In Wolfgang Petersen's filmography , "die Konsequenz " is an anomaly; filmed in stark black and white -the cinematography is splendid indeed,the buildings and even the trees seem to imprison the heroes, even when they are "free" -;utterly uncompromising,with a conclusion in the shape of a question mark :this ending,for its simplicity ,is the strongest that this desperate work could have.
Fifty years ago,so horrendous were the chances taken by the director that ,with another lesser talent, the film could have ended in the gay porn ghetto whereas it's genuine art house cinema ; essentially psychological drama , naked scenes kept to an economic level , but humiliating homophobic scenes are constant ,nothing is spared the viewer and the fact that such a harrowing screenplay succeeds artistically without falling into the trap of sentiment is entirely due to the director's ,Jürgen Prochnow 's and his co-star's feeling for sparseness
and restrain which preclude all forms of conventional sentimentality and pathos.
And yet, emotion is overwhelming in the admirable scene of the lovers alone in the cell,perhaps inspired by Jean Genet's short "un chant d'amour" ;two mises en abyme really fit into the story , particularly the first play where all the roles are played by men; but the moments of happiness are few and far between ; it is the depiction of a descent into hell; in a macho world where the instructors are given carte blanche to make men out of these "criminals", where even the inmates are ,with the exception of the young boy whose best friend hung himself in his dungeon ,ruthless enemies ; women ,who are almost absent in the whole movie, are not spared either:Frau Manzoni is the submissive housewife flesh on the bone; but nymphomaniac Babette is not even a human being ,but a sex machine : the scene is scary ,unbearable and makes the viewer look away.
When the whole world is against you, the only thing you can do is to accept your fate :that's what's the elder calls "instinct of self-preservation"; but his young lover's so called healing is only a façade : even the uneducated mate has understood his mind was undone .
An admirable plea for tolerance,at a time when the "marriage for all " did not exist , Petersen made a convincing manifesto on behalf of the LGBT.
