The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)

Load of rubbish!!

It is a performances centric movie

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

From director Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Fear Eats the Soul), the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die has provided me with plenty of films I am keen to see, and this one from Germany is one of them. Basically the film restricts us to staying inside the apartment of successful fashion designer Petra Von Kant (Margit Carstensen), who is arrogant, caustic and self-satisfied, and this includes being rude and constantly ordering about her secretary, maid and co-designer Marlene (Irm Hermann). Petra is being visited by twenty three year old Karin Thimm (Hanna Schygulla) who wants to be a model, but as they get to know each other in their time together they seem to fall in love, and she asks her new love interest to move in. We see the affair continue on until Karin walks out, and we see Petra turn into an emotional wreck, on her birthday in front of her friends and family, they all leave her to wallow in self pity, Marlene finally decides she has had enough, and Petra is left alone sobbing. Also starring Katrin Schaake as Sidonie Von Grasenabb, Eva Mattes as Gabriele Von Kant and Gisela Fackeldey as Valerie Von Kant. Carstensen gives a great performance as the beauty who seems to only care about herself, getting everything she wants and attempting a lesbian relationship that goes wrong, the story is based on the director's own personal experiences as a homosexual, and with inspiration from All About Eve, it is unusual viewing and did not fully make sense at all times for me, but overall it is a rather interesting melodrama. Very good!

"The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" (1972) - 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." 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). 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.9.5/10

Claustrophobic, talky and highly inventive – The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is a key film in the development of R.W. Fassbinder's art. According to longtime colleague Ulli Lommel, Fassbinder wrote the entire work (which also became a play and, posthumously, a modernist opera) during an 11 hour plane journey from Germany to LA. Excited by this flush of creativity, Fassbinder ordered his entourage to head straight back home and shot the entire film in a extraordinary 10 days.Set wholly within one room in the home of successful fashion designer Petra Von Kant, the film deals with the destructive love affair Petra (Margit Carstensen) begins with aspiring model Karin (Hanna Schygulla). As one of Fassbinder's early forays into the reexamination of 1950's Hollywood melodrama, the film has the tendency to polarise audiences with it's highly stylised and almost stagy approach. Even the lack of incidental music may jar with those not familiar with the director's work. Rather than using a swelling score giving cues to the emotions the audience is meant to feel, Fassbinder opts instead for selective natural sound (a typewriter endlessly clacking away in the background during an important scene, for instance) and records from Von Kant's (i.e. Fassbinder's) record collection. Without this trapping, we watch Petra's self-destruction with a certain ambiguity and a more considered response is elicited from the viewer. More space is also given to the magnificent dialogue and inventive camera-work (shot in long, winding takes) which allows the fine ensemble cast to to plunder the depths of emotional despair, all the while dressed in Von Kant's wonderfully outrageous designs.This is all the more fascinating when read as a thinly veiled confession of Fassbinder's domineering ways with those in his inner circle. As also pointed out by Lommel, the film's exclusively female characters were actually all based on men. Fassbinder, however, mostly preferred to work with women as he felt they were freer to express extreme states of emotional truth and more open to the requirements of high melodrama. As a primer for the great director's work, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is an excellent example of Fassbinder's over-riding theme: how the hunter can quickly become the victim and that the universality of desire and need within all human relationships is a constant, regardless of status, sexuality or age.

When I went to see this film I had no idea what to expect (probably the best way to see any film.) I was WOWed! The acting was tremendous. Margit Carstensen was amazing! The whole idea worked extremely well. Seduction by power and personality followed by a power shift then leading to a total breakdown. Basically the story of any torrid romance reduced to its essence. Margit Carstensen plays Petra as both masculine seducer and rejected femme in a seamless and believable fashion. And the set design projects a mood that is both foreboding and carnal.Be sure to bring your brain to this one.