Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)
A Film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
DVD5 | ISO | PAL 4:3 (720x576) | 01:59:10 | 4,38 Gb
Audio: German, Russian - AC3 2.0 @ 224 Kbps (each track) | Subs: English, Russian
Genre: Drama | 3 wins | West Germany
A Film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
DVD5 | ISO | PAL 4:3 (720x576) | 01:59:10 | 4,38 Gb
Audio: German, Russian - AC3 2.0 @ 224 Kbps (each track) | Subs: English, Russian
Genre: Drama | 3 wins | West Germany
Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer – arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in. The rest of the film deals with the emotions of this affair and its aftermath. Fassbinder tells his story in a series of 5 or 6 long scenes with extended uses of a single camera shot and deep focus.
IMDB
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 13th of the 33 films he made in his short life and one that received international acclaim. It features an all-female cast, all uniformly smashing. "Bitter Tears" is a film based on a play Fassbinder wrote that makes no attempt to disguise its theatrical origins. The film is divided into five acts set in the same room, against the backdrop of a painted mural after Poussin. The painting gives a striking view of a male nude's private parts. In this claustrophobic setting, the stirring emotional performances and the film's long, elegant takes never let the viewer forget the high artifice of the dramatic situation.
Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)
![Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)]()
"Bitter Tears" sketches an improbable lesbian relationship that teeters on the strength of dominance and submission. This psychodrama love triangle involves Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen) as a manipulative wealthy woman, her willing slavish secretary and possible former lover Marlene (Irm Hermann), and an attractive model named Karin Thimm (Hanna Schygulla) with the common beauty of a working-girl and the ambition to climb the social ladder as a bisexual based on her figure. Fassbinder's misanthropic point is that if you look below the surface, all human relationships are based on factors of master and servant. Love is mostly a substitute for possession or of putting demands on someone. Karin at one point cruelly explains her flawed love for Petra by saying: "I love you in my own way." Other quotes that favor Fassbinder's spin on the miserable human condition include: "People need each other but haven't found a way to live with each other" and "Everyone is dispensable."
Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)
![Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)]()
Petra is a haughty, caustic, self-absorbed, successful fashion-designer living in Bremen. She lost one husband to a car accident, and gave birth to his daughter Gaby (Eva Mattes) a few months after he was buried. The starving-for- affection high-school-aged girl has been sent to boarding school and rarely sees her mother. Petra was also married and then divorced from a man she learned to despise, finding him so revolting that she says "He stank of man."
Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)
![Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)]()
Living with Marlene her subservient secretary, assistant and maid in a luxurious but cramped apartment, Petra displays contempt while bossing Marlene around despite her obedience, hard work, and uncomplaining attitude. When questioned about how cruelly Petra treats Marlene, she responds by saying that's what she expects and wants. Upon a visit from her friend Sidonie (Katrin Schaake), Petra meets Sidonie's friend Karin. She falls head-over-heels for the 23-year aspiring fashion model and has Karin move in with her. But Petra receives the stings of a one-way love relationship as Karin dominates the relationship with her insolence and unconcern about Petra's feelings. Hopelessly in love with Karin, Petra will have a nervous breakdown after Karin tells her she had wild sex all night with a well-endowed American black serviceman, and that she will leave Petra for her husband who just arrived from Australia.
Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)
![Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)]()
The big breakdown comes on Petra's 35th birthday, some time after Karin has left her possessive grasp, when in a drunken state of shock Petra verbally insults all her houseguests (all the women characters in the film except for the absent Karin). Petra has lost control because Karin, on top of everything else, never even called to wish her a Happy Birthday. Adding to her despondent state is the arrival of her parasitic mother (Gisela Fackelday), who upon finding her daughter in love with another woman can only express shock and disappointment.
Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)
![Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)]()
Petra's recovery begins in the quiet after the storm when she realizes that love means more than possession and dependence. In the final act, to the sound of The Platters singing "The Great Pretender," Petra offers a partnership to Marlene, who has been a silent witness throughout, but the secretary without saying a word to this generous (from Petra's point of view) offer packs a suitcase and leaves. This stinging stylized drama of losing a love-object is consistent with Fassbinder's ongoing theme of devastating irony in relationships and his setting the table with sensual atmospheric gloss and high-camp. It's all played out without action in a non-stop verbal barrage, which should limit its audience to Fassbinder freaks and lovers of the unusual in drama and admirers of Douglas Sirk melodramas.Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)
"The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" - was the first Fassbinder's film I saw many years ago in Moscow and it had started my fascination and interest in the work of the enormously talented man who was a writer/director/producer/editor/actor for almost all his movies. "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" is a screen adaptation of the earlier Fassbinder's play and it never leaves the apartment of Petra Von Kant, an arrogant, sarcastic, and successful fashion designer who constantly mistreats and humiliates her always silent and obedient assistant Marianne (Irm Hermann, with whom Fassbinder made 24 movies). As a background for Petra's apartment, Fassbinder uses the blowup of Poussin's painting "Midas and Bacchus."
Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)
![Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)]()
The use of the mural is ironic on more than one level. Nude Bacchus stands in the center of the mural and is the only male presence in a film populated entirely with women. Petra, not unlike legendary Midas wished for herself a golden girl, young and beautiful Karin with golden hair (Hanna Schygulla, another Fassbinder's muse with whom he made over 20 films). As with Midas from legend, it turned to be a huge mistake for Petra who learned herself what abuse, indifference, and humiliation meant. With just a few characters locked in the claustrophobic and suffocating atmosphere of the apartment, the film is never slow or boring thanks to the young director/writer story-telling ability and to magic camera work by Michael Ballhaus ("Goodfellas", "The Last Temptation of Christ", and "After Hours" among others).
Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)
![Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)]()
It is hard to believe that such a gorgeous looking movie was shot for ten days only. I've read that Fassbinder was able to make so many movies in such a short period of time because they were cheaply produced - no special effects, no big action scenes, no exotic locations. This is true but his movies are most certainly not cheap - highly intelligent, thought provoking, always excellently acted and beautiful or perhaps I've been lucky and have not seen the ones that don't fit the description.IMDB Reviewer
Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)
Special Features: Filmography only
Note! It's Russian untouched DVD
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