March 16, 2024
1576.) I’ve waited several years to show scenes from the most prominent of Fassbinder’s “missing” films (which amount to three theatrical features and a handful of telefilms) and have decided that now is the time to discuss and feature scenes from it — since nothing is on the way in terms of an American release. Clearly the American rights are caught up in some bind, because a restored print of the film, Lili Marleen (1981), is on Blu-ray in Europe and it just happens to be the English-dubbed version. (The film was shot by Fassbinder in English; despite that, certain short moments in the restored version revert to German.) The film was a work for hire for RWF; Hanna Schygulla was sought for the lead and she said she would only do it if he directed. It is thus a peculiar item that at once looks and sounds like a Fassbinder film, but it also has a very conventional plot structure and heightened emotions that can be looked upon as his approximation of tropes from the Hollywood biopic/WWII movie model, or his satirizing them. Hanna plays a fictionalized version of Lale Andersen, the man who made the song “Lili Marleen” a hit in Germany during the war. We watch as she and her Swiss Jewish orchestra leader boyfriend (played by Giancarlo Giannini) are broken apart by the Nazis but keep drifting back together. The film has a cornier feel than Fassbinder’s personal work, but it does benefit from three elements that always distinguished his films: the absolutely beautiful cinematography of Xaver Schwarzenberger (who did all of RWF’s films after Michael Ballhaus started working in the U.S.), the atmospheric music of Peer Raben, and the acting of the Fassbinder ensemble. Schygulla gives a very “up-tempo” performance here that is odd with her other work, but she was at the height of her beauty at this time and the height of her fame — and was indeed Fassbinder’s very own Dietrich, as shown in the musical sequences here. (Where Hanna did her own English dubbing.)