Prenez garde à la sainte putain

Fassbinder ends this film with a quote from Thomas Mann that expresses his tiredness in representing the human species, without being part of it. This could well be the key to interpreting not only this film, but almost all of Fassbinder's work.

In a world divided between capitalist tyranny and socialist hypocrisy, there is no real place for Fassbinder and his troupe, representative of a generation that wants to be above bourgeois values, but finds no alternatives, falling into nihilism and depression.

In retrospect, we can believe that Fassbinder's discomfort stemmed, in large part, from the rejection of homosexuality, whether by fascist moralism or socialist progressivism. The sexual freedom of the sixties did not yet include homosexuality, and Fassbinder, using shock therapy in his films, was one of the staunchest critics of this hypocritical sexual revolution.

The film tells the story of a film production, which takes place in a haphazard manner, in a Sorrento painted in Francoist Spain, as a metaphor for a society and a revolution of mentalities, which is also slow to happen.

Meanwhile, Cuba Libres are drunk, in honor of the revolution.

It's amazing to see that Rainer Werner Fassbinder made this picture when he was just 26 (and, perhaps not too oddly enough due to his reputation, looks all of 41 as the producer Sascha) and it has the kind of sad insight that an older, more experienced director would have. But from everything I've read, he was already this experienced, for better or worse, as the director depicted in the film, Jeff (Lou Castel). Jeff is hot or cold, sometimes both, and can either be sullen or deep in thought or just going completely off on someone and throwing them off the set. In Beyond a Holy Whore he's shooting- or trying or not trying to shoot- some movie starring Eddie Constantine in a role that sickens the veteran French star, and most of the crew and women around him languish in a sea of distilled despair: will the movie actually get finished? Where's the money? Who's sleeping with who? What will be the consequences of this or that?

In terms of the storytelling, I was thrown off at first by Beyond a Holy Whore. It's not really very uniformly put together, and makes 8 1/2 look about as lucid as a Hollywood Golden Age picture by comparison. It's not really dreamlike, but it's got a sad, perverse streak of rotten existentialism going on (or maybe what Fassbinder thinks it is). So, from time to time, it is a little choppy, as one scene goes into the next without much of a sense of where the story is. But after a while I got into the modus operandi; this is by design a story of this man, Jeff, and his producer, Sascha, along with various groupies, gay folk, disgruntled actors, going along with a flow that never seems to be taking any charge. What becomes clear, in segments that occasionally have comedy to them (I just started laughing at one bit where Jeff was losing it and crying hysterically while directing a scene) and sometimes have a lonesomeness as via the characters, is that film-making can be a rotten enterprise when the creative well runs dry.

But it's not just about creativity or lack of inspiration for Fassbinder; it's also a kind of mood that he sets which is important, of going through a similar self-imposed brutality that the director wants depicted in the film within the film. As far as "director self-commentary" pictures go, it's not one of the best ever made. But it is an interesting picture all the same, one that grows on the viewer accepting of its loose form and sad notes - not to mention fine points of irony like the sweet Leonard Cohen songs playing over the decay at the bar.

"Warnung Vor Einer Heiligen Nutte" (1971) is everything else than an obscure, hermetic and highly stylized movie. Before you watch this masterpiece of the middler Fassbinder, you should read the biography by Peter Berling, "Die 13 Jahres Des Rainer Werner Fassbinder" (1992). Peter Berling was also the producer of the "Holy Whore" and acted a part in it. It is a very precise description of practically all members of Fassbinder's troop since the time of the "antiteater". However, the persons have been exchanged. So, f.ex. Magdalena Montezuma plays "Irm", i.e. Irm Hermann, who also is the dubbing voice of Montezuma. She accuses "Jeff Kocsinsky", the director of the picture "Morte o Patria", of having stolen her years, promised to marry her and have children with her. Jeff is of course Fassbinder, while Fassbinder himself plays the role of "Sasha", probably an invented role. However, it is astonishing that Fassbinder's family agreed to unwrap their own and not only personal but highly private problems in front of the public. A highlight in this respect is "Fred" alias Kurt Raab. He is the artistic director of the movie - as he was in his real life, a weak and subordinate creature depending on love or hatred of his always changing lovers. It shows anew what a magnificent actor Raab was. Lou Castel as Fassbinder alias "Jeff" does a very great job. The same man who is determined to make a movie against brutal state force is using on the set all imaginable means of force up to terror against his actors and staff. Concluding, I would even say that "The Holy Whore" is a example of bravura of how one can make a movie with basically nothing, if there is a group who is determined to create something together.

Fassbinder's wry comedy about the trials and tribulations of filmmaking. It's gorgeously shot and very well acted (especially by Fassbinder himself and Lou Castel, who plays the director), but, truth be told, a bit on the dull side. I guess most of Fassbinder's early films are a little dull. Only fans will want to pursue them. There is plenty to like, though. The best element of the film seems to be lost on all those whose reviews I've read. The film is set mostly in an opulent Spanish hotel, and, at least for one sequence, it lapses into a deft parody of Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad. I think that, if I tried to describe it, my explanation would be too wordy and would not convey it well enough. So, if you ever do happen to watch the film, make sure to keep an eye out for that joke. 7/10.

The disparity in the comments for this film really speaks to how much Fassbinder is a matter of taste, although a lot of the complaints might be due to all the references within the film to other films and to Fassbinder's own life. I'll just add that I loved this film, but I enjoy all of Fassbinder's work, even to the point where they make you dizzy or despise the man and all he wants to say. He is definitely NOT for most people...especially those who don't appreciate dry German humor. I was laughing through this whole thing...especially the way he mocks the way the traveling film company treats the local Italians (the film was set in Spain, but I believe it was actually shot in Ischia.)

You might enjoy it more if you understand a few things I noticed about it: 1) No one really pointed out how autobiographical it is...to an extreme. Since Fassbinder is using many of the friends he worked with in experimental theatre, they are essentially all playing each other, and obviously enjoying it. This makes the movie essential for Fassbinder fans. 2) There's Eddie Constantine, so this, technically, is Fassbinder's contribution to the Lemmy Caution series, much as Godard did with "Alphaville". 3) Another cinephile noted the reference to "Last Year at Marienbad"; the entire broken style of the end of the film seems to me a gentle mocking of all the Nouvelle Roman and experimental film coming out of Europe at the end of the 1960s. 4) This makes an interesting comparison not just with "Day for Night", but also "The State of Things", Wim Wenders film-within-a-film. I've also seen this film called boring, and it certainly could be seen as such; making movies IS boring. Fassbinder's interpretation is actually racing along compared to Wenders', but Wenders always has his exquisite cinematography to fall back upon. If you call it "boring", it is only because you've failed to accommodate the intent of the film. If it was trying to tell an exciting story, yeah, you would see it as a failure. But as a character study of a film company on location (I believe they were actually filming "Whity" at the same time in Ischia), this is relatively quick, to the point (less!) and a great opportunity to see how the earliest Fassbinder envisioned his own early success.