Lili Marleen

Story of a song. And what song! In fact, the creation of Hans Leip and Norbert Schultze is the only character, a spell who creates existences, loves, tragedies with a sarcastic indifference. It is an obsessive music, soul of a ambiguous time of dreams and ideas intoxication, with old words and cruels ambitions.

Certainly, it is a Fassbinder's lesson about values and lies, about rules of war and feelings, about small victims and sacrifice.

Hanna Schygulla is gorgeous in a character's skin different of Lale Anderson or Marlene Dietrich but with the same art to describe the atmosphere of extincted space. In some moments I saw in parts of film elements of "Cabaret" Nazi song or "Satyricon" dances. It is normal: interpretation of song is not only piece of a show but rule of life. "Lili Marleen" is not the old "Das Lied eines Jungen Soldaten auf der Wacht" but hard of an universe, hypocrite, coward, frail.

The final meeting between Willie and Robert is only seal of ordinary tragedy. To late, to far.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder always made movies as if he knew his was on borrowed time. Many of the 44 films made by him in his 16-year career represent searches, experiments, attempts to express himself as an artist in the most diverse cinematic ways. 'Lili Marleen', made in 1981, the penultimate year of his life, belongs to a cluster of several films that are apparently less radical than most of the others and closer to mainstream cinema. After the success of some of his movies in previous years, Fassbinder was able to secure financing for more expensive productions with international casts and many extras. He chooses to make 'Lili Marleen', a story woven around the famous song that sounded in the trenches of the Second World War, both German and Allied (one of the famous versions belongs to Marlene Dietrich) and somewhat inspired by the autobiographical book of Lale Andersen, the German singer who first recorded the song on disc. Apparently, it is a melodrama that improbably embellishes her biography. In fact, we also find in this film the story of a woman who has to face alone the dark forces of the surrounding society combined with Fassbinder's sarcastic vision of the history of 20th century Germany.

The film's lead character, Willie, is a blonde, Aryan, German singer who doesn't seem to know or care much about what's going on in Germany in 1938. She performs in a cabaret in Zurich and falls in love with Robert, a wealthy young Jew, whose family is involved in the anti-Nazi resistance fight and in the rescue of the remaining Jews in Germany. Willie's father opposes the relationship and maneuvers so that the young woman cannot return to Switzerland after a trip to Germany. Forced to earn a living in Nazi Germany, Willie records the song 'Lili Marleen', which after the outbreak of war and the occupation of much of Europe and North Africa by the Nazis becomes a hit listened to by German soldiers and later by the Allies when they will disembark in Europe. The relationship between Willie and Robert continues, and the singer, forced to make artistic compromises and collaborate with the Nazis, begins to open her eyes and get involved in the fight against Nazism.

As in many of Fassbinder's films, the female characters are much stronger, more nuanced and better defined than the male characters. The lead role is interpreted by the exceptional Hanna Schygulla, Fassbinder's favorite actress. Her Willie is carefree at first, eager to live her life, a fighter for survival using her art and feminine charms as weapons. Above all, however, she is in love, but times of war crush destinies and love stories. Robert and his father are ambiguous characters and Fassbinder has been criticized for this, but also for nuancing the characters on the other side of the conflict, the Nazi officers. My opinion is that artistically the choice was appropriate, and the film must be seen from the director's sarcastic perspective, fascinated but also critical of the anti-cultural kitsch of 20th century Germany. As in many of his other films, Fassbinder also appears in a cameo role, as head of the anti-Nazi resistance, perhaps also to emphasize his personal position. 'Lili Marleen' is a film less appreciated by critics and Fassbinder experts. I consider it among his best films.

Many critics have felt offended that R.W. Fassbinder has portrayed both protagonist Wilkie and the Nazis in this movie in a human-like manner. Connoisseurs of other Fassbinder films, however, will realize that "Lili Marleen" (1981) belongs to Fassbinder's "women movies" like "The Marriage of Maria Braun" (1979) and "Lola" (1981). Fassbinder was convinced that "stories can be told much better with women than with men", because, according to Fassbinder, while men usually fulfill their determined roles in society, "women are capable of thinking in a dialectic manner". Dialectics, however, means that there is not only a thesis and its antithesis like usually in our black-and-white world, but a synthesis where the oppositions coincide. Moreover, dialectic means that because of the third instance of synthesis the absolute opposition of the difference between thesis and antithesis is abolished. Concretely speaking: Starting from a dialect point of view and portraying the fascist state, the underground fighters must necessarily use the basic means like the rulers do, and between offenders and victims there is thus a chiastic relation, so that every offender is also victim and every victim is also offender. Fassbinder has illustrated this abstract scheme, that transcends classical logic, in his play "The City, the Garbage and the Death" (1975) which was filmed by Daniel Schmid under the title "Shadow of Angels" (1976).

Therefore, approaching an a priori controversial topic like Nazi Germany, in a dialectic manner, the depiction of this time in the form of a movie gets even more controversial, especially for people who cannot or do not want to see that our recognition of the world is by far not exhausted with a primitive light-switch schema, but needs the third instance of synthesis as controlling instance of its opposite members thesis and antithesis. The mutual relationship between offenders and victims has to scrutinized, since it is simply not true that the offenders are the bad ones and the victims the good ones. In a synthetic viewpoint, the bad ones participate on the goodness as the good ones participate on the badness. They are mutually related. In a world-view based on classical logic, a relation between good and bad cannot even been established, and in an ethics based on this insufficient system of logic, the bad conscience of the survivors of Nazi Germany, feeling (illogically enough) responsible for the deeds of their ancestors, exclude the possibility of a relationship between the two extremes and thus a synthesis in the form a new evaluation based on this relationship as well. From Fassbinder's dialectic viewpoint, it follows that neither Lili Marleen nor Lola nor Maria Braun can be condemned for their "misuse" of the ruling system for their private purposes, because they don't misuse them, they just use them. In the opposite, since victims must repeat the actions of the offenders as the offenders must repeat the actions of the victims, because "good" and "bad" are no longer simple mirror images of one another like in two-valued logic, their strategies are legitimated by the chiastic structure of a logic that describes our world, that is not black and white at all, much better than a black-and-white logic.

The story of a song in Nazi Germany.. a fiction piece masterly created by Fassbinder. Whilst a stimulating watch, it feels editing could have been tighter at times. Afterwards you can not get the song 'Lili Marleen' out of y head. Best to watch the German version instead of the dubbed English one.

Even though Lili Marleen's events take place right before, during and up to the end of World War II, it is a movie centered around people and their feelings in typical Fassbinder fashion.

It is the story of Willie (played by the stunning Hanna Schygulla) and with her the story of Nazi Germany that follows a similar trajectory. She is a German that tries to make a living in Zurich as a singer/cabaret artist and falls in love with Robert (Giancarlo Giannini), a Jew and member of the anti-Nazi resistance camp. His family doesn't approve of their relationship, because she is German/Aryan and make sure they go their separate ways after her deportation. Back in Germany, she must find a way to survive and, seemingly out of nowhere, her song "Lili Marleen" becomes a monumental hit, a source of inspiration and courage for every German soldier, which brings Willie in a tricky spot, as it becomes harder and harder to maintain the balance between collaborating with the Nazis in an artistic level and taking part in the resistance against them all the while hoping for a reunion with Robert which seems more and more unlikely.

An interesting element of the movie is that it presents both sides in a nuanced way, it avoids portraying the Nazis as the one-dimensional caricature villains. It also shows how thin the lines are and how hard it can be to fight prejudice and shake off a social or political stigma.

And of course the song itself deserves its legendary status.