All language subtitles for The.Wizard.of.Babylon.1982.576p.VHSRIP.H.263_Track03

Rainer, you've just concluded
your 41st film, QUERELLE,

based on a novel by Jean Genet.

What made you film this radical novel
by Genet after your feminist films,

MARIA BRAUN and VERONIKA VOSS?

Or, why did you postpone it
for so long?

Well, I didn't shoot feminist films
but films about human society.

QUERELLE by contrast...

Is an utopian draft.

That's what it's in contrast to, it isn't a
feminist film as opposed to men's film.

These films were to describe
a society as good as possible.

It's easier to do this
with women in my opinion.

QUERELLE is a draft of
a possible society...

which, judging by all
its repulsiveness, is wonderful.

Therefore, they don't contradict
each other but compliment each other.

When reading the novel, it isn't
easy to imagine it being film.

When the novel was to be prohibited,

it was said to be pornographic
and fascistoid novel.

What's your opinion?

Everything that stretches
as far as the social border...

or crosses it must automatically be
pornographic in this society...

and every imaginable Utopia contains
the danger of fascistoid moments.

That stands to reason.

Didn't you fear the radicalness
of its content, the two great taboos

of the bourgeis world -- murder on one
side and homosexuality on the other?

No, I wasn't anxious about that...

because QUERELLE is
the same kind of stuff...

it's like what I would have
invented myself if I did invent.

You changed Genet's novel
in one point.

Your Querelle is
soft and fragile at the end,

you even put words of Seblon in
the mouth of the radical hero of force,

while Genet's Querelle puts out to sea
as the radiant victor

and Seblon is in prison.

Do you enjoy making
your characters break or fail,

do you want to help the spectator
to identify himself with the character?

It's always like this when things
have a good or bad end...

how's the spectator going to picture
the end for himself?

In this case I'm certain he
didn't break but isn't as heroic

at the end as in Genet's version -- but
the heroic part, the heroic part

will be added by the spectator.

The entire film was shot
in a studio with a everlasting

yellowy-orange and blue light.
Why not in the original setting?

The novel doesn't play
in original settings either.

This isn't a novel in which the
author first has a good look

at the countryside and places
like Hemingway did,

and then uses this
in a form of narration.

The Brest that Genet depicts
is a totally invented one.

It doesn't exist... maybe
in some kind of bar in Texas.

I go and leave you behind in the evening, which,
although sad, falls so sweetly on us living,

with the changing light that clots into shadows
here in the district and strangely shakes it.

It gets bigger and emptier
all around and ignites from afar.

A greedy life. - Pier Paolo Pasolini.

The Peasant of Babylon. Excessive humiliation.
Shit on all walls. Monumental erections.

Private planes with nothing on board but coke.
Scandals of consternation. Eager anarchy.

Any kind of private life abolished
for a corrupt falling regime.

Stimulants to fall asleep. To survive
betrayal. Like Querelle himself.

Doing evil with the tenacity
of a fighter.

Being tender in a wild state, being torn by
the senses, cruel and proud to a certain finality.

As you would like to be.

To be glorified by someone
who comes after you.

That's no longer needed
to be understood by the living.

Be quiet down there!

He wanted to yell that line, if
I remember correctly.

Absolutely!

(RWF): He also shall tell him
to take off his hat and to stand up.

(RWF): The camera has to
move fastly towards him.

(RWF): It's supposed to be a zoom.

(RWF): This needs to be more aggressive.

(RWF): Very carefully for fuck's sake.
Be more aggressive!

Let's start again.

(RWF): Once again.

(RWF): You started too early.

Street scene in New York.
A man stops you and says:

"You look like this famous German film
director Rainer Werner Fassbinder."

You take a short glance at him, the
sunglasses' dark lenses pointed at him

like revolver barrels
and ask: "Oh yes?"

then you say quietly,
as if only to yourself:

"He's much too famous.
He wouldn't walk down the street."

Where's Brad?

(RWF): Here Brad starts and gets up

to walk to the box
with the gun in his hand.

(RWF): He will get changed here.

Who? Meaning that he hands him…

(RWF): No, Karin, he will simply
eat the gun.

Well, he has to give him the gun.

(RWF): Precisely.

He will take the gun out himself?

(RWF): He sits down on the box
and starts unpacking it.

The gun?

(RWF): Yes.

And Hanno will start
to uh… change clothes?

(RWF): Yes.

(RWF): With the gun he will turn around,
since he got his back to the camera...

(RWF): So then you say: I have to shoot.

That, too, is loneliness. The greedy life of
the gay bars of New York, where the men

enjoy themselves completely uninvolved,
actually uninvolved, in a frenzy of ecstasies,

as they grant each other
like murderers.

And sometimes,

when your loneliness was
at its darkest,

you hoped someone
would pull out a knife.

But even the murderers loved your films.
They just pulled out their pens.

You are famous. America
knows your name.

Hollywood is waiting
and taking their time,

still the seductress
so confident of victory.

But instead of making films there, you're
still here, trapped in the greedy life,

putting your dick in the mouth
of a boy so he can chew it.

Innocent and uninvolved.

But the boy just stares at you. His
hesitation could make you commit murder.

The boy only proves it again:
you are famous.

Nothing matters.

Even the sailors of the meat market
aren't keen on you anymore.

(RWF): What are the first lines please?

(RWF): Then you bend down

(RWF:) You throw the stuff off the table

Everything?

(RWF): Everything.

(RWF): Then you will lay over
the table like Querelle.

(RWF): Here I'll lay the eggplant
under the blanket.

(RWF): Then I'll pick out the underwear
from under there.

(RWF): I will hang them here.

(RWF): Now they will start laughing.

(RWF): Then you'll go down.

Down.

No one lies down there?

(RWF): No, someone can sit down
there as well, I don't mind.

All quiet, please

You remove the eggplant
and take that thing over there.

Then you'll hide it in the front.

Then you'll laugh again
and the camera moves up.

You will delay the laughter a little.

Close to you are only those who have
already passed their rejection.

Like Querelle, whose beauty
hits you right in the heart.

The glory of his muscles
makes you dream.

His gaze soothes you
and licks the wounds.

You wanted to shoot a film with
James Dean once. Here he is.

Patrice Chéreau visits you from Paris, solely
to see you direct. Is he also insane?

Robert Rauschenberg pays as visit.
Andy Warhol as well. They are

only allowed to come if they won't talk
to you. You don't talk with any of them.

They are all so terribly famous that
talking no longer makes sense.

And you can see it in Warhol's face,
the insane price he has to pay.

To only be a shell, to
sacrifice oneself.

Destroyed by their own work.

And then talk as much nonsense
as this Andy. And so elegant.

"I saw QUERELLE, it made me hot for the
whole day, do you want another Schweppes?"

Later, back in New York, you get
the idea to call Jacqueline Kennedy,

if she would like to meet you.
Andy calls. No problem.

Someone as famous as her, you should be
allowed to just sit there and remain silent.

Of course Jacqueline wants to meet
this Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Isn't it unbelievable, Kitty?

Kitty, the producer
of QUERELLE, believes it.

It makes you mad, so you decide
that it shall stay unbelievable.

Three hours before the scheduled meeting
with Jacqueline, you travel back to Berlin.

Kitty is annoyed. Jacqueline,
that would've been it.

But you're just enjoying yourself, looking
back at the fairy tales behind all realities.

Is Rainer your ideal?

It is my ideal, indeed.

How did Rainer react
once he heard of the plan?

He agreed spontaneously.
He wanted to do it.

Seemingly it is his all-time
favorite book.

Which he devoured
around 15 years ago.

Same for me.

A new way of thinking, which seemed
impossible before, presented itself to me.

This way of producing a film, cinematically
and financially, was done independently.

Since this became a possibility, it further
strengthened me in dealing with rejections.

One is possibly freed
of imposed ties.

Thus for me, producing a film
also entails a certain risk.

Making a film with total security, which
we have experienced very often in Germany,

also leads to films that
are artistically very secure.

The director of this film RWF, is a person
who is not afraid to climb the rope,

while the danger of falling
is always present.

Which felt similar with the way
I felt in approaching this film.

Another risk was
the financial construction

since we began filming
without receiving all the funds.

Some contracts had not yet
been legally concluded.

However, I always knew that the film couldn't
be done if I simply wait around for it.

From that point on
I wasn't bothered anymore

and was even willing to work
as a lumberjack in Canada.

The fact that they call you a genius
makes you hostile towards yourself,

because you can also be boring. Life too.
And the desire to disappear.

I don't know if Genet has had any contact
with Fassbinder until now.

But I think he'll be very happy
to find in this film,

A whole literary universe,

which we are now finding through the filming,
which I have seen the first results of.

The exact precision.

Genet is very precise in his writing.

Fassbinder is also precise in
his film writing.

We find exactly the same concentration,
the same density.

Beyond the transposition
that Fassbinder made in images,

we find the same research,
the same efforts,

the same direction towards
a purity of men,

of friendship, of love... Sensuality.

(RWF): We have to do it again!

(RWF): Did you drink?

No.

(RWF): It's not your turn.
There's a logic behind it.

(RWF): Put your hand on his left shoulder.

(RWF): Yes, keep standing there
exactly like that.

(RWF): Step back a bit.

For you, too, the proper success
would be a triumph in America.

But the Americans warn you:
no extra length, no art film

and they demand the deletion
of the epic narrator.

America is big, and powerful
are the fists that caress you.

You torture yourself, thinking of
the mistakes of Bertolucci and Fellini.

And you think of the triumph. "The
sucess in America", the cover picture.

Suddenly the French, who are co-producing, are
in agreement with the Americans on that matter.

Only thing is, they already think of you as
the genius and would never dare to interfere.

But they prefer geniuses
who are also businessmen.

You are enough of that too
to stop tormenting yourself.

(RWF): On "please" you drink.

(RWF): The glass has already
been poured.

(RWF): Can he get a cigarette, honey?

(RWF): We have to try it.
There's no other way.

(RWF): That's too automatic, too contrived,
it should happen in the moment, flowing.

(RWF): We'll do it once again please,
since it's important.

But you also glorified the anger and
disappointment when everything went awry,

even trashing the whole hotel room then
calling your friends to ask, if it was possible

to get an Oscar nomination.

"You're going to get it," everyone says.

"Give it to me so that I can live".

The heavy body is walled up
into the fat, and the leather.

And the soul has long since
been turned away from all splendour.

Describe your experience
working with RWF.

How did it differ from your
previous role in “Endstation Freiheit”

It is totally different for me.

I started here with a very well thought
and finished concept

of the original titular Genet novel.

I wrote two scripts, so I didn't enter
like a regular actor

only having Rainer's version
as a reference.

Since my way of approaching the subject matter
of Genets novel differs greatly from Rainer.

My interests started early, during my time
in school I was already a fan of Sartre's works.

I identified
with the idea of existentialism.

Those thoughts were akin to me. Sartre also
wrote extensively about Genet in his work.

So my approach differed
since I leaned on Sartre.

The first time I stepped on the set
Rainer came to me in a cop outfit,

and without telling me about
his ideas, vision or concept,

he immediately asked me
to wear welding goggles.

Thus I thought he was
taking the piss.

The day came to a close and
we were shooting a fight scene.

I have shot many fight scenes before
and was interested in them.

I knew how to convey them correctly,
since I also spend some time in the USA.

However, Rainer's way of shooting
the fight scene was different.

More like one you would
encounter in a stage play.

He told me that the whole fight
will be filmed in one take.

Which was the way
he intended to shoot it.

As a way of cinematic theatre.

However, I knew that one take wouldn't
suffice for filming the scene in his vision.

So I protested the one take idea.

Then Rainer came up to me
and said "I hear you are afraid"

He presented himself in a very macho
and chauvinistic manner.

Then things started to get
quite difficult.

Thus I think that he can only work with people
who find true pleasure in submitting themselves.

But the way you reach me is through kindness
since I want to understand the intentions.

I like to be treated with tenderness, instead
with cynicism, mockery or even brutality.

The only thing that rises in me
with that behaviour is murder

and with that in my mind it became
very difficult to play the role of a cop.

How did you manage to live and work
with that behaviour?

I didn't really manage. One day of shooting
I was only sitting there still, without acting,

while being filled with hatred.

Surprisingly the next day the atmosphere
shifted to a more friendly one.

The producer came up
to and told me to keep it cool,

while keeping the film
as finished product in mind.

And that is precisely why I decided
to continue to work on that film.

I believe, that it was hard for others as well,
especially for the ones not speaking German.

They must have felt that someone was standing
behind them, smiling and whispering about them.

A person with a very cynical attitude
towards other people, especially co-workers.

It's not easy to do a scene, to act
according to the script, whilst knowing

that someone in the background
is giving sceptical commentaries.

(RWF): Let's do a rehearsal.

(RWF): Then she takes a step back, and then
a step forward again to result in a spin.

(RWF): There must be a mistake,
since it is set here.

(RWF): No, that was her position.

(RWF): That's where I was.

It was too early.

(RWF): No, I was right in my spot.

(RWF): I see, it's the centimetres
that count!

(RWF): But I was almost exactly here!

(RWF): Ah well, the millimetres...

For her you are a dancer and your
admiration for she is immediately limitless.

She allows herself to love you.
Oh, and how she loves you.

The way you stand in front of her with
a lowered gaze just to to give her a single,

never repeated directing instruction:
"You just have to be great."

(RWF): She tells him like a lullaby.

She thanks him with her famous smile.

Jeanne knows the men well, she knows
the secret of their rituals,

understands their silence
and the fear in them.

But she also enjoys their brutal
simplicity and unpredictability,

just like in Genet's story here,

and especially the one
of its young director.

The production writes Jean Genet

a letter and asks him to give a commentary
for the French version of the film.

Jean Genet replies: "It's been 40 years,
the book "Querelle de Brest" is far behind me.

I forgot about it, just like my other books. Say
that to Mr. Fassbinder, he will understand me."

(RWF): No, I wanted the first turn to be real
and the second one to be seen in the mirror.

I want to get on the cover photo
of the TIME magazine.

I will make it, and that makes me happy
and I admit that. That is luxury.

Work when ugliness finally
reconquers all beauty.

(RWF): Where is she supposed to be
standing, when he walks around her?

A feisty, fat body, a monstrous bastion against
any affection that only makes you suspicious.

It also protects you from the expected hugs.
Even those you shyly long for.

Getting ugly is your way
of staying alone.

That's luxury.

How the world stars dance
in front of your camera,

and you're standing next to them in the
shadows with your Bavarian wheat beer.

Nothing is more fascinating
than being famous.

Because nothing compares to the horror
when the dreamt up becomes reality.

(RWF): Thanks! Was it good?

Get ugly and work.

Then, only then should they come.

The beautiful kings of film.
The Queens and the photographers.

(RWF): When do you start seeing her?

(DoP): At the end of the panning.

(RWF): She can already be
further along. Tell her.

(RWF): Burkhard, another rehearsal please.

(RWF): Walk through quicker,
bang, quicker!

(RWF): The camera pan
reaches them, they start walking

and I'll pan along
but mainly focus on Lysiane.

(RWF): Then they'll walk out
and the songs ends. My God!

There she is, singing you the song of
the dead. In a bar for four million.

Around you sailors from
the eternally unfullfilled pictures.

When he dreams, when he is alone.

And when he dreams of himself.

That's how he sees himself in his fame.

And without a doubt he wished
a hundred, a thousand times...

...to see his future image.

The entry reads: born on the 19.12.18,
10 o'clock in the morning.

By Gabrielle Genet, father unknown.

Apart from his books, nothing
is known about him.

He is unknown, like the day of his death,
which he feels is near. Jean Genet.

For many years you've been
working with a worked-in team.

I noticed a concentrated tension
during the shooting,

it was different to other films.

Was it like that from the beginning,

or is it because of the common
experience of the team?

This team's been working
together quite freely for years.

Here we had quite a bit of tension.

This certainly has something to do
with the film's theme.

I think that the fascination
of the Utopia...

...was more or less carried
on to each individual.

What motives made you engage stars

like Brad Davis, Franco Nero,
and Jeanne Moreau?

Was it to make the film
more publicly effective?

This is a difficult question.

These aren't stars who have a
special audience right away.

There are very few of those
in the world.

No, Franco Nero is the right
man for this role -- in any case.

Jeanne Moreau is the woman for me
and my filmic imagination, and Lysiane

is the woman in the story. She was
the only one to come into question.

Brad Davis has something that
very few stars have...

...an unnatural fascination between
acting and the screen.

This is very good in acting but
still better on the screen.

This is rarely the case.

Couldn't it be that
you're a director who,

because of his success, is compelled
to work with famous actors?

Or is it always your personal choice?

It's my personal choice. No one forces
me to engage any certain person.

In such a case I'd set an end
to such a project.

If a financial backer tried to force me
to engage a person, I wouldn't do it.

With the double role of Hanno Pöschl

as Querelle's brother Robert
and as Querelle's friend Gil,

you certainly revealed a main theme

and taboo of the novel --
the forbidden love

between brothers, which is expressed

in the fighting of the brothers.

Genet doesn't show this thought so clearly.
How did it come about?

I do think that
Querelle's relationship

to Gil stands for the love
of his brother Robert.

At least that's what I read in Genet.

Even looking back on it, don't think
it's a mistake; it's correct that way.

Now a general question
about homosexuality,

which is an old theme of your films.

Couldn't one say that you're
the director who was chosen

to shoot QUERELLE,
like one says that Visconti

was chosen to shoot Proust's
"Remembrance of Things Past"?

Oh, I don't know,
who chooses who, I don't know.

How would you say that
homosexuality is depicted in films?

Always wrongly, anyway.
You can't do justice to any group.

You can't do justice
to the homosexuals

nor to the heterosexuals. You can just
keep doing everything wrong.

Homosexuality isn't a theme anyway.

The theme is the identity of
an individual and how he obtains it.

That is in connection with
what Genet says...

I fully agree with him here...

that to be able to be complete,
you need yourself once more.

After MARIA BRAUN
your films became more

and more publicly effective
and more traditional

than, for example, SATAN'S BREW
and IN A YEAR OF 13 MOONS.

Have you lost interest
in this kind of film?

Do you look at this kind of film
differently now?

No, not at all. I always
said I'd carry on producing

these cheap, quickly-made films
with small crews.

I haven't decided on
a special kind of form.

I still find all forms of films
possible and necessary.

Some characters in your films
use the same names as the actors.

Does QUERELLE contain any
of your own experiences of life,

is there something of you in him?

Yes, certainly.

Yet I still can't say that
I'm Querelle. I can't say that.

But every character contains
experiences out of my life.

It's more difficult to say
with this film than with others.

There are certainly some
autobiographical connections.

I think I have to have lived the life
I lived to be able to shoot

the film in this manner.

In 1977 you said you'd go
to Hollywood.

No, I didn't say that. I said
I wanted to move to New York.

Is there anything
that would make you

want to go to Hollywood
like Wim Wenders?

I'm not interested in going
to Hollywood to make films.

I could, though.
But I've always said that

to be able to make films
in a country, films about a country,

I'd have to have lived there
for about two years first.

If I did move to New York one day
and live there for two years,

I might make a film in Hollywood.

But not before then.

You started to create
a kind of German Hollywood

with LILI MARLEEN and QUERELLE,
which were

both extremely big
studio productions.

That was once an expressed
thought of mine.

What I'd like is a
Hollywood cinema, that is,

a film that's as wonderful and as easy
to understand as Hollywood's cinema

but at the same time
not as untruthful.

What would you
say caused the great crisis

for the German cinema,
especially in the sixties?

Werner Herzog once
said that the German film

directors had no fathers
but only grandfathers.

You'll have to ask
Werner Herzog about that.

I keep realizing more
and more that towards

the end of the forties
and the beginning

of the fifties there were
initial steps of high quality

in the German film business but they
weren't able to gain acceptance.

This has something to do
with the mixing-up of

the German and American
film industries.

Distributors are still obliged to show
a certain percentage of American films.

During the fifties the German
film industry blindly

submitted itself to the Americans in order
to preserve its share in the market.

Instead of thinking about
what they want to produce

they thought in formulas.

This had to lead
to an artistic collapse.