Al di là del bene e del male

This is the second part of The German Trilogy directed by Liliana Cavani (the last one is "Berlin Affair"). In "Night Porter" she described connection between perversion and fascism. This time Cavani described life of Friedrich Nietzsche - great, German philosopher, who declared "Death of God" and wrote such famous books as "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" and "Beyond Good and Evil". Film focused on love, bisexsual triangle between Nietzsche (Bergman's actor Erland Josephson),his friend Paul Ree (Powell)and Lou Salome (Sanda). Like in "Night Porter" film is full of strong, violent sequences (homosexual rape, scatology etc.) but in the other hand it contains the main ideas of Nietzsche philosophy, clearly transformed into feministic discourse (woman as Superman beyond Good and Evil). Recommended for intellectuals with nerves of iron.

Briefly, this film is a historical fiasco because there is no known historical sources, and is not only incoherent but rather deliberately distorts even the most indisputable facts, such as dates and so on.

I can add that the fantasy erotic scenes that fill this ridiculous film are likely to captivate the attention of the mass audience, but make a huge disgrace to the memory of the German thinker and his two companions of intellectual adventure, in first place. It is painful to note so little interest to base this story on facts rather than daring to invent so many situations that are unimaginable. The most obvious example -aside creative liberties, all associated with a simply incredible sexual frenzy-, it may be recalled that Nietzsche stopped seeing Salome in 1884, while he had his breakdown, which resulted from that moment in madness, only in 1888. Suffice it.

Pardon my language, but I do not speak much English.

Less a Biography than a bizarre and fantastical depiction of a portion of three real people's lives. To say this represents the thoughts, ideas and writings of Nietzsche is to ridicule him and his two fellow travellers Lou Andreas-Salome and Paul Ree. Their love triangle of personal and sexual freedom is, in this film, one of emotional slavery, loveless lust and jealousy. Misery and loss rule. The only deep understanding I get from this movie is that it sides with religious conservatism. In other words, Nietzsche suffered from the wages of sin. He was a drug addled, diseased fool and his rejection of religion whilst embracing sexual freedom caused a swift and vicious reprisal from god. It wouldn't have five stars if it weren't for the good acting.

The film tells the story of the "ménage à trois" between Nietzsche, Paul Rée and Lou Salome, the beautiful woman they both were desperately in love with - Nietzsche proposed to her three times, being turned down every time, as she preferred friendship. Nevertheless she agreed to live with them both, having them both as lovers, which of course could end in no other way but badly. Still, these were the most important years of Nietzsche, during which he wrote his major works, and after the break with Paul Rée and Salome, his life was more or less finished, writing a few more books that found no readers and then suffering a total collapse, possibly the consequence of much abuse of both opium and sex of all kinds - Wagner said that he attracted syphilis from visitng too many gay brothels in Genoa. Paul Rée became a doctor and died att 52 in an accident in the Alps - in the film he dies being raped to death by homosexualls, which couldn't be more wrong.

That's the default of the film. It wallows in sexual exaggerations, which is totally unnecessary and only drags the film down in baseness, posthumously humiliating Nietzsche. The actots are perfect, though, but the best performance is by Virna Lisi, who plays the sister Elisabeth, who married an antisemite and insisted on a break of her famous brother with the "Jewishly contaminated" Paul Rée and Lou Salome, who both had Jewish ancestry, althopugh no believers. Nietzsche accused his sister of causing the major disaster of his life by interfering in his relationships with the two people he loved the most.

So it is a tragedy, and it is beautifully filmed - no matter how you might dislike and object to the exaggerations of the film, it is a work of art first of all of outstanding beauty, and Liliana Cavani, the director, was herself the scenographer. The music is equally prominent and enhances the beauty of the film. Erland Josephson is better in dark depressive films of Ingmar Bergman, while here he is miscast and not convincing, entirely lacking Nietzsche's German temperament. Robert Powell, on the other hand, is another asset here. It is worth seeing at least once, although it needs some endurance.

This is Cavani's most influential film. No one interested in Nietzsche or Salomé can leave this film without notice! The interpretation of some of Nietzsche's main ideas are well articulated and visually made comprehensible so that they both win in depth and become even more enticing. Cavani uses Mozart's music in a way that makes your spine tinkle. Spiritism, Mozart and a life just petered out make together a scene that is overwhelming in meanings. Most of the philosophical points are given in visual argumentation; that makes the film a real treasure box for anyone interested in visual thinking and its art. In this film Cavani has also developed a cinematic language she nowhere else applies. She uses pictorial mementos known to most of us and plays a semiotic game that makes quite common scenes to grow ambiguous, even breathtaking. The film is really not to be recommended to anyone, since without basic knowledge in Nietzsche and Belle Epoque one can't enjoy the story. But for those who are even cursorily familiar with the scene the film will be a revelation.