The Furniture: Leering Through Querelle's Erotic Architecture

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

by Daniel Walber 

The films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, though they are many and varied, almost always have striking production design. The obvious examples include the ‘70s scifi chic of World on a Wire and the opulent apartment of Petra von Kant, but it's true of his whole catalogue. The design of Querelle is as bold as it is aroused. And as of this week it’s new to FilmStruck, a place where you can find tons of design classics (like La Ronde and Great Expectations, two of my favorites).

Querelle got terrible reviews when it opened in 1982. It’s often considered an oddity of excess at the end of a career built on precision, an oversexed and underwritten mess with little to say and too much to show. 

That’s nonsense. Sure, it's a lot, including the work of production designer Rolf Zehetbauer and art director Walter Richarz. But what most of the reviews seem to have missed is that Querelle isn’t just about sex. It’s about power, and the way that sex between men can be as much an exchange of control as it is an exchange of fluids.

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Michael Ballhaus (1935-2017)

by Nathaniel R

It is with great sadness that we share the news of the passing of German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus. The 81 year old artist was a crucial figure in making me the movie maniac that I am today. Michelle Pfeiffer on the piano top in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) -- hell the entire movie -- being a defining image in my life, after which I went from enthusiastic regular moviegoer to celluloid-devouring obsessive.

Ballhaus had retired after Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006) making only one German movie in the last decade of his life and we had hoped each year that he'd be announced as an Honorary Oscar recipient. His three scant nominations -- The Fabulous Baker Boys, Broadcast News, and Gangs of New York -- do no justice to his long and gorgeous career. That's because they don't feel representative of his career as a whole and because, apart from his crowning glory (Baker Boys -- which ought to have walked away with Cinematography in just about any year, let alone 1989) aren't even his best work.

Ballhaus and Fassbinder worked together all through the 70s

Ballhaus got his start as a young man of 24 in German television but quickly graduated to features...

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Linky Pudding

Buzzfeed It's official Will & Grace (& Karen & Jack) is returning to NBC for a ninth season. The series ended on May 18th, 2006 over 10 years ago but their recent one-off election special got everyone excited again. 
AV Club supposedly that long hinted at Eastern Promises sequel will start shooting in only two months and supposedly Viggo Mortensen and Vincent Cassell will return. We'll believe this when I see it but would be happy to do so
Criterion Ira Sachs on Rainer Werner Fassbinder's classic Fox and His Friends

Arnaud Trouvé offers up César nomination predictions. If you can read French you'll enjoy it more
THR It's Octavia Spencer for "Woman of the Year" and Ryan Reynolds for "Man of the Year" at Harvard's annual Hasty Puddings celebration. Someone cast them in a rom-com together!
Coming Soon Sony Pictures Animation slate to come from The Smurfs onward
About Last Night a long lost interview/profile of Mikhail Baryshnikov from 1998. Just because! 
Boy Culture Betty White interviewed for her 95th birthday this week
Paste Manuel on One Day at a Time's successful resuscitation of the theater/tv hybrid of the multi-cam sitcom
Decider in Joe Reid's new Oscar column he talks to me about three Oscar races: Actress, Director, and Supporting Actor. Here's an excerpt:

My fantasy is that Ralph Fiennes, easily the single most Oscar-worthy actor who can’t seem to ever catch Oscar’s eye, is nomination morning’s biggest shock for A Bigger Splash. The key word in that sentence being “fantasy”.

Best Shot(s): The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972)

Hit Me With Your Best Shot
Season 7 Episode 16

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
Written and Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus 

When you watch a lot of movies you inadvertently end up drawing comparisons between films that you wouldn't have thought to put in conversation previously. It's as if you've accidentally become a guest programmer of a repertory theater or a local festival. Such was the case this week when I (not intentionally) watched Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) and The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972) nearly back to back and shook my fists to the heavens and cursed the name of anyone who ever regurgitated the lie that you have to "open up" stage plays to make them work on screen. 

Tears. not totally bitter yet but she's getting there.

Sometimes half the power of a text is in its site-specific constriction. So I went from George & Martha's messy drab campus housing with a bar (or at least its contents) in every room, to the stylish studio apartment of fashion designer Petra Von Kant which was paradoxically both over-decorated and minimalist, and both frozen in place and ever-shifting without explanation (Wasn't the bed over there in the last scene? Can these mannequins move around the room at will like the toys in Pixar movies?). I loved every second of both films and especially, perhaps paradoxically for someone who prefers short movies, the foreboding sense that there was no way to exit either film, ever, unless you accepted your fate and drowned in their contagious neuroses.

All it takes to make a play cinematic when it becomes a movie is great filmmakers. That's it. That's the whole formula...

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Links

Vanity Fair "Introducing Caitlyn Jenner" Annie Liebovitz's great photo of Caitlyn (née Bruce) is all the rage on the internet today. Vanity Fair's cover story will be 22 pages in print form
VF Tumblr also has behind the photoshoot footage
Awards Daily wonders what the Academy's documentary branch will do about the new New York Times policy -- previously their policy was to review every single movie that opened in New York City
In Contention the screenwrite of Grace of Monaco live tweets it to "correct" the record
You Must Remember This I'm so behind on this podcast which is typically great and educational about Old Hollywood -- the latest episode is about the Manson Murders in Hollywood but don't let a ton of "Star Wars" titled episodes fool you. It's not Lucas's space opera but 40s-era stories about stars during wartime
The Film Stage looks at the 10 favorite films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder which include Johnny Guitar and Salo, or: The 120 Days of Sodom; sounds about right! The prolific gay auteur would have  been 70 this week

The AV Club with some funny news: E.L. James will basically rewrite 50 Shades of Grey to make more money oh and to tell things from Christian's perspective.
Variety bummer news: Sofia Coppola stepping off the director's chair for The Little Mermaid
The Stake urges you to remember that Point Break (1991) is "tremendous" before you see the inevitably terrible remake - while on that topic...
RedBubble has a cool graphic poster of that movie for sale
The Playlist a new tearjerker project for Channing Tatum, Two Kisses for Maddy about a widower raising his daughter 
Cinematic Corner falls hard for Furiousa and Mad Max Fury Road
Reel Talk thinks we need to start taking Nicholas Hoult seriously (as do I post Fury Road... though I was far less convinced previously)
CineMunch wonders who your favorite drunk actresses are on their latest podcast -- with gin drink recipes!
CHUD great new poster for the final Hunger Games movie. Those movies are dull but I will give them this: they've always had wonderful smarts about the teasing
MNPP's quote of the day reveals two Stephen King properties that the studios actually don't want. Weird
MNPP gets excited like Chris Pratt for Jurassic World 

Tweet o' The Week
Squarespace no longer seems to allow tweet embeds -- they say they do but they never show up at TFE anymore so this is a snapshot of a tweet from the ubiquitous Jessica Chastain herself. (About the formerly ubiquitous Bryce Dallas Howard). It is wonderful. Gingers forever.

Showtune to Go!
June is Pride Month and with Caitlyn Jenner kicking things off with that Vanity Fair reveal today let's go back to one of the most moving original gay anthems "I Am What I Am" from La Cage Aux Folles. It's only one of the greatest songs ever written about being true to yourself. (I adore that moment at the beach in Paris is Burning when the two ladies start singing it).

Sing out, John Barrowman!