s most recent pictures, Angelica is too stoical to convince emotionally, especially in the film’s fantastical moments – for example, Isaac’s imagined meeting with Angélica comes off more farcical than magical. Though not totally devoid of enjoyment, Angelica requires considerable patience, and the third act is likely to leave one wanting.

BED OF PROCUST (MOLDOVA/2001/VIORICA MESINA, SERGIU PRODAN)

Based on the Camil Petrescu novel of the same name, Bed of Procust concerns a romantic relationship in 1920s Bucharest. Fred pursues a liaison with the vivacious Emilia, but an eventful night together has them lying together in bed, reminiscing about past loves and hidden truths. Fred, reading through love letters, recalls his romance with a young socialite named Madame T, an archetype of femininity, and through flashbacks we see what he gave up for love. Emilia looks back on her time with the deceased Ladima, an old friend of Fred’s, and remembers their incompatibility, and we also learn of her tendency towards promiscuity. In trying to recapture the past, Fred and Emilia are forced to reflect on the future of their current relationship.

With a premise that keeps its two protagonists in a bed for the present time, relating the story through vignettes, Bed of Procust expects a lot from its cast. Thankfully Petru Vutcarau and Tania Popa fulfil their roles as the protagonists, but it is Maia Morgenstern as the seductive Madame T who steals the show, her performance and image channelling the actresses of yesteryear. With the theme of love and romance repeating through the film, it gets a bit cloying at times, sentimental even, but there is a straightness to the whole product that keeps each memory relevant. Full credit must go to husband-and-wife directing team Viorica Mesina and Sergiu Prodan who, in their only film project, do a great job of bringing literature to screen.

LOS OLVIDADOS (MEXICO/1950/LUIS BUÑUEL)

Set in the unforgiving landscape of an impoverished barrio in Mexico City, Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados places focus on the lives of children forgotten by society, and the interpersonal relationships they form in order to survive. Jaibo, a teenager well respected by many of the younger local kids, escapes from a correctional facility and enlists the assistance of his friend Pedro to get revenge on those who wronged him. Feeling that his involvement has sent him in the wrong direction, he elects to repair his relationship with his mother, but his connection to Jaibo threatens to draw him permanently into the life of a downtrodden street urchin.

Though an uncharacteristic film for Buñuel, Los Olvidados manages to balance a serious portrayal of real life with warming moments of surrealism, manifest in a dream that Pedro has of the boy that he and Jaibo kill. In setting the scene, Buñuel strongly gets across the idea that these children have had to band together out of circumstance, and Pedro’s active desire to leave this life behind make him seem more mature than even the oldest of the street urchins. Buñuel’s psychological investment in his characters allows the film to serve as an ethnological document as well as a gripping twist on the crime genre without trivialising the subject matter. With its focus on the precocious development of children, Los Olvidados is a remarkably timeless feature (the relevance of which will scarcely diminish), and would make a brilliant double feature with Forbidden Games.

BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE (GERMANY/1971/RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER)

In an instance of comic self-reflexivity, prolific director Rainer Werner Fassbinder uses Beware of a Holy Whore to lampoon his career as a filmmaker, specifically reflecting on his time making surreal western Whity. Lou Castel plays the director of a project set in Spain which appears to be stuck at the point of no return. We first join the crew as they congregate in the lobby of a hotel, chain drinking and flirting as they wait for the director to turn up so the shoot can start. When he finally arrives (escorted from a helicopter no less), he is less than impressed with the location and proceeds to shout down to anyone who dares challenge him, revealing a whole network of relationships between cast and crew members, emotional and sexual.

Beware of a Holy Whore is said to have been the film Fassbinder regarded as his best, and if one knows the rest of his work, its importance is obvious. Casting himself as the short-fused production manager Sascha, rather than the despotic director, is perhaps for cathartic purposes, allowing him to experience his own megalomania from the perspective of one of his ‘subjects’. The film references several of Fassbinder’s earlier films – the overwhelming sexual tensions and discussion of community living come straight from Katzelmacher – but there’s enough in this film to keep the uninitiated entertained. With its sarcastic exaggeration of film relationships and awkward theatrical flare, Beware of a Holy Whore is a perfect introduction to the work of Fassbinder.

BESIEGED (PORTUGAL/1970/ANTÓNIO DA CUNHA TELLES)

After splitting from her patronising, abusive husband for the married American Bob, Marta slowly comes to terms with the concept of freedom. Her newly-formed illicit relationship with Bob at first appears to give her everything she needs, even an apartment which Bob pays for. In an attempt to further liberate herself, she has flings with a photographer, whom she encounters during a modelling shoot, and a drug-dealing bad boy who perhaps leads her the furthest astray. Before long, she is once again left picking up the pieces of her own life, as well as those of others.

A wistful tale of anomie in a metropolitanised Europe, Besieged is a key film of the Cinema Novo, Portugal’s own take on post-war neorealism. The film often echoes early Polanski and Cassavetes, and it’s safe to say the males in the film don’t come off particularly favourably – the title and opening credits refer to a siege of manipulative men. Consistently androgynous with her cropped hair and schoolgirl skirts, Marta is a tragic figure whose constructed happy-go-lucky image, occasionally recalling the starlets of the French New Wave, belies her status as a lost woman. Unfortunately, given how much of the film rests on her story, Marta isn’t a particularly sympathetic character, her twists and turns led more by disillusionment with her current state than a genuine desire to create a new life for herself. Simplistic sound design becomes distracting when less is heard than seen, but the film does feature some magnificent vérité photography.

TRAVELLING ACTORS (JAPAN/1940/MIKIO NARUSE)

Hyoroku and Senpei are two actors whose ‘big break’ comes in the form of a role as the front and back halves of a horse in a baffling pantomime production. Despite the relative unimportance of their role, the two men are desperate to prove their mettle, discussing their trade as if they were revered professionals and showing off to geishas. When their theatre manager books in a live horse in their place for a performance in a rural area, the show becomes a bigger hit than expected, and the actors are informed that they will soon be replaced. Beaten at their own game by an animal, the men are left to fight a battle for their self-esteem.

Sharing the same playful but sincere comedy as Mikio Naruse’s earlier Wife, Be Like A Rose! , Travelling Actors is a gentle meditation on serious issues. Though ostensibly a comedy, it is clear that Naruse has a motive in championing these hack actors over the locally conscripted soldiers. The men’s role as the horse appears to consist simply of resisting the instruction of the owner, an act tirelessly portrayed performance after performance. This by extension is Naruse’s own conscientious objection, and an attempt to underline the importance on the arts in reflecting a nation’s status. Naruse occasionally throws in a shot of the men’s legs, as if to remind us that this is all the audience sees of them, whereas of course we as a film audience witness much more. A minor treat.

SINCERITY (JAPAN/1939/MIKIO NARUSE)

A subtly complex story about class values in Japan, Sincerity concerns the friendship of two schoolgirls from different backgrounds. Nobuko lives with her parents in a lavish, state-of-the-art house where she is given what she wants, while Tomiko shares a very modest house with her seamstress mother Tsutako, the father figure noticeably absent. When Nobuko gets a middling report card, her mother consults the teacher who advises her to take after Tsutako’s style of raising a child. As the teacher continues his favouritism towards Tomiko, Nobuko’s father loses his temper and before long, a devastating secret is revealed that could destroy both families.

At little over an hour, it’s not the most memorable of films and is unlikely to ever sit amongst Japanese classics, but Sincerity is nonetheless an interesting slice of drama with a timeless social dilemma at its heart. All of the characters in Sincerity are given a fair amount of screentime as the problem here affects everyone. Intimate close-ups, as in Naruse’s earlier Avalanche, echo the intensity of emotions. Playing against type, the strongest of Naruse’s characters are the two children, Nobuko and Tomiko, whose insistent questioning about the structure of family drive the narrative through its peaks and troughs – in fact, the girls appear to understand a little too much about relationships given their age for the story to be completely convincing. Perhaps most notable about the film is that the war context becomes little more than a plot detail in the context of family values.

ENTER THE VOID (FRANCE/2009/GASPAR NOÉ)

After the boundary-pushing histrionics of Irréversible, many questioned what exactly Gaspar Noé could do next in an attempt to outdo himself. As a result, his latest project Enter The Void has been hyped to an almost embarrassing degree, with themes of drug addiction and spirituality promising an intense display of zeitgeist. Expatriate drug dealer Oscar lives with his pole dancer sister Linda in a flat in Tokyo. On what appears to be a slow evening at a bar, Oscar is shot by the police, and the story takes a turn as he becomes a floating ghost, able to see but not interact with the world around him. In this spirit form, Oscar seeks to fulfil his childhood promise – to protect Linda from evil.

Although it’s shot entirely from Oscar’s point of view, Noé keeps a lot of the film on the surface, and he frequently repeats symbols as if to remind the audience that this film has profundity. Oscar mentions the Tibetan Book of the Dead, before sinking into a DMT-induced hallucination evoking mandalas. A memory-led narrative full of potential becomes worryingly simplistic with lines like “I promise I’ll never ever leave you”. As proven in Irréversible, Noé knows how to play with his audience, and one must applaud him for some of what he manages to put on screen, but where he might have conceived of his film as a sugary pill designed to cure cinema’s ailments, one can’t help but feel this is little more than a placebo.

PRISON (SWEDEN/1949/INGMAR BERGMAN)

It is perhaps very fitting that the first film that Ingmar Bergman made from his own script was a meta-referencial, existential study of good and evil. Shot on a minute budget for the time, Prison follows Martin, a director whose life is changed by a suggestion made by his old maths teacher during a meal – life on Earth is Hell. Martin delights in amusing his friends with the idea, but decides to use it as the basis of a film project. The film then essentially begins again, and it soon becomes clear that we are now viewing the director’s project, both on and off screen. As Martin and his friends experience existential crises, their own lives begin to mirror the filmic hell that Martin is striving so hard to recreate.

Laden with verbal and visual puns alike, Prison is an unusual early exercise in recursive filmmaking, bolstered by a decent cast and cinematography. At moments, one might even be led to believe this is some modern film experiment riffing sarcastically on forties cinema. But as interesting a concept as the film presents, it isn’t in and of itself a significant film, besides manifesting the emergence of Bergman’s style. It’s almost as if Bergman created the meta-film element as an excuse to explore the histrionic potential of photography, and the title itself may have been a reference to his experience of working for studios. Watch out for the Méliès-style short film (later seen in Persona), which confusingly sits inside the film-within-a-film.

INLAND (ALGERIA/2008/TARIQ TEGUIA)

While on a mission to provide electricity in a deserted area of west Algeria, topographer Malek discovers a community damaged by the religious intolerance of Islamic extremists. After encountering many of the local representatives, ranging from policemen to shepherds, Malek realises that the task at hand involves repairing more than just electricity. Over the course of a few evenings, Malek finds himself awoken by explosions, said to be cicadas landing on mines in the area, but a daytime investigation reveals another issue – refugees. When one woman attempts to hide out in Malek’s base camp, she unexpectedly draws him into a wild journey across the country, driven only by a desire to be lost and forgotten. The film is punctuated by darkly lit flashbacks to debates about class division and society’s priorities,

What grabs you immediately about Inland is the soundtrack, ranging from Afrobeat and raï to ambient electronica and indie rock. But although the diverse musical choices each add their own touch to the film, its most powerful moments are those which approach silence, a neat contrast with the wordy evening debates which sit awkwardly between scenes. The film eschews aesthetic complexity in favour of a more direct, realist approach – one particularly strong shot takes the journey of a train, inviting the viewer to survey and assess the landscape as is Malek’s responsibility. Reminiscent of Waiting For Happiness, Touki Bouki and even the exoticism of Woman of the Dunes, Inland is a bold drama with a subtle yet seductive rhythm.

PIONEERS IN INGOLSTADT (GERMANY/1971/RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER)

The first of Fassbinder’s films to receive significant critical attention, Pioneers In Ingolstadt concerns the construction of a bridge in a German village, spearheaded by a select group of soldiers. Our protagonist of sorts – the story jumps between various characters – is Berta, a reserved young woman who falls almost instantly for a soldier named Karl. Unlike her vampish friend Alma, Berta struggles with sexuality, and her romantic manner jars with Karl’s impatience. Alma, on the other hand, is content to manipulate the men to feed her desires, and by her own assertions is ‘well-liked’ by the visiting soldiers. Before long, the task at hand is forgotten in a long weekend of debauchery.

The film is an adaptation of a play by Marieluise Fleißer, and carries much of the expected theatricality in its mise-en-scène. Fassbinder’s angle on the play is led by gender stereotypes, and he uses his burgeoning film style to experiment with these conventions. The soldiers’ presence in the town is seen as intrusive, almost unwanted, but charged with erotic potential. Men are simultaneously portrayed as heroes and beasts, lycanthropes whose desires get the better of them at night, while the women’s envy is borderline Freudian. The bridge, too short to necessitate much attention, provides a symbol for the relation between the military and small-town Germany, while another motif, a moonlit park bench, provides a setting for various dalliances, sexual and romantic. It might not be a classic, but Pioneers In Ingolstadt is vital viewing for the Fassbinder fanatic.