Love Is Colder Than Death is Fassbinder's first long film, and there are many elements of genius in it that are worth perusing. For him, a wall, a carpet, and a person can shoot a scene, laying out the relationship between the characters in a fixed small space, maximizing restraint and repression. Whether in real spaces like houses, cafes, malls, banks, or open scenes like streets, wildernesses, or even a wall, Fassbinder is good at fixing all the spaces, just like the door frames and rearview mirrors under his lens, the characters walk in and out of a given area, stepping on a rhythmic pace, mechanical and cold.
This debut film has a shadow of the New Wave, but also has Fassbinder's strong personal style, and there are two long shots in the film that impress me very much, the first is a two-and-a-half-minute-long panning shot, Bruno driving to Munich to find Franz, the camera follows his car through the dark of Munich, through the streets, the building is full of graffiti, like another form of shouting, in the middle of the beating electronic plucking music, slightly eerie presentation of the dark urban mystery. The same theme melody appears in another scene of Bruno driving, when he drives a stolen car to the outskirts to deal with a man who is accidentally knocked unconscious by them.
The second long shot is also close to two and a half minutes, and the three men are still walking side by side on the sidewalk after killing the Turk. Fassbinder uses this long shot of only three people walking to show the seemingly idle but actually very complicated feelings of the three people, and what he does is actually pulling himself on a road of no return, going farther and farther on the road of light. The poor, prostitutes, pimps, gamblers, fugitives... These people try their best as if they are more determined than anyone else to do something, but the wrong behavior can only pull themselves into the vortex of doom. In addition, Franz's dispatch when he was interrogated at the police station was also very exciting, the semi-frosted translucent glass behind him was faintly about other people walking around, the sheriff paced in the foreground to tell the ins and outs of the case, and the camera followed the characters to the left to the bottom and then continued to follow up to the right, back and forth twice, back to the middle scene, followed by a close-up of the two people. Fassbinder seems to be very good at using this extreme deliberateness to represent the living conditions of the people at the bottom.
In the film, if love is used as a yardstick, the relationship between these three people is very delicate. Franz because Joanna resolutely returned to Munich, but can share Joanna generously with Bruno, Bruno risked waiting in front of the police station for Franz who was released on bail, the background music of the scene where Joanna and Bruno went to the supermarket together has a temperature, but she said that Bruno could not attract herself physically, Bruno heard the instructions from her superiors to get rid of Joanna, Bruno coldly replied OK, and finally Joanna called the police to arrest Bruno, and Franz, who learned the truth, scolded Joanna as a slut. For them, it is more about demand and mutual use, talking about love is too vain, too sticky, and even a little ridiculous, compared with love, death with hot blood will appear more warm.
Fassbinder once had the same experience as in the movie story, he was a pimp, a bisexual, accustomed to lies and betrayals between people, desire and abandonment, silent madness and hysteria, the first work brought to people by this evil genius can be said to be qualified, although the first screening was mixed, but many of the elements in it are still very intriguing, may be influenced by German dramas, such as a group of people holding blankets and sleeping directly on the ground, The design of three people stealing sunglasses in a department store is somewhat contrived, but it is also ingenious.
© Original 丨 Article Copyright: Snapshot Brief
Please do not reprint in any form without authorization