mistaken identity
by
Douglas Messerli
Tom
Stoppard (screenplay, based on the novel by Valdimir Nabokov), Rainer Werner
Fasssbinder (director) Eine Reise ins
Licht (Despair) / 1978
By
the early 1930s surely everyone in Berlin must have known that the governmental
world had already gone mad, and that it was only a matter of time before the
disease would strike down
everyone. Surely
wealthy chocolatier Hermann Hermann (Dirk Bogarde), a Russian émigré of vaguely
aristocratic connections, is aware that everything has changed. Of course there
is the market, the fact that money has hardly any meaning; and then there are
the brownshirts crawling all over the city streets, sometimes effectively but,
more often, ineffectually threatening Jewish businesses. In one brilliant scene
in Fassbinder’s film, with bricks and bats four of them attempt to break out the
windows of a Jewish shop, without much effect. As they move on, the shop workers
simply come out with brooms and clean up the mess.
But then the doubly named Hermann is also
tortured by his stupid wife, Lydia (Andréa Ferréol) with whom he appears to
have a somewhat tame S&M sexual relationship—certainly he verbally (and
quite amusingly) abuses her. So ignorant is this magazine-reading
chocolate-consuming member of the German bourgeois that she perceives of the
Wall Street Crash as an accident in the streets of New York. And what’s worse
is that she is having a quite open affair with her cousin, the painter,
Ardalion (Volker Spengler). Ardalion is not only a bad artist but is an
outrageous cross-dresser, appearing thoroughly in outrageous robes and beads as
if he were some sort of absurd Puba, who might actually not even be an true
heterosexual in completion for Hermann’s Lydia.. Fassbinder presents his role
as a kind of Dionysian fool, who in explicably satisfies Lydia when her husband
is not available, which is further proof of her vapidity.
The ultimate story that Fassbinder tells
is less Nabokov, however, than it is a sort of mad detour into Hermann’s
delusions, which in the German director’s version involves his audience as we
attempt to negotiate Hermann’s belief that a gypsy-like performer, Felix Weber
(Klus Löwitsch), whom he encounters upon his business travels, is an exact
duplicate of his own vision of himself.
In most ways, the two appear to have
little in common, including their facial characteristics; but so convincing is
Bogarde that they are visual twins, that we have ourselves to continually ask
ourselves about what we are perceiving, particularly when Hermann offers his
“double” the possibility of receiving more money than Felix has ever seen to
impersonate him. Of course, once Felix accepts the offer and attempts to
transform himself into Hermann, the chocolatier kills him, presuming that he
will not be perceived as dead, and his wife (and he) will receive the benefits
of his new insurance policy which will allow him to escape the Nazi world (and
presumably his stupid wife) into Switzerland.
The fact that his “double” (his long-lost
brother, be believes) does not truly look like him obviously bollixes everything, as truth
forces Hermann himself to embrace the madness that he had hoped to escape. What
he had hoped would be a “mistaken identity,” represents his own mistaken
perception
(visual and moral) of himself. He was, after all, just another of those from
whom he sought to escape. His “journey into light” was inevitably a voyage into
darkness, a “despair” to which Hermann could never admit.
Fassbinder’s sophisticated and
introspective vision, along with the high literary achievements of both the
original author and screenwriter Stoppard should have assured that this film
would be perceived as a major cinematic contribution. And it was entered into
competition of the famed Palme d’Or. Certainly, it is Fassbinder’s most witty
work and has the most outwardly comic film elements—despite its obviously dark
thematics—since his Fox and His Friends of
1975. The music, by Peer Raben, contributes to this film almost as much as it
would later to Fassbinder’s great television series, Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Yet all my film guides and even the
usually ploddingly specific Wikipedia entries seem to suggest that their
contributors somehow fell to sleep before the final scenes of the movie. What
went wrong is quite inexplicable. It’s certainly a film that is worth watching—if
nothing else for Bogarde’s, Ferréol’s, and Spengler’s remarkable performances. One
has to wonder that, in the same year that Fassbinder produced the absolutely
brilliant In the Year of 13 Moons, perhaps
he had simply overwhelmed his audience.
Oh, if only one could go back and show
one’s appreciation for the miraculous creations at the time! History doesn’t
work that way, unfortunately. Works that should not have been dismissed are, sometimes
subject to a fluke of timing and misconceptions.
I’m here to tell you, simply, look at
this film again. It may not be the greatest of Fassbinder’s conceptions, but
then, all his works are astonishing, and this was certainly not one of the least
of them! If nothing else, this film reveals that Fassbinder was one of the
greatest of artists to document the psychological effects of World War II and
the post–war years that followed, which is a quite an amazing achievement in
itself. The director’s singular vision and brilliantly eccentric visions,
moreover, make all his films moving documents not only of their time but of
cinematic history. I’ve yet to encounter a Fassbinder film which did not totally
intrigue and involve me in its fictions.
Los Angeles,
March 21, 2015
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