First post an old article of mine titled "First Acquaintance with Fassbinder" -
...... Before seeing Fassbinder's films, I had long heard of the myth of Fassbinder, a new German film ghost who had only lived for 37 years and had written and directed 42 films and almost all of them were evocative masterpieces, and his creative power was simply incredible.
Such a master, who thought that he must at least be a young man with a wise face, but in fact he is a lonely big boy with a moody and chaotic life, and his face is often hung with a decadent rogue face.
Judging from the written materials I have come into contact with, Fassbinder should have taken a completely realistic path, and his concern for the fate of man transcended everything.
I've heard that artists have to experience life first, but I don't know when Fassbinder uses to experience life.
Fassbinder's first shock came from The Marriage of Mary Brown, a film that won the Silver Bear at the 1980 Berlin Film Festival, which ostensibly explores marriage and love, but deeply reveals the endurance and emotional sacrifice of women in the national renaissance of post-war Germany.
Returning from the war, Herman discovers that his wife Mary has an affair with an American soldier, and during the dispute Mary accidentally kills the soldier, because of love, Herman imprisons Mary for Mary, and because of love and forced to make a living, Mary becomes the capitalist Oswa's assistant and mistress.
Fassbinder has been reminding the audience that although Mary has always had an advantage in this conditional relationship, she cannot break through the net of love after all.
When Oswa died of illness and returned to Canada after his release from prison, and when Mary could theoretically re-enter the arms of marriage, she found that the two men had once had an agreement, and Herman could never appear in front of Mary during Oswa's lifetime, so he could receive half of Oswa's inheritance - Mary was originally just a pawn on a chess game between two men.
At this point, we can probably understand Fassbinder's definition of love, "love is the most sophisticated, cunning, and effective tool of social oppression."
I have to say the wonderful ending of the film, Herman is listening to the 1954 World Cup West German vs Hungary final live, Oswa's lawyer knocks on the door, Mary goes to make coffee, listens to the will to send away the guests, re-dressed and shiny Mary lights a cigarette in the kitchen, and suddenly the house explodes and collapses, reminiscent of the hasty wedding of Mary and Herman in the bombing at the beginning of the film.
Ironically, the explosion at the end did not mask the live commentary on the radio cheering Germany's first World Cup, which showed photographs of the post-war West German chancellors — as if Mary's tragedy was no longer her personal tragedy, but Fassbinder's reflection on the entire post-war German society in the transition period.
To this day I still wonder, is Mary's failure to turn off the gas intentional or unintentional? According to the record of the book "The World of Fassbinder" by Guangxi Normal University Publishing House, the original arrangement in the script was that Mary and his wife were killed in a car accident while driving out, and it was changed to this ambiguous ending during filming.
Fassbinder's film scenes are slightly simple and monotonous, and it can be seen that they are all small productions, and I have seen Fear in Fear, Deep Grudge and Beware of the Holy that I have seen successively, but what is attractive about them is that almost every moment, there is a suppressed emotion that comes out and grasps people's hearts...
Over the years, watching this film, I have watched it dozens of times, and I have watched most of Fassbinder's films, only to find that this film is really my favorite, which is an example of Fassbinder's honest storytelling and success, although on the outside it has a melodrama packaging, but the film's subtle meaning, I think it is at the top of all his works, almost this is also one of the greatest German post-war films.
Two years ago, I had a deep interpretation of this film in my own unpublished manuscript, and originally planned to take it and the textbooks of the Beijing Film Academy to PK, it is said that in that college, the analysis of this film is one of the courses of undergraduates, I would like to know what the perspective of expert authority is, is it not that academics are the public instruments of the world? But I have been busy on the Internet for a long time, and I still can't get the authoritative comments of the North Film Version.
Let's talk a little bit off-topic. This film has been broadcast on CCTV6, CCTV's dubbing is not to say, the key is that CCTV's dubbing wasted the climactic scene at the end of the film, why? Because the scene at the end of Mary and Herman's broken mirror has always had the radio commentary of the World Cup final as the background, when the explosion happened to be when Germany won the championship, the film used this moment to replace the post-war revival of the Federal Republic of Germany (economically), but because of the dubbing, it was necessary to take away the radio commentary and the sound of the character dialogue together with the dull Chinese, CCTV's translation director probably realized this problem, so he also re-matched the live sound of a football game. I guess it's a voiceover from an unanswered audience in the Chinese A-League, but what does that mean for the film? It is better to play subtitles without sound, that kind of dubbing is a serious castration of the film's information.