Wildwechsel

("In Bavaria, I do not even want to be dead", Herbert Achternbusch). "Wildwechsel/Jail Bait" (1973) is one of the rarest to be seen movies of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Although it belongs to his earlier period of work, it bears all the signs of perfection of Fassbinder's later work. Despite the fact that the film is based on a stage play by Franz Xaver Kroetz, Kroetz himself reached a courthouse sentence which forbade the broadcasting of this movie immediately after it was finished. The correspondence between Fassbinder and Kroetz - published at the beginning of the 70ies in leading German newspapers - entered history a long time ago. Since Kroetz did not even withdraw his disposal in 1982, when Fasssbinder died, according to German law, there is nothing left to do until to wait for Kroetz'death before this movie can be presented to the public again for which it had once been made.

The movie tells the sad story between Franz and Hanni. He is 19 and she is 15 (so she says in the movie; not 13, as always indicated by people who most possibly have non seen the movie). They fall in love, she gets pregnant. While her mother is rather ambivalent - because of her own education and her unhappy marriage with Hanni's father, the father menaces Franz and declares that he will sue him for making his daughter pregnant. When he says that, sitting at his kitchen table, we see above the Virgin Mother. The question may arise: Does the bible tell us, how old Mary was when she got pregnant from Josef (with whom she was not married)? Does the father, who sits at the bottom of the statue, know that the Jesus-child was born under tragical circumstances after all "civilised" people had refused to give the couple shelter? Is he, who is a Bavarian Christ, aware, that he is doing exactly the same as the population of Bethlehem did some two thousand years ago? That he has no right to have the Virgin Mother hanging there? That his regular visit to the Church on Sundays is just an excuse to start drinking already after mess, in the morning? - Contradictions (or blasphemy) cannot remain long, since they are maximally instable, and so the Bavarian bigotry becomes catastrophically disturbed by Franz and Hanni who cannot see that a child is a child, independent whether it is born inside or outside a marriage, with or without the blessings of the bigots.

I recently had the good luck to find a copy of "Wildwechsel" and found it to be among the best work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It's an extremely rare film. The title roughly translates into "Jailbait," and it is a seemingly simple story about young love, between a 19 year old boy and a strange, mature beyond her years, girl of 14. What young girl wouldn't be smitten by the older, handsome, motorcycle riding Franz? Hanni's parents are horrified by the relationship and try to separate the pair, but have little success. The first portion of "Jailbait" plays out like a very sweet after school special kind of thing, (only with some graphic nudity) but when the second act unfolds, things take an extremely dark and disturbing turn, in true Fassbinder style. And Fassbinder truly is a master of dark drama and controversy. And many familiar faces appear, such as Hanna Schygulla, Kurt Raab, and El Hedi ben Salem. Harry Baer is wonderful as the young rebel, and Eva Mattes can play sweet innocent as well as she can pull off cold, clinical, and psychotic. As far as family dramas go, it doesn't get better than this bittersweet tale. Absolutely worth tracking down for fans of the late, great Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Tonight I saw the infamous Wildwechsel, or Jail Bait, at the Museum of Modern Art. This movie lives up to it's reputation as one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's darkest and most perverse movies. And that's really saying something.

Eva Mattes, age 18, plays Hanni, age 14. Hanni willingly has a sexual relationship with Franz, age 19 (played by Harry Baer). Hanni looks older than her age--say, 4 years older--as we cannot help but notice, since Hanni is nude or hornily pulling her clothes off in scene after scene. Franz gets busted for sleeping with a minor, but Hanni still wants him, and it all goes downhill from there.

This is an extraordinary level of cinematic manipulation by Fassbinder. He makes the audience feel guilty for watching a 14 year old girl (even though we know she is fictional), naked on the screen, in sexual situations. The only people who don't realize that Hanni is a sexual being are her conservative (Nazi daddy) parents, who blame Hanni for ruining their lives. Death threats, suicide threats, and tragedy upon tragedy ensue.

The emotional "vicious circles", (Elsaesser, 1976) are especially vicious in Jail Bait: the parent/child relationships go from bleak to bleaker to bleakest. None of the four main characters are sympathetic, and Hanni, the ostensible victim, has the blackest soul of them all.

MOMA's print was vintage '72 and kind of a dirty faded unrestored mess, especially at the very beginning. But that is a minor complaint. Jailbait contains early use of key Fassbinder imagery which return in film after film: the slaughterhouse, a child's dolls, and the ever present mirrors. The performances from Harry Baer and Eva Mattes as star crossed, twisted young lovers are heart wrenching.

Seeing Jail Bait, there is no wonder why it has never been released on VHS or DVD--this film truly pushes and challenges the limits of decency, in many ways. That's what makes it classic, essential Fassbinder.

Wildwechsel is one of the very good Fassbinder films. It's a family-story with all the restrictions in a typical Bavarian Fassbinder-family. Eva Matthes is the daughter in her puberty who wants to explore sexuality. Harry Baer is the young Romeo. But as always with Fassbinder the people surrounding the two - parents - are enemies of the relationship. I don't know, why this Fassbinder-film is never been shown on TV again and why it never got released on VHS or DVD - lucky people who have the film on celluloid ;-) Maybe it has to do with the author Franz Xaver Kroetz, that this very good Fassbinder-film from the center of his oeuvre is not available.