Palermo or Wolfsburg
Johannas Dream
Aggression
Argila
The Kingdom of Naples
Death of Maria Malibran
Willow Springs
Day of Idiots
The Pilot of the Bomber
The Rose King
Two
Malina
Neurasia
Callas Walking Lucia
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1/ prior to the poll, watched NEURASIA, MALINA, WILLOW SPRINGS, AGGRESSION, DAY OF THE IDIOTS, PALERMO OR WOLFSBURG.
1.1/ out of these films, the only one i was not able to relate to was NEURASIA. but not necessarily a shortcoming of the film (maybe i was just not in the compatible/receptive mood).
1.2/ MALINA, WILLOW SPRINGS, AGGRESSION, DAY OF THE IDIOTS i liked but all of them are already somewhat blurred within my memory. i would need to rewatch these films to make a relevant vote. however, i will devout my poll time to new viewings and thus i will vote/non-vote to any of these rather haphazardly.
1.2.1/ maybe i will vote for AGGRESSION because it is an internal monologue movie that is my cherished genre.
1.2.2/ i might vote for DAY OF IDIOTS because it has a local flavor. this film was partly shot in communist Czechoslovakia and part of the cast & crew were my fellow countrymen/countrywomen. especially noteworthy in this regards is the scriptwriter Daňa Horáková (who was the wife of Pavel Juráček, one of the key figures of Czech New Wave filmmaking). lately, all of Pavel Juráček's diaries were published. btw. there is a film based on a snippet from these diaries called THE KEY FOR DETERMINING DWARFS OR THE LAST TRAVEL OF LEMUEL GULLIVER (Martin Šulík, 2002). Daňa Horáková was asked to write a side note to the volume dealing with years of their (Daňa's & Pavel's) exile in West Germany. from the intended side note ultimately emerged a full next volume (this time written by Daňa) called "About Pavel". it caused a stir in the local milieu because creative genius Pavel is portrayed there as a narcissistic, ego-maniacal jerk. allegedly, there is also a passage in this volume about the making of DAY OF IDIOTS. reading all the Pavel Juráček diaries and also the extra volume by Daňa Horáková is one of my many ongoing plans.
1.3/ gonna vote for sure (and most probably it is gonna be my top — if i won't watch something mind-blowing in the next days) for PALERMO OR WOLFSBURG. i consider this film outstanding! love it! (and thus i am very curious about THE KINGDOM OF NAPLES.)
2/ for the poll, watched (so far) CALLAS WALKING LUCIA, THE PILOT OF THE BOMBER.
2.1/ CALLAS WALKING LUCIA is one of the early films that is dealing with Werner's obsession with Maria Callas. i can't much relate to this obsession but i might try to watch at least one more short flick of this kind before the poll is over.
2.2/ THE PILOT OF THE BOMBER is probably (somewhat) related to the other two films of Werner's oeuvre:
2.2.1/ with WILLOW SPRINGS it has in common a group of female friends (as the main protagonists). in WILLOW SPRINGS they are cult members, in THE PILOT OF THE BOMBER they are cabaret singers (entertaining initially the soldiers on the command of Hitler and ultimately soldiers on the command of Nixon).
2.2.2/ THE PILOT OF THE BOMBER might have also something in common with THE KINGDOM OF NAPLES because both of these films are chronicles of the post-war decades (either of West Germany or of Italy).
2.2.3/ moreover, watching this film and reading Werner Schroeter's obituary in Guardian made me also become preoccupied with the following:
in THE PILOT OF THE BOMBER one can encounter displays of female nudity that can be perceived as sheer exploitation. there is also a scene that is explicitly ironizing feminism. plus in the obituary, i stumbled upon the following claim related to MALINA...
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/a ... r-obituary
Schroeter returned to cinema in 1991 with Malina, based on a novel by the feminist Austrian author Ingeborg Bachmann and adapted for the screen by Elfriede Jelinek. Starring Isabelle Huppert, it is set in Vienna and tells of a writer torn between her lover and husband. Schroeter's first film from another source was attacked by feminist critics who felt he had betrayed the book by, according to a leading German feminist writer, Alice Schwarzer, "trivialising sexual violence". But Schroeter, never interested in the world outside the one of his imagination, remained true to himself by seeing the character, known only as The Woman, as the embodiment of all desire or as the mimetic ideal.
this made me quite curious about what was the reception of Werner's oeuvre in feminist circles and what was his possible response (if there was any) — in any case, i am quite curious to read Alice Schwarzer's article (if it is available).
2.2.4/ related to my fresh new THE PILOT OF THE BOMBER viewing, i have to mention also the following...
i already said before that being raised in a totalitarian state (where doublethink was in full bloom) made me biased against conventional storytelling. whenever i watch a narrative film that is missing internal monologues (or asynchronous sound) i feel i am deprived of the substantial part of the tale. it has become deeply ingrained within my juvenile brain that what ppl explicitly say and what they think might be vastly different and thus only watching a film where protagonists utter something and don't reveal their (possibly contradictory) thoughts (alongside their replicas) is for me hard to follow (such narratives seem to me near pointless — highly deficient). thus i like about f.e. THE PILOT OF THE BOMBER (and some other films by Werner Schroeter where asynchronous sound is used) that i can see protagonists moving their lips one way (they say something that is not audible) but i hear something different (from the soundtrack). thus i feel comfortable that the bullshit part of the replicas was omitted (only moving lips are left) but the substantial (the different) part of what protagonists have on their mind i can hear. if narrative structures are built this way, i perceived it as something familiar and i can easily follow such storytelling (i am used to it). btw. it is also one of the reasons i loved LAOCOON & SONS by Ulrike Ottinger (it is also an asynchronous sound tale).
2.2.5/ on the other hand, while watching THE PILOT OF THE BOMBER i was also thinking about the following reason that prevents me to fully embrace most of Werners' films (and consider them all outstanding, as f.e. PALERMO OR WOLFSBURG)...
i would prefer if the "high camp" tinge of most of Werner's films would be treated slightly differently. i like about f.e. CANNIBALS (Manoel de Oliveira) that "campy" part of the tale is not advertised directly by protagonists — they are the whole time dead serious while doing all their "campy" antics. Werner's "campiness" is more straightforward and is often slipping into caricature (which is a bit less intriguing to me than a "camp" that is dead serious).
3/ plan to watch for the poll (for sure) THE KINGDOM OF NAPLES, ARGILA, JOHANNAS DREAM, TWO, THE ROSE KING (and maybe also) THE DEATH OF MARIA MALIBRAN, and GOLDFLOCKEN.
4/ contributed to the subs pots of THE LAUGHING STAR, THE BLACK ANGEL, COUNCIL OF LOVE, HIMMEL HOCH, CARLA.
4.1/ i regret, i can't watch Werner's films from Mexico, Philippines, and Argentina — THE BLACK ANGEL (Mexico), THE LAUGHING STAR (Philippines), FOR EXAMPLE, ARGENTINA (Argentina).
4.2/ i didn't watch yet a single film by Rosa von Praunheim but now i would really like to watch his A VIRUS KNOWS NO MORALS and Werner's COUNCIL OF LOVE. these two films about politics & epidemics (1980s aids, 1490s syphilis) might be quite interesting to watch in our post-epidemics times (i guess).
5/ i will proly not get to watching WHITE JOURNEY
One of Werner Schroeter’s most important and inventive works, this threadbare evocation of Jean Genet’s notorious Querelle depicts the erotic adventures of two sailors through the world’s seaports in the manner of a cut-rate silent movie.
but i got quite intrigued by the following trivia...
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/a ... r-obituary
In 1982, Schroeter suffered a great disappointment. He had long cherished making a film of Jean Genet's homoerotic novel Querelle de Brest when Fassbinder managed to get the rights and the money to direct it. Schroeter felt that Fassbinder had stolen it from him and hated the film. (It turned out to be Fassbinder's last work before his death, aged 38.)
One scene (in "Night", 2002) in a tawdry nightclub where Huppert sings a song appears to be a belated reconciliatory tribute to Fassbinder's Querelle.
in the past, i watched Fassbinder's QUERELLE because it was mentioned in the book "Chromatic Cinema: A History of Screen Color" (by Richard Misek) — mentioned there due to its remarkablele use of color.
