on a binge
by Douglas Messerli
Alexander
Kluge (writer, based on his story, and director) Abschied von gestern (Anita G.) (Yesterday Girl) / 1966
In part, the problem is simply that the
new society she has joined defines itself almost entirely upon possessions,
while she has nothing but her face and figure. Since she has not tested high
enough, she can no longer continue her education, and almost all of the “jobs”
Anita is offered—such as a hotel cleaning woman—put her on the level of an
immigrant. Is in any wonder that this intelligent, good-looking girl might wish
to steal—a bag, a sweater, a coat—in order to share these Western “benefits?”
Had Kluge been a different kind of
director, this film might have turned into a deeply disturbing sociological portrait
of the post-War II German society. But, the director, influenced by Godard and
other figures of the French New Wave—and positioning himself in the forefront
of the New German Cinema, which would soon come to be dominated by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and others—treats his character’s
serious dilemmas as satire.
More importantly, his remarkable actress
sister, dressed nearly always stylishly despite living in hovels, seems almost
impervious from endless series of rejections she daily faces. Not so very
differently from Fassbinder’s tragi-comic Franz Bieberkopf, Anita G. is
determined that somehow things will get better, as she hunkers down in order to
try to penetrate the gobbledygook of her professor’s lectures, the lame
assurances of love Pichota and others with whom she beds offer, and the attacks by
those to whom she owes money.
Sadly, for this young girl, there is no
choice but abandon her youth to imprisonment—a place where at least she can
sleep comfortably and be fed three times a day. The final scenes of this film,
are played out with the rules of prison being carefully explained to her by
more efficient than caring, but nonetheless nonjudgmental matrons, representing
many strict mothers who may help birth the lost child into the new society in
which she has chosen to live. Too bad, she has had to institutionalize herself to
get the help she had asked for from those “Good Germans” she had previously
encountered.
Los Angeles,
September 6, 2015
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