Here, Here, Herr ?

Now I don't refer to him as the 'beautiful bastard' for nothing, Rainer Werner Fassbinder has earned every connotation of that title, and one might be hard-pressed to discover any other director out there
that has Fassbinder's particular blend of boogey-man and stuffed bunny, and unsurprisingly when
it comes to this talented Teutonic, those two elements aren't mutually exclusive. In all of the forty-one times that Rainer called the celluloid shots, he never once neglected his emotive post, from the stylized ultra-violence in his  La Nouvelle Vague paean/ unconventional gangster love story Love is Colder than Death (1969) to the decidedly more disturbing turn in 1970's Why does Herr R Run Amok?

Twentieth Berlin Film Festival entry ; ( No prizes awarded due to a naughty indiscretion by director Michael Verhoeven )Why does Herr R Run Amok? a feature that was also credited to the co-directing of  screenwriter, director Michael Fengler (b.1940), there were even several rumors that this was actually Fengler's film proper. Although, no doubt it was a project in tandem, there certainly ain't no denying Rainer's inimitable scent over every aspect of this production. Even though I, your humble filmographer am considered a seasoned veteran on the subject of Fassbinder, upon re-viewing the very reason why that Mister R ran amok, I literally found myself having difficulty in breathing and despite being a bona fide teetotaler, could probably use a double of whatever you are having after being privy to this devilish debacle. 

                 Don't Leave Him Hanging On The Telephone...


Shot in an unashamed and unadulterated 16mm, much of which delivered from hand-held glory - enter a 1970 Deutschland dismal, the year they would lose the world cup by a hair to Italy, the cold
war still whirring, and the Ostpolitik was still in it's infancy, and the Soviet bloc was behaving itself
only just a tiny bit better. It was still a West Germany and it did come replete with an atmosphere fraught, and a heavily affected collective psyche. 


Quietly embodied in the heart and soul of Kurt Raab's (1941-88) Herr R. From the first frame, we are privy to this poster boy of the underwhelmed. Ennui never had it so bad, but here the Herr was, soldiering on, with most of the practical aspects of his life taken care of, being in relatively good health with a spouse, although critical and at times bordering on harridan, did in fact love him and a son to make three.

                             Aw, see, things don't look so bad now, do they?



We are taken along, kicking and screaming through their daily sojourns, although one day is not discernible from the next, these hours are filled of pleasantries and dinners by six-o-clock, early beds and back at drawing board
next mornings. A few status conscious friends, neutral and innocuous in-laws, trite discussions and do it all over again tomorrows.


The one gospel and constant, is that Herr R does everything he is supposed to, never do we find him coloring outside the proverbial lines, sans the one time he had the impertinence to chirp a German folk song in vociferous fashion in front of the unimpressed Frau R. He even buys a record early on in the film, although we never really hear him play it. He is the archetypal chin taker, and pathos is never a problem here, we all really do feel for the guy.


And so I have asked myself, all these symptoms - is this what a murderer makes? Was all this internalizing, never challenging his wife on her ability to reduce him in a single bound? The longing 
for the poetry back in his life - that he never was actually permitted to have in the first place? Fassbinder surely had an allegiance to the question mark. Yes, this article does contain some spoil-sport spurts, be careful what you read, okay? I am using my best sleuthing skills to come up with some closure to one of the most unanswerable queries I have ever witnessed in my life. It has been noted that and through my careful research on the subject that there are no definitive profiles of what being a murderer entails, backgrounds, status, standings, coherence, intelligence, for all of these things are transcended. And it is often that 'really nice person' that lives a few houses down that said hello to you every morning you passed them on the street - that have that certain special homicide bug, and that most mass murders are committed by relatively sane souls (gulp)!

                         Well it's one for the money...



It goes beyond this. Alfred Hitchcock in all his wildest, wildest nightmares, could not have given us this dose of s-u-s-p-e-n-s-e. The candlestick murders, maybe, perhaps - perishing a woman for her pretentiousness, name-dropping and loquacity, I can see that. Repeating same such offense on an unsuspecting wife, okay yes that too. Filicide on a slumbering child? You what? Why, Fassbinder why? Yes you wanted me to ask you, you know you did -  you git!