Hanna Shygulla in Lili Marleen

I saw Fassbinder's Lili Marleen on Saturday night. I enjoyed it well enough, but it certainly does not rank up there with his best films. It takes place at the start of WWII, following the rise of a cabaret singer whose one song--"Lili Marleen"--captures the attention of the entire Western world. She's a German living in Switzerland at the beginning of the movie, and madly in love with a Jewish pianist who is helping the resistance smuggle Jews and their belongings out of Germany. She ends up getting trapped in Germany at the beginning of the war, separated from her lover in Switzerland, and knowing only a high-ranking Nazi official.

As usual, Fassbinder's images can be stunningly beautiful and very unconventional (especially in his use of mirrors); and again he uses actors who give large, open performances of material that sometimes verges on outrageous. Hanna Schygulla never disappoints, and she makes the singer into a strong woman whose future is dictated more by fate and others' machinations than by her own doing. But something about the film never quite gels. I think Fassbinder was straddling his two worlds of auteurship and popular film. He wrote neither the story nor the screenplay, so the tart and brutal honesty that comes forth in his own writing was lacking here.

Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale in The Leopard

Fassbinder is very much about taking the the 20th century development of Germany as the thematic umbrella over his whole body of work. In films like The Marriage of Maria Braun and Ali: Fear Eats The Soul this method is extraordinarily successful. I was interested Sunday night to go to an Italian film from 1962--Visconti's The Leopard--and see a similar structure of an intimate story of one family representing the larger political development of their day, namely the unification of Italy. The film captures the melancholy of one era shifting into another, of the necessary march of time, of developing history, with all of the nostalgia for the past and all of the hopes for the future. I've seen The Leopard four or five times now, and am still stunned by its beauty.

The look of the film is very painterly, with formally composed shots, sweeping camera movements, and the pageantry of mid 19th century dress. Of course, it's not hard to find beauty when Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale are on screen together--making googoo eyes at each other or kissing passionately. Cardinale's acting is a bit over-the-top, but it doesn't matter because she's so appealing. And Delon is perfect--all charm and ease. The man even makes mustaches sexy! But the movie belongs to Burt Lancaster who plays the aging prince who sees his old order crumbling around him.

It was great to see this movie again while I've been so entrenched in Fassbinder. It certainly complements Fassbinder's themes and even some of his style, and I felt like I got to see it with fresh eyes.