Veronika Voss

In her own eyes,Veronika Voss is not really alive unless she retains her audience, unless she is loved and admired for her manufactured image. There are times in movies when Technicolor will not do, when the use of traditional black and white evokes evokes film noir, in this case referencing Billy Wilder's brilliant evisceration of and the pain of fading fame, Sunset Boulevard. The fine shadings of mood and atmosphere reflect the life led by Veronika under studio lights, just as the stark, unrelenting whites at her doctor's office blind her to reality during her visits for morphine injections.

Veronika Voss is based on the life of an actual German actress who rarely came alive unless under the lights, depicting a harsh and unrelenting life lived vicariously; it is a harsh look at a cruel existence increasingly dependent on addictive drugs to soften the hard knocks that come with the loss of fame and inability to face simultaneous aging process; it is a film worth repeated viewings.

Beautifully photographed in simple black and white, with some lovely gliding shots and some interesting camera angles and framing, the film is an amazement on a visual scope, even if the screenplay and acting are nothing special. Fassbinder's choice of lighting is excellent, giving true stark contrast between areas of black and areas of white in certain scenes. Sound is a significant aspect too, with soft radio recording heard in the background of just about every scene. The meaning behind such an audio style is not clear, but still it provides an interesting feel if not much else. As already alluded to however, the technical aspects outweigh the rest of the film. It is a rather cold tale with awkward characters, which are hard to sympathise with. Towards the end it also goes off on a bit of a tangent, from being a drama to a thriller. The film definitely seems more dedicated to its style than its substance, but that only makes is a certainly degree less fascinating to watch. The style quite literally sparkles and the film applies a few interesting editing tricks to change from scene to scene. If not involving as a tale, it is nevertheless great "eye candy".

In a career spanning a mere sixteen years, Rainer Werner Fassbinder made forty-four films before his death at just thirty-six, which occurred a few months after the premiere of this, the final part of what has come to be designated as his BRD Trilogy.

It is beautifully written by his regular collaborators Peter Marthesheimer and Pea Froelich, shot in knife-like black and white by his preferred cinematographer Xavier Schwarzenberger and as one would expect from this director, features a strong leading role for an actress, in this case Rosel Zech, whose character is loosely based upon that of the fascinating but tragic Sybille Schmitz who despite never being fully accepted by Herr Goebbels and company found it virtually impossible to continue her post-war career because of her perceived Nazi connections and whose drug-fuelled downward spiral ended in suicide in 1955.

Zech is simply stupendous in a demanding role that requires a wide range of emotions and as a bonus she performs a beguiling, Dietrich-like rendition of 'Memories are made of this." As a lesbian Dr. Feel-good, there is a magnificently chilling performance by Annemarie Dueringer. The entire cast is uniformly excellent and all of the characters are well drawn. Armin Mueller-Stahl again makes his presence felt whilst the influence of America in the Germany of the time is epitomised by the sound track and not least by the presence of the ubiquitous African-American GI played as always by Guenter Kaufmann. As well as being a tribute to the mighty UFA Studios, the relationship between fading star Voss and the journalist of Hilmar Thate is a nod to 'Sunset Boulevard'.

There is an absence of socio-political comment here and the whole enterprise succeeds solely through the myths of the movies. Fassbinder was an avowed devotee of the dream factory that was Hollywood and professed his adoration for Douglas Sirk. As it happened the master long outlived the pupil and Sirk offered a fitting tribute:"Although his fims were controversial.....only those things that survive opposition have the power of permanence."

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's second-but-last film does not show primarily the life and downfall of the UFA-star Sybille Schmitz, but gives, at the hand of the Schmitz-inspired, yet fictive character Veronika Voss an unvarnished and hopeless picture of the Bundesrepublik Germany in the 50ies. Part of Fassbinder's "BRD-Trilogy", it is also one of his 4 "women"-films, besides "Lola", "Maria Braun", and "Lili Marleen".

It is hard to say if the main focus of this movie is the former UFA-star Veronika Voss or the sports reporter Robert Krohn. One rainy night, he meets, in a little forest amidst of Berlin, a crying little bundle of mensch who seems to have completely lost her orientation. She is not so much thankful for his help but astonished that he does not recognize her: the great Veronika Voss. After he accompanies the woman to her door, she continues to occupy his mind. He asks his older colleagues who confirm him that she was once a movies' super-star, but now forgotten, divorced, impoverished, addicted and out of work. Soon, they meet again, and between Krohn, who is in a steady liaison, and Veronika, who sees in him one of her once many admirers, a very problematic love story starts which costs two humans' lives, leaves an investigative mind back in despair, discloses the corruption between medicine and politics and portrays the deterrent situation in the post-war German film industry which used his former flagships as fuel.

R.W. Fassbinder got for this films the "Golden Bear" out of the hand of Jimmy Stewart who was his friend for many years. Fassbinder had been nominated for the highest German film price since a long time, but it was Stewart who realized that soon it might come too late. Fassbinder passed away only a few days after having received the Golden Bear.

A man runs into a pretty but aging woman in the middle of a rainstorm. He politely protects her from the downpour with his umbrella, and even lifts her over a fence so she can get to her bus. He also gets on the bus, and, beginning to pant, she declares that she can't go near anyone else on the bus, because she's a famous actress and she'll be thronged. The other passengers on the bus look up at the exasperated woman, but don't pay her any more mind than that. A bit later, the woman proudly tells the man that she is Veronika Voss, and all he can do is politely nod. She hasn't been in a movie for three years, and hasn't been in a good one for longer than that. Veronika has to try really hard to pin the man, Robert, down and seduce him, and even when she accomplishes this feat he doesn't seem particularly interested. Robert's interest does grow when he begins to discover some nasty secrets about her life, notably that she is addicted to morphine. A strange doctor seems to be little more than a local drug dealer when he begins to look into the situation.

The plot is decent; it would have been a really good one for a classic Hollywood film starring Joan Crawford or Bette Davis or someone like that. Its greatest worth is in the performance of Rosel Zech, who has the titular role. Cornelia Froboess as Robert's girlfriend and Annemarie Düringer as the wicked doctor are also good. The character of Robert is never very interesting. The black and white cinematography (Xaver Schwarzenberger) and the unconventional score (Peer Raben) are very good. The tape I watched was not in a very good condition, so I may have liked it more if I had seen a better copy. 8/10.