Foreign | SpoutBlog

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

By Karina Longworth posted 6 months ago

God knows, I should have made a New Year’s Resolution that would have actually bettered my day-to-day quality of life, but instead, I made a New Year’s Resolution to become fully versed in the work of two filmmakers with whom my overall level of familiarity is, really, shameful: Pier Paulo Pasolini, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Because Fassbinder’s work is generally much easier to find on DVD, I’ve decided to start with him and move on to Pasolini after I’ve watched everything I can get my hands on. So as I watch his films, I’ll write about them here. I’ve made a conscious decision not to research the films before I watch them in order to offer my spontaneous impressions, so it’s probably best to look at each installment of this project as more of a close reading/viewing diary than a review, per se.

This week, I begin with The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant.

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Petra Von Kant (Margit Carstensen) is a “fashion designer” who spends half the day in bed meticulously adjusting her face paint and having long conversations with guests while her live-in assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann) finishes her sketches. Petra is addict-thin and a bit mannish; in the film’s first act of three (all of which take place entirely in Petra’s stifling apartment), she hides her own thin hair under a wig that’s very late-Judy Garland. Marlene has Dietrich hair and a Deitrich air, but with the face of a Marion Davies or a Clara Bow. She’s obviously slumming––she’s obviously inherently too good for housework––and from the first scene, it’s obvious that she’s chosen to be here instead of somewhere better, because there’s something about the power balance between her and Petra that Marlene likes.

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Classics

Ingmar Bergman Obit Round-up

By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago

As promised, here’s a master list of Bergman obits and tributes. Everything I’ve come across today is linked here; if you’ve written or read something I’ve missed, please leave a link in the comments to this post.

Most recent updates follow immediately after the jump.

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Last updated August 7, 2007

“Well, goddamnit.” — Keith Uhlich, The House Next Door

“Non-cinephiles likely have heard of Bergman even if they somehow think that the woman from Casablanca directed a seminal foreign film about death.” — Aaron Dobbs, Out of Focus

“I wonder how many under-35s have even seen a Bergman film. The Bergman art-house aesthetic of the ’50s and ’60s is about as far from the Tarantino film-geek attitude as you can get.” — Jeff Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere

“Dozens of us [film critics] have the same story of teenage revelation: of seeing a Bergman movie, usually The Seventh Seal, and saying, “This is what I want to study, devote my life to.” Here, we saw, was no mere director, collaborating on scripts with other writers, but a full-service auteur.” — Richard Corliss, TIME

“Mr. Bergman dealt with pain and torment, desire and religion, evil and love; in Mr. Bergman’s films…God is either silent or malevolent; men and women are creatures and prisoners of their desires” — Mervyn Rothstein, New York Times

“His vision encompassed the extremes of his beloved Sweden: the claustrophobic gloom of unending winter nights, its glowing summer evenings and the bleak magnificence of the Baltic islet of Faro, where the reclusive artist spent his last years.” — Louise Nordstrom, AP

“That says it all, really: Bergman offers the penis up, unannounced, but part of an incredible sequence; Fincher promises it, then never delivers.” — Brendan Connelly, Film Ick
…Read more

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Indies