Interview: Christian Petzold on 'Transit', melodramas and the influence of Fassbinder and Ackerman

by Murtada Elfadl

Transit, opening this weekend in limited release, is the latest from the gifted German director Christian Petzold (Barbara, Phoenix). It is a haunting modern day adaptation of Anna Seghers 1942 novel "Transit Visa". The film stars Franz Rogowski (Happy End) and Paula Beer (Never Look Away, Frantz) as would-be lovers desperate to escape an occupied France. We got a chance to interview Petzold in January when he visited New York for a retrospective of his work by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. When we meet he informs us that he’s been up for more than 24 hours because of a flight delay, so he might struggle to find the words in English. But that's not what happens. There’s a translator but she only chimes in a couple of times in our half hour conversation. Perhaps delirious from no sleep, he’s in the mood to talk.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity...

Murtada Elfadl: How did you come to the decision to clash the contemporary setting with the period story. Can you talk about the choice for that dissonance?

CHRISTIAN PETZOLD: I started to write the script as a typical period picture, everything was set in 1942. I was with my son on a father / son journey through California and the writing was coming easy to me --  everything going well is not a good sign. My Mac notebook was destroyed by the sun when I left in the car. I didn't have any back ups. Actually I was relieved that everything was destroyed. Period pictures are mostly museum pictures as if you are going on a journey to old times, you get to see Sherlock Holmes or Keira Knightley in costume. I thought I’d have to cast Ben Kingsley in my movie...

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Jennifer Jones Centennial: Cluny Brown (1946)

For the Centennial of one of Oscar's largely forgotten superstars, we asked Team Experience to pick one of her films to watch. 

by Paolo Kagoaoan

We’ve done centennials here before but this one comes with some degrees of difficulty. It doesn’t help that someone changed her name from Phylis Lee Isley into the whitest name in the world, and that the person who gets more Google results for that name is a curler. As a Canadian I can’t say anything bad about curling, but shouldn't a Best Actress Academy Award winner be on at least equal standing to a Gold medallist? Look up all the women who have had five Oscar nominations and a win (Bancroft, Sarandon, Hepburn, Maclaine, etc...) and imagine the world forgetting them. Explaining Jones to friends is equally difficult, even to people in the film industry who know her second husband's name, David O. Selznick.

I’d only previously seen Jones in Beat the Devil, a terrible dengue fever dream of a film. And it’s on TV all time instead of films with better reputations like Portrait of Jennie, which is her highest rated film on both iMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. Or Cluny Brown, her film with the highest rating on Letterboxd, and one that also came out the same year as Duel in the Sun (the film that brough her her 4th conseuctive Best Actress nomination) so that's what I picked to watch... 

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Nathaniel's "Extra" Prizes: Musical Moments, Action Sequences, and Best Endings

As the Oscar aftermath is just about over, we return you to the in-progress Film Bitch Awards. We hate to not be done with these before the Oscars - argh - but these things happen. We'll finish up soon as there's now just 5 (gulp) categories left. 

Scene Awards
Musical moments, thrilling action sequences, opening scenes and great endings, and the like. There's lots to reminisce about but obviously there are spoilers for some 2018 scenes, particularly given the "endings" category. Films honored include but are not limited to: Ant-Man and the Wasp, The Children Act, Cold War, Eighth Grade, Isle of Dogs, Old Man and the Gun, Paddington 2, Vice, and You Were Never Really Here. Check it out.

20 More Oscar Lewks

We couldn't leave Oscar week without a final red carpet posting. Herewith 20 more gowns (well, looks... a few women wore pants) to gawk out... from the non-nominees this time and with a few comments thrown in. Who was your Favourite?

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Reader Polling Results

by Nathaniel R

So each year we poll you on who you'd like to see take the Oscars (among their nominees of course, which are obviously different than who you may want to see up for the prizes each year) and after a month of voting here's how you responded. You can look up the individual charts on each Oscar page if you so desire to see a fuller breakdown but your collective vote went like so if you're curious, and we hope you are. The eventual Oscar winners were usually either your winner or your runner up but I was personally surprised by a few of the polls...

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