This is Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film, posthumously
released just months after his death in June 1982. Based on an obscure book
written in 1947 and set in the French Port town of Brest by Jean Genet called
Querelle de Brest. It was originally to
be filmed by Werner Schroeter the German film director, screenwriter and opera
director whom RWF cited as an influence on himself and on German cinema in
general, but he was unable to raise the finance. Then the script, written by
the wonderfully named Burkhead Driest, was offered to Italian film director
Bernardo Bertolucci of
Last Tango in
Paris (1972) fame who refused on the grounds that the cinema going public
was not ready for such a film.
Fassbinder had always wanted to film Genet’s novel but by the time he
got around to it he did not live long enough to see the première of either the
original English language version or the German dubbed version.
The movie did not attempt to transform the novel into what
could be conceived as normal cinematic form instead he used spoken commentary,
fading out to a blank white screen and allowing a written text, which appears
on screen at regular intervals, explain what’s happening. For example this text
accompanies a scene where we witness Querelle ass-fucked by another man ‘for
the first time Querelle kissed another man on the mouth. It seemed to him as if
he was thrusting his face against a mirror, which reflected his own image, as
if his tongue were rooting in the stony interior of a granite head’ another
follows an incident where Querelle offers to help an individual that resembles
his brother, he dresses him in his brothers clothes, kisses him, declares his
love and hands him over to the police. ‘Querelle
had entered into a kind of unspoken pact with the devil. He didn’t sign away
his soul or his body, but something just as precious: a friend. And the death
of this friend sanctifies his crime. It is our task to express what is
universal in a particular phenomenon. It’s no longer about a work of art – for
the work of art is free’. I think you probable get the idea.
 |
| Bred Davis as Georges Querelle. |
Everything was filmed in a studio with the use of ‘lurid
expressionist colour’ it’s obvious that the sets are nothing more than
cardboard cut outs, which make the whole film seem like a theatrical production.
The film stars Brad Davis as Querelle, Franco Nero as Lieutenant Seblon, Jeanne
Moreau, who had lost none of her sexual allure at the age of 54, plays Lysiane
and RWF regular Gunter Kaufmann as Nono. The story is about a sailor Georges
Querelle whose ship the Vengeur arrives in Brest. Going onshore with a quantity
of opium he makes a deal to sell it to Nono the landlord of the Feria
brothel. Subsequently he murders his
accomplice to keep all the profit. Nono’s wife Lysiane is the lover of Querelle
brother Robert with whom he has a love hate relationship. He also wants to
sleep with Nono’s wife but to do so has to enter into a game of dice, if Nono
loses Querelle will be allowed to make love to Lysiane, if Nono wins he will
have to submit to anal sex with the bar owner first, allowing Nono to proclaim
‘That way, I can say my wife only sleeps
with assholes’ Continuing with a life style of murder, thieving and sex
Querelle embarks on a journey of self discovery. It’s not until the end of the
film that Lieutenant Seblon reveals his love for our main protagonist.’
 |
| The sexually alluring Jeanne Moreau. |
In his last interview Fassbinder stated ‘Someone who wants to liberate himself for a
new society must go down to the deepest depths of this society. Someone who
does that, in whatever way, is fascinating. That’s obvious’ a statement
that the Danish author Christian Braad Thomsen claims has to do with living out
all your repressed desires, something RWF describes as ‘doubling one self’
which is, I believe, the core component of the directors film, is it a
coincidence that the final shot in RWF’s final film is a mirror image? He also
sets out to prove that all human relationships are artificial and that life is
just an extension of a three-act play: he does have a point. As normal with his
films, violence and murder are interchangeable with sex although sex is
temporary and death is the final release with Braad Thomsen opining that the
whole film can be understood as Querelle’s journey into the realm of the dead!
He also offers the opinion that our sailor is a Jesus substitute but without
seeing the film again and watching from that point of view I would not presume
to agree. Subject of much controversy, not least because of its free and
provocative depiction of homosexuality and criminality, Rainer Werner
Fassbinder’s final movie is a return to the early avant-garde films and one
that the viewer would benefit from multiple viewings.
 |
| The final embrace. |
Epitaph
In the thirteen years
during which he made films, he changed the face of cinematic art and our idea
of what film can be. Until one day he disappeared as suddenly as he had come.
