Fassbinder-Martha(1974)

What’s been described as a film depicting “marriage as a vampire story” begins with unmarried Martha (played by Fassbinder regular of the period Margit Carstensen), in her early thirties and still a virgin, holidaying in Rome with her domineering father who cannot bear to be touched by her. As they climb the Spanish Steps, he suffers a heart attack and dies and, even at this stage, he rebuffs her offer of physical help, snapping, “You’re always wanting to touch me!” Martha, in a panic and confused - it simultaneously transpires that her purse, containing all of their money, has been stolen - then flees the scene and leaves him to the care of a group of layabout hippies. Later, outside the German consul, where she has gone to organise repatriation of the body, as well as the financing of her own carriage home, she has her first encounter with Helmut (Karlheinz Bohm – 14 years on from his role as Mark Lewis in “Peeping Tom” and here embarking on a short period where he was to be quite a significant member of the Fassbinder repertory). What she is unaware of at this point, though, is that this is the man who she will later marry and who will ultimately wreck her life, as well as her sanity. The audience, however, are given a clue to the significance of their meeting, as they circle one another silently and in a dreamlike state before each continuing on their ways, seemingly unaffected and unimpressed.

    

Back home again in Constanz, ensconced in a bourgeois milieu, Martha is held responsible for the aforementioned death by her alcoholic and drug addicted mother, a woman who also mocks her daughter for being unmarried and left on the shelf. So, for the second time, we see Martha being the figure of abuse for so-called loved ones, her patient acceptance of this behaviour clearly defining her as being possessed of the masochistic tendencies which her name suggests. Martha isn’t, however, without suitors as, shortly after her return, we see her respectable manager at the vast, deserted library where she works ask for her hand in marriage. When she refuses, though, he instantly asks her best friend and colleague the same question and she readily accepts, the rapidity and coolness of this switch indicating early on that Fassbinder may, perhaps, be cocking a snoop at “the sacred institution”.

Shortly afterwards, at a very stilted wedding reception, where Martha’s mother takes the first of the sedative overdoses which will lead to her being sectioned, Helmut turns up as the brother of the groom. He follows Martha, who is clearly distressed by his arrival, into the garden and, from this stage on, their relationship, Martha’s humiliation and Helmut’s intimidation begin, as he grabs her in a violent embrace, but not until he has clarified that he will be moulding virgin clay and then told her, “I don’t think you’re very beautiful and certainly not attractive and charming. You’re too thin, almost skinny. When one looks at you, one can almost feel your bones. And I have the impression your body smells.” If it wasn’t so cruel, this film would be hysterical in places.

During one of their first dates, to a fairground, Helmut insists that Martha rides on a rollercoaster with him, even though she is terrified and tells him that she will be sick. As he smiles and chuckles the whole ride round, she gasps for breath and turns whiter by the minute. Then, as predicted, straight after disembarking, she vomits in a dark corner, unaware of the secreted lovers just a stone’s throw away witnessing her every retch. An early indication of Helmut’s cold and twisted personality ensues when, instead of asking after her well-being, he announces, “Martha, I want you to be my wife,” to which our ill-fated heroine responds, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You’ve no idea how I’ve yearned to hear these words.” Instead of embracing her, Helmut then turns coldly away. Could this woman be marrying her deceased father?

It is then on their honeymoon on the Italian Riviera that the torment and erosion of her personality begins, starting seemingly innocuously with Helmut insisting that she has tea and cornflakes for her breakfast rather than her preferred eggs and coffee and admonishing her for smoking too early in the day. When she sunbathes later that day, he tells her “You’ve got such white skin. I’d like you to get a sun tan quickly,” refusing to apply cream to protect her, as she has requested. What then follows is probably the most shocking scene in the film, when the severely sunburnt Martha, who has fallen asleep and deliberately not been woken by her husband, lies unable to move due to her pain. Her suffering, however, serves only to inspire lust and cruelty in Helmut who forces himself upon her there and then on the hotel bed. Now, the domineering sadist has fully surfaced.

 

Back in Germany, after what she thinks is a wrong turning on their return journey, Martha learns that their wedded life will be spent not in her family home, as she had expected, but in a huge property nearby which Helmut has got cheaply on account of it having been the site of a murder. Then, once inside their new abode, he tells her she is not permitted to have any of her own furniture as it will be out of keeping with the property and that she is only allowed to smoke in the conservatory, a decree we see her obeying immediately after he departs on one of the numerous business trips which keep him away from Martha and the house throughout the week. She, meanwhile, returns to her own place of work only to be told that Helmut has tendered her resignation for her. Trying to keep face, she pretends that she has only gone in to borrow a book and that she has not, in fact, turned in expecting to do a day’s work.

Back at home, now holed-up with nothing to do and no company, Martha smokes, reads and listens to music all day. However, even this is not good enough for Helmut as, when he returns home one weekend with the gift of a record for her, after laughing at her new hairstyle and then demanding the savage sex he expects on tap, he removes her own choice from the turntable, screaming, “Do you listen to this dreadful music? But, Martha, that’s not music. It’s slime! Pure slime!” (It’s not even U2!!) Similarly, wishing to control her reading matter, too, he buys her a book about dam engineering. “You have a whole week to read it,” he tells her. “I want you to understand my work so that I can talk with you.” We later see her memorising huge chunks of text in order to please him.

   

And on it goes. He tells her he wants her to promise that she will never leave the house, he kills her pet cat and he has the phone disconnected, all before Martha sees the light and decides to flee Helmut’s controlling and increasingly deranged ways. Even now, though, he wins the day and total control of his wife, as the film ends with him wheeling Martha out of hospital, now paralysed from a car accident which occurred as she tried to escape his tyranny. Her one remaining friend and ally, an ex-colleague, has been killed in the same accident. The final shot then shows the doors of the hospital lift closing, indicating that life is over for Martha and that she has no option other than to submit fully to Helmut’s regime.

Many levels of interpretation can be layered onto “Martha”. On the one hand, it can be read as Fassbinder’s reworking of George Cukor’s 1944 film “Gaslight” in which Ingrid Bergmann suffers psychological torment and is driven towards a nervous breakdown by her husband, updating and paying homage to old Hollywood films being one of Fassbinder’s old hobbies. “Ali : Fear Eats the Soul” is essentially Douglas Sirk’s “All That Heaven Knows” transposed onto post-war Germany and many of his other films like “Fox and his Friends” bear resemblance to Hollywood melodramas albeit transferred to an alternative context. At the same time, it can also be seen as Fassbinder’s own childhood revisited and turned into celluloid. His own father (also called Hellmuth, you’ll remember), apparently, had a sadistic, controlling nature and once had the family telephone disconnected in order to sever contact with the outside word, just as Helmut does in “Martha. It’s even a wickedly cruel comedy – some scenes are actually laugh-out-loud funny, especially when she tries to memorise the correct consistency for mixing concrete to please Helmut. Freudian interpretations are possible, too, with regard to a sexual tension between fathers and daughters which leads the heroine to marry a man so similar to the one she watched die at the beginning of the film and who, we suspect, treated her equally cruelly. She is delighted, for example, when, on their honeymoon, Helmut professes to share the same favourite food as her late father (When she prepares it for him later in their marriage, though, he tersely announces that he is allergic to offal and refuses to eat it). Like a lot of Fassbinder films, it also acts as a critique of bourgeois conventions, this time marriage and, at the same time, is partly an emblematic allegory, the kind of cautionary tale you might consider buying as an engagement gift for a friend you can see entering into a doubtful pairing. This is a character called Martyr, after all, who stays with her man and lives in a town called Constance. The heavy rain on her wedding night is highly ominous and then has a coda in the tears we see falling from the eyes of the religious bust which stands immediately inside the portals of their new home. It’s all very reminiscent of an early literary model like "The Pilgrim's Progress" or "The Faerie Queene". Whichever of these slants you warrant the most weight, “Martha” is certainly a film which is beautifully shot, with sumptuous colours and settings and, therefore, comes highly, highly recommended to you on that level alone. Get yourself down to your local Amazon now!

Fassbinder Introduction and "Katzelmacher"(1969)

Issue 1 of my fanzine "German Bite" included quite a long article about my favourite film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Here's the first part of it. I'll post the rest of it as and when I get a chance, hopefully over the next few days.

RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER(1945-1982)

“Back to Nature”; “X, Y and Zee”; Sylvester; “Cabaret”; Throbbing Gristle; “The Abominable Dr. Phibes”; Siouxsie and the Banshees; “Down in the Park”/”Are Friends Electric?”; “Sebastiane”/“Jubilee”; “The Marble Index”/“Desertshore”; Sparks; Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood and The Bromley Contingent; Suicide; “Here Come the Warm Jets”; Swell Maps; “Pink Flamingoes”/“Female Trouble”/“Desperate Living”; Amanda Lear; Wire; “Yes, Sir I Can Boogie”; “Nag Nag Nag”; “The Blood on Satan’s Claw”; “Ca Plane Pour Moi”; “Plastic Ono Band”/“Fly”/”Approximately Infinite Universe”; Kraftwerk; “A Clockwork Orange”; T.Rex; The B52’s; X-Ray Spex; “No G.D.M.”; “Red Dress”; The Sex Pistols; The Village People; Patty Hearst; Chic; “Je T’aime Moi...Non Plus”; “Psychomania”; Devo; “Nearest and Dearest”/“Not on Your Nellie”; “Groovin’ with Mr. Bloe”; Blondie; “Christopher and his Kind”; The Ramones; “Supernature”; “Bouquet of Barbed Wire”; Pete Walker; “T.V.O.D.”/”Warm Leatherette”; Bowie in his many guises; “The Night Porter”; Essential Logic; many a fantastic Beryl Bainbridge novel; Sheila B. Devotion; “Barfuß im Regen”; The Modern Lovers; Larry Grayson’s Generation Game”; “Being Boiled”/”Reproduction”; “Trash”/“Heat”/“Women in Revolt/Bad”; Giorgio Moroder/Munich Machine/Donna Summer; “Spiral Scratch”/“What Do I Get?”; “Tokyo Joe”; The Red Army Faction; “Daughters of Darkness”; Vice Versa; “Salo”; “Live at the Witch Trials”; “Paris 1919”/“Vintage Violence”/“Fear”; “Death Line”; “The Idiot”; “Mind Your Own Business” ; “Blind Terror”; The New York Dolls/Heartbreakers; “Deep End”; Patrick Hernandez; Zoo Records; The Residents; “Billy Porter”; Chicory Tip; Metal Urbain; Wayne/Jayne County; Noosha Fox; “Cakes in the Home”; “Big Red Balloon”; Subway Sect; “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol : From A to B & Back Again”; File Under Pop/AK Process/AK47; “Black Christmas”; “Disco Clone”; “Produkt der Deutsch Amerikanischen Freundschaft”; “Love Hangover”; “Rock Follies”; “Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?”; The Flying Lizards; “French Boy”; The Runaways; The big 5 Roxy Music albums; The Slits; “Rock and Roll Pts. 1 & 2”; “Transformer”/”Berlin”; “Automatic Lover”; Grace Jones’ disco period; Kleenex; Thomas Leer & Robert Rental; “Mouldy Old Dough”; Lori and the Chameleons; Mott the Hoople; “Er Hat Ein Knallrotes Gummiboot”; “Sid Did It”; “Electricity”; “Fairytale in the Supermarket”; “Better Scream”; “See My Baby Jive”; “The Possession of Joel Delaney”; “Let’s All Chant”; “Myra Breckenridge”; “Trog”!! The list could go on forever.

The 1970s were an absolute treasure trove. However, another reason why it was an extremely important decade is because it was the one in which Rainer Werner Fassbinder, German Bite’s favourite director by an absolute mile, made 33 of his 43 films, before his life was tragically shortened as a result of an overdose in 1982. Now, like the above list, there’s so much to say about Fassbinder that this article could go on forever. So, GB has decided to give just a small insight by focusing on four of his films from different stages in his career and, who knows, if we run to future issues there could possibly be even more on the way. But, first, some biography for those who don’t know a great deal about this “drug-crazed German faggot” as the “Time Out Film Guide” so homophobically refer to him in their overview of “Querelle”. Naughty, Naughty, Time Out Film Guide!! While we’re on the topic, too, they could have also been a little more careful with their phrasing when talking about our very favourite film, “X, Y and Zee”. People can be terrible parrots, you know, especially when aping snippets of American English to impress the gang.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was born on 31st May 1945, directly at the end of WW2, give or take a few weeks, into a middle class, semi-intellectual family living in Bad Wörishofen, a spa town in southern Bavaria. His father, Hellmuth, was a medical practitioner, and would-be poet, and his mother, Lieselotte, who went on to star in several of his films, worked as a translator. They named their son after the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and brought him up in a household where toys and comics were, apparently, forbidden and where paying guests also lived on the premises. However, all this changed when Fassbinder was six years old and his father left home, the young Rainer and his mother relocating to Munich, the city with which he is most associated. Here, living in an area which at that time was known for its prostitutes, pimps and immigrant workers, Fassbinder’s worldview, aesthetic and sexuality began to take shape, American films from the 1930s and 40s also having a significant influence upon his development, as his mother sent him off to the cinema regularly so that she could spend time alone with her younger boyfriend. She was also absent for quite long periods due to her suffering from tuberculosis and, if stories are correct, Fassbinder was for much of the time a street child, responsible for his own well-being and development. He ended up going to a Steiner school, too.

By the time he had left school, minus his diploma, Fassbinder was writing poetry, plays and short stories, as well as mixing and doing odd-jobs in related circles and, as a result, the original core of what has been called “The Fassbinder Group” began to form, starting with Irm Hermann (the first of “Fassbinder’s Women”, star of his first short film “The City Tramp” and someone who would go on to appear in a good proportion of his films over the next ten years or so). Three other important figures also appeared around this time, Hanna Schygulla, who he chose for the lead part in his second short “A Little Chaos”(1966) and with whom he worked on and off throughout his career, Peer Raben who acted in many of Fassbinder’s films, as well as composing the music for the majority of his oeuvre, and Kurt Raab who worked on 31 of his films, either as an actor or production manager, often as both.

And so it was in this milieu and with this coalescing group of people that Fassbinder began to direct for the theatre, some radical reworkings of plays by Brecht, Sophocoles and Büchner and some compositions of his own, including one Artaudian piece which dealt with the actions of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, “Preparadise Sorry Now(1968)”, all performed in the run-down Action Theater on Munich’s Müllerstrasse. Interestingly, a regular audience member at the time was Andreas Baader whose sidekick, Horst Söhnlein, was using the theatre’s back room as a bomb factory and, as the two left equipped to burn down department stores in Frankfurt and to kickstart the activities of the Red Army Faction, they smashed up the place, in turn providing the impetus for the next stage of Fassbinder’s career, his own theatre company, The Antitheater, München, who went on to serve as production company for his first feature length film “Love is Colder Than Death” in early 1969.

Over the next twelve months, Fassbinder would write and direct nine full-length films, setting a precedent for the next decade or so, during which he was almost superhuman in his prolific creativity and during which he became one of the stars of the New German Cinema (see also Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog et al), as well as one of the most respected and, ultimately, successful directors of the period, achieving many accolades en route. At the time of his death, having just won The Golden Bear at The Berlin Film Festival for “Veronika Voss” and with probably his most known and successful film “Querelle” about to be released, he stood poised for major international success. However, the personality which was to produce so many films of such intensity and at such an intense pace was also to be the one which would lead to his untimely end. Fuelled by years of cocaine, alcohol and sleeping tablet abuse, stories abound of Fassbinder smashing up motor vehicles, treating hotel rooms with the same kind of disregard as hedonistic rock stars of the period and becoming a well-known habitué of New York’s notorious leather bars such as The Anvil, The Spike and The Mine Shaft – his leather jacketed look, mirrored aviator shades and faded jeans from the latter part of his life certainly bring Robert Mapplethorpe and his gang to mind. His career was also peppered with a series of tempestuous love affairs, mainly with men (including two who committed suicide) but others with women in his circle – he married one of his leading ladies, Ingrid Caven, in 1970 – such that his biography has become almost synonymous with his output. He was even absent from his own funeral, by the way, his body still being examined for traces of narcotics at Munich’s city morgue, as mourners accompanied his empty coffin to the grave.

But, now we’re descending into gossip so let’s look at those four films, as promised, shall we?

Katzelmacher(1969) – Fassbinder’s second feature length film, arriving pretty hot on the heels of “Love is Colder Than Death”, was a development of an earlier stage play that he had written for his Antitheater group and this is highly evident in the stylised, often static tableaux-like scenes which make up the film. For the title, meaning “the little cat maker”, he adopted a derogatory term which was applied to immigrant guest workers in Germany at the time, supposedly as a result of their uncontrollable and indiscriminate breeding habits and their ability to sire larger litters of children than the average domestic male, and the film, consequently, represents Fassbinder’s first attempt at tackling the theme of racism, which he then did most famously in “Ali : Fear Eats The Soul”(1974) and also in the less well-known “Whity” of three years earlier.

In the opening scenes, we meet a cast of characters who live and socialise in a block of flats in a lower middle class neighbourhood of Munich but who don’t really seem to like one another very much or have a great deal to do during their leisure time, apart from stand around in silence, gossip maliciously, turn on one another from time to time or sleep with people behind (or in front of) each other’s backs. First, we see Marie, played by Hanna Schygulla who sports a mini-dress and bubble perm, being picked up from the shop where she works by her boyfriend, Erich. Then, we cut to a passionless bedroom scene where a bored looking Paul and Helga undress unexcitedly and perfunctorily, helping one another with the more tricky bits, as if this is a worn-out, meaningless routine. A few scenes later, we return to the bedroom where Helga now clings onto Paul’s leg whilst he dispassionately gets redressed. He knocks her face with his knee, as he slips into his shoes, before violently pushing it away and rushing out the door saying, “Put it on the bill, baby!” Meanwhile, in another apartment, Elisabeth and her man, Peter, are eating a tense, practically silent meal. When we cut back to them a minute or two later, she has left the table and, as she exits the room, she tells him that he must sleep on his own from now on. “Let’s talk it over. Please,” he says and she replies, “Don’t touch me.” Their dialogue is wooden and impotent like so much in the lives and interactions of these people. Tensions might be high but their expression is stilted and ineffective, to say the least, almost as if Fassbinder is doing a bit of a Brecht on us here and we’re watching an emblematic demonstration of their lives rather than the real thing, the point also being that their existences and aspirations are bland in the extreme.

 

Over the next half an hour or so, we find out more about the gang through the playing out of a series of recurrent set pieces. In one of these, different combinations of characters lean against a railing by their flats, often in silence or occasionally uttering words of spite or mischief making. At other times, they go to the local tavern where they play cards, for the most part, in silence and, every now and again, a different pairing walks the same stretch of car park, always at the same pace, engaged in some form of catty or dissembling dialogue. The camera never moves during any of these scenes, which, combined with the cold contrast of the film’s grey tones, gives a sense of dull yet claustrophobic boredom.

    

What also emerges during these scenes is the latent violence which lies beneath all that they do, most noticeably in the way that the men view and treat their women. Very early on, we hear Erich state, “I’m damn thirsty. Bring me a beer,” whereupon Marie resignedly holds out her hand for the money she will need to go and get it. Soon afterwards, Helga says to Paul, ““Why do you have to go around with that guy? It’ll come to no good.” His response, other than to first tell her to “shut your trap” is to whack her on the head, a blow she accepts with barely a wince. Similarly, when Marie is non-committal to Erich’s cool suggestion that they marry, as she lies naked on the bed, she is served several blows to the head so that she can think better in future. He later tells her that “I’m important in your life and no-one else.” Most shocking, though, is the advice that he gives on occasion to Paul regarding Helga. When Paul claims that, “All we ever talk about is marriage,” Erich’s solution is to “Punch her in the face and then she’ll soon shut up.” Later on, when she declares herself three months pregnant, Erich, who is also screwing Helga on the side, declares, “Punch her in the belly or throw her in the Isar.” Meanwhile, the women compete with one another in pretending to have the perfect relationship, as Marie asks Helga, “How’s your guy?” before going on to state, “Mine’s sweet. When he touches me, I really feel something.” Not to be outdone, Helga lies, “It’s the same with me and my one.” Oh, really, my dears?

The sex they all have is as stilted, meaningless and unsatisfying as their social intercourse, an element played out by the inclusion of the film’s first outsider character, Rosy, who seems to stay perpetually in her flat, alone and dreaming of entering into a career in modelling or film. That is, unless she has visitors, female members of the group, round to snoop and bitch, or the men who place money on her table, either a loan or a gift, for which she exchanges a sexual response. Her main “client” seems to be Franz who leans against her naked yet unmoving in one scene. He asks her, “You do enjoy it, don’t you?” To which she replies, “I don’t understand anything about that. I have to live, that’s all.” Sex as a transaction seems to be something that’s completely everyday amongst these men as, in addition to his visits to Rosy, Paul also has Klaus on the go. Every time they part and a future rendezvous is planned, Klaus dips his hand into his inside pocket for cash.

Although she has her uses, Rosy’s non-conformity poses a threat to the group and they view her with contempt. Erich says to Paul, for example, “She has a mind of her own. That’s not good,” whilst the women for whom she, perhaps, poses the greater threat are more severely censorious. Gunda’s evaluation of the situation is that, “It ought to be reported. A person like that shouldn’t be free to mix with us.” However, the heat is taken off Rosy by the arrival of Jorgos, played by Fassbinder himself, who the group instantly recognise as a foreign gastarbeiter. He is renting a room from Elisabeth who gets him to temporarily double-up with Peter whilst his own room is being decorated and this is where his troubles begin when Peter sees him naked and reports back to the others. He has a better build than any of the German men, he tells them, and his extends down to his Schwanz (use your imagination), as well. As these men, who are impotent on all levels, even including planning lucrative futures, hear the news, they look crest-fallen and angry, whilst the women’s curiosity is piqued.

Passing him in a children’s playground one day soon afterwards, Gunda now asks him how he likes Germany and then speculatively, we guess, asks him if he has found love yet. Unable to fully understand, he eventually grasps that she means “fucky-fucky” before mournfully conceding that he has, in fact, not. The two part politely, although Gunda then runs to the gang and tells them that he has thrown her to the ground, shouting “fucky-fucky” at her and that she has been lucky to escape. Within minutes, the story is that he has raped her in a children’s playground. Rumours also fly about his landlady, as we hear that she apparently stripped herself naked and called for him to go to her one night, Jorgos returning to his own room three hours later looking completely exhausted. There are even rumours that he is a communist as Greece, apparently, is full of them.

The final straw, though, comes when Marie, now split from Erich, begins to pal-on with Jorgos. Even though he cannot speak German as well as the other men, he can use what little he does understand to make poetic phrases, such as “Eyes like stars.” She also says that, “He always looks you straight in the eye,” something she could never expect from the others. This is all too much, though, and it is Erich who decides, “It ought to be forbidden. Something must be done,” before the men, like a group of Hitler’s Brown Shirts, give him the good hiding they feel he so richly deserves. In an echo of events from thirty years or so earlier, Gunda then says, “It had to happen. He was walking around as if he belonged here...We need a bit of order here.” Whilst Elisabeth, who has borne the brunt of their social exclusion, is double-edged when berating her partner for his involvement: “You didn’t have to take part. That wasn’t necessary. If you hadn’t done anything to help, OK...but taking part!” The event, though, seems to be somewhat cathartic for the community, as resigned to the fact that Jorgos will not be leaving, they look on the bright side. Foreign workers, they realise are good for Germany as they raise production levels and the money stays in the country. Elisabeth is now viewed as a shrewd business woman as she can charge more than the going rate for her spare room as foreigners are more desperate and are a bit stupid. She is even planning to get a false wall built in her flat so that she can move another one in.

 

At the end of the film, two of its chief characters, Erich and Marie, both have a journey to look forward to, his into the army and hers to visit Jorgos’ homeland. On a metaphorical level, though, Fassbinder seems to be, perhaps, suggesting that all young German’s stand at a similar fork in the road, either to take the route of perpetuating Fascist aggression or to seek out a more egalitarian society where people do not belong to one another and no attempt is made to police their behaviour. As it stands, at least in this social grouping, in spite of us seeing a new post-war generation of young adults, the attitudes which led to the rise and initial success of National Socialism are still prevalent. “Katzelmacher” even begins with a quotation from German writer and actor, Yaak Karsunke: “It’s better to make new mistakes than to perpetuate the old ones to the point of unconsciousness.”

Sniffs

Exciting times are finally upon us in Leeds after what seems like an eternity of having no local bands about whom to become even vaguely enthusiastic. I've lived here for over two decades now and, in my view, those who can even be included in the marginally passable bracket are probably countable on the fingers of one hand ( I quite liked Mr. Peculiar, Sharron and Burgers if anyone remembers any of them and The Real Losers and Sexy Burglars were good, too, while they lasted). On this, like every other level, Manchester, Glasgow or Liverpool Leeds is not and never will be, even though it foolishly likes to think it's in the running from time to time.

Anyway, it's with great pleasure and pride that we can now shout from the rooftops about the adrenalin rush which is Rent Boys (more of whom very, very soon when they release their new single "Shoot Your Shot" on German Bite Records) and the more recently formed Sniffs who, after only two gigs, the most recent at The Hide and Seek Club last Saturday and their debut only a few weeks prior to that, have already got all the right tongues wagging. An extremely elegant duo who formed less than a year ago and who have only just recorded their first demos, they're no doubt set to cause quite a sensation over the coming months as word spreads and their following grows. 

Their sound is very sixties inspired - think girl groups like The Shangri Las at their most ballsy or The Whyte Boots' "Nightmare" or the tougher end of Lori Burton's solo output - but this is then refracted through all manner of clever gadgetry such as Kaoscillator, vocoder, occasional drum machine and a beautifully compact Roland SH-101 to give it an avant garde, space age and other--worldly edge. Meanwhile, layers of brittle guitar are looped through numerous pedals so that they build and repeat throughout to provide a foundation which smultaneously gestures towards  both surf and someone like PIL whilst never aping either. Last Saturday, I overheard two youngsters talking earnestly behind me and, having seen two people using electronics, they were rather glibly likening what they were hearing to Suicide and Silver Apples but, although I'm sure it's all in there in the brew somewhere, to make a direct comparison of this kind would be very misleading indeed. Someone else said they brought The Fall to mind and there is a bit of "Kicker Conspiracy" somewhere in the vocal delivery, I concede, but that's about as far as it extends. In actual fact, I think I can safely stick my neck out and say that their, as yet still rather chaotic, swoosh is truly unique and this is why it's so obviously going to have to catch on.

    

Exciting indeed! Next weekend they'll be up on stage again playing songs from their repertoire with titles like "Nous Sommes (Les Sniffs)", "White Jaguar", "Macho Bravo", "Good Girl", "Black Glass Floor" and "Big Bastard Biker Boys". This time they'll be in Newcastle, though, supporting the brilliant  Monochrome Set at The Star and Shadow Cinema and I for one shall be there. May I recommend that you are, too.

STOP PRESS: I've just been sent a link to where you can listen to a couple of their recordings. Plus, I found another photograph of them, this one from their Hide & Seek Club gig last weekend.

http://www.facebook.com/sniffspage?sk=app_178091127385

Planningtorock-W

Seeing as this was released a little over three months ago, it seems a bit strange writing about it now, especially as I intended doing so at the time but somehow never got round to it. However, the second album by Planningtorock (ex-Bolton resident and video artist/musician Janine Roston who has been living and working in Berlin for the past decade) has been such a highlight and constant companion over my summer months, alongside the new Andreas Dorau and Horrors albums and the recently released Ladytron and Depeche Mode compilation sets, that it doesn't seem right to let the moment pass and not include it amongst everything else on here that I've been enthusing about. In fact, it's such a powerful collection of songs that it stands head and shoulders above much that has been released in recent years so to miss it out would be very stupid and unrepresentative indeed.

In case anybody doesn't know, "W" is the follow-up 2006's "Have It All" which was released on Chicks on Speed's label and was supported by quite extensive touring around the world with the likes of Peaches, The Knife and LCD Soundsystem. It was around this time that I saw Planningtorock performing in Leeds when she and Kevin Blechdom rolled into town, her all white outift, including top hat and painted on white beard, assortment of masks and helmets, caveman bone which she shook in time to the beat and video accompaniment creating quite a memorable spectacle. In the meantime, as well as all this live work and the odd bit of remixing, Roston has also collaborated with The Knife and Mount Sims on "Tomorrow, in a Year" an electro-opera based on Darwin's "The Origin of the Species" which was first performed in Copenhagen in September 2009 and then in other European cities before being made available as a recording last year.

From what I've been reading, "W" had quite a long gestation period, stretching across the four years or so prior to its release and is the product of recording sessions at home in JR's own studio in Berlin, as well as collaborations in Iceland with percussionist Hjörleifur Jónsson and in New York with DFA's Pat Mahoney and, much as I enjoyed the last album and its sister release "Have It All Stringed Up", this one certainly taken things to a different level.

Many of the old elements are still recognisable, such as the textured electronics, treated vocals and plucked strings which create an atmosphere which is paradoxically both warm and unsettling at the same time - listen to "Changes" or "Think That Thought" on the last album or almost any track on the new one. Also evident is the sense of tongue-in-cheek comedy which was found on tracks such as "I Wanna Bite Ya" or "Bolton Wanderer" which is perhaps best exemplified now on the Hi-NRG stomper "Living It Out" (guaranteed to  blow away the cobwebs on any early morning journey to work, trust me!) which is beautifully orchestrated and structured and has lyrics possessed of some degree of profundity whilst seeming to simultaneously poke fun at age-old disco cliches ("We're living it up, we're living it down. We're living it in, I'm living it out") all this accompanied by occasional  grunts and similar exhalations which further add to a sense of partial pastiche.

However, there's a new level of drama and powerful emotional expression and appeal running through this album which was lacking on the last, this coming across most on a track like "The One" which has a Michael Nymanesque intensity, a smooth but not at all stomach churning saxophone break and lyrics which repeatedly claim "You are meaning a lot to me" or the album's closing track "#9" which is possessed of a perky melancholy courtesy of its thunderous drumming, electronic nips and lyrics which are both reassuring and vaguely threatening at one and the same time. Elsewhere, the instrumental "Black Thumber" has a sophisticated classical grace and lushness  to it, as does "Milky Blau", the music of which has the repetitive immediacy  of something from one of the soundtracks to a Peter Greenaway film, whilst "I'm Your Man" has an electro-pop potency whilst also being the most obvious example of the recurrent theme of gender identity and individual duality which seems to lie at the core of this work, as well as much of the last album, such as on a track like "Local Foreigner" - see also the album's title ("double you"), the gloriously rich blue artwork and accompanying videos where Roston has used theatical putty to reshape her nose and brow to appear more gender ambiguous, as well as her treated vocals throughout which achieve the same effect.

Two of the album's stand out tracks were released slightly preceding it in the form of a blue vinyl 11" single and with it came a video for each which I am now including for your delectation: the stately and slightly sinister, creeper "Doorway" on which Roston has been quoted as saying she unleashes her "inner trannie" and the highly accomplished "The Breaks" which has pizzicato strings and saxophone honks subtly layered over lush chords, this all combined with lyrics both cautionary and seductive. This latter is for me a perfect crystalisation of all that the album offers.

  

She's got quite a few gigs lined up over the coming months, too, including a couple in the UK, I see. Hopefully, she'll add a few more including one in Manchester or Leeds as I'd love to hear all of this in a live context.

Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943)

Here's an article about Oskar Schlemmer which was in the first issue of my magazine "German Bite".

          

When the Bauhaus first opened its doors in April 1919, its founder, Walter Gropius, stated its aim as being to unify all of the artistic forms in a “Cathedral of Socialism” and a number of workshops then emerged, specialising in areas such as metalwork, weaving, painting, cabinet making and so on. Shortly afterwards, a stage workshop was initiated, apparently the first ever at an art school, under the leadership of Lothar Schreyer and performance became an integral part of life at the Bauhaus, then situated in the German city of Weimar. However, in contrast to the progressive approach of the rest of the school, Schreyer’s was somewhat dated and still owed a great debt to the Expressionist style of the previous generation, exaggerated gesture and vocal delivery being key techniques in conveying strong emotions in compositions with titles such as “Crucifixion” and “Kindsterben” (Child Death). Then, in 1923, when the establishment staged its first major exhibition, under the title “Art and Technology – A New Unity”, the extent to which the theatre workshop was out of step with the rest of the school became glaringly obvious and the calls being made by staff and students for Schreyer’s resignation had to be answered. Directorship of the Theatre Workshop now passed to Oskar Schlemmer, who had already been at the school for about three years, overseeing sculpture and mural painting activities, but who also had a background in ballet in his home town of Stuttgart.

A revolution then took place over night, it seems, as Schlemmer began to put into practice the theories which he articulated in his essay “Man and Art Figure” which appeared in Walter Gropius’ book “The Theatre of the Bauhaus” a year later. “The history of the theatre is the transfiguration of the human form,” he wrote. “The materials involved in this transfiguration are form and colour, the materials of the painter and sculptor. The arena for this transfiguration is found in the constructive fusion of space and building, the realm of the architect. The manipulation of these materials, the role of the artist, the synthesizer of these elements, is determined.” This approach was, therefore, a lot more akin to Gropius’ proposal of a cross-fertilisation across artistic disciplines and workshops, all under one unifying ideology of exploring the essential elements of design. In the same essay, Schlemmer went on to write, “One of the emblems of our time is abstraction. It functions, on the one hand, to disconnect components from existing and persisting wholes, either to lead them individually ad absurdum or to elevate them to their greatest potential. On the other hand, abstraction can result in generalisation and summation, in the construction of bold outline in a new totality...a further emblem of our time is mechanisation, the inexorable process which now lays claim to every sphere of life and art...and last, but not least, among the emblems of our time are the new potentials of technology and invention which we can use to create altogether new hypotheses and which can thus engender, or at least give promise of, the boldest fantasies. The theatre, which should be the image of our time and perhaps the one art form most peculiarly conditioned by it, must not ignore these signs.” Thus, in August 1923, the tone was set when Schlemmer and his students presented “The Figural Cabinet 1” which, strangely enough, parodied “faith in progress”, using cabaret techniques to create what has been described as “a medley of sense and nonsense characterised by ‘Colour, Form, Nature and Art; Man and Machine, Acoustics and Mechanics” and in which flat, colourful figures on a travelator, operated by invisible hands, would “walk, stand, float, slide, roll or rollick for a quarter of an hour”.

As a painter and a sculptor, like his Bauhaus colleagues, Schlemmer was very much concerned with an investigation of space, form and colour and, whilst his paintings explored this line of enquiry in two-dimensions, his sculpture and theatrical experiments allowed an opportunity to experiment with the plastic. The “Gesture Dance” of 1926-7, for example, was one of his more theoretical pieces and sounds pure Bauhaus, as three figures dressed in the primary colours of red, blue and yellow followed paths of motion which Schlemmer had prepared in advance in the form of a mathematical graph, the resulting complex geometric gestures being mixed with banal counterpoints such as “pointed sneezing, broad laughing and soft listening.” Similarly, lessons given by Schlemmer involved stretching taut wires across an empty stage in order to describe the cubic dimensions of the space. Dancers would then move through this web with specially designed costumes which would emphasise particular parts of the body and employ chosen colour combinations. However, not all that Schlemmer and his students undertook was so academic and dry, as parties or “festivities”, were also an important part of life at the Bauhaus, both in Weimar and in Dessau, where the school was forced to move in 1925, the theatre workshop usually being at their core. At one of these, “The White Festival”, guests were required to wear costumes dotted, chequered and striped and at the Metallic Festival of February 1929 the school was decked out in metallic colour and substances. Guests accepting their invitations, which had been printed on metallic card, then entered on a miniature train along a metallic chute and were finally greeted by tinkling bells and a flourish performed by a four-piece band.

            

It’s for the amazing costumes and the striking visual appearance of his performances, though, that “German Bite” most appreciates Schlemmer, photographs of these still seeming modern and shockingly avant-garde nearly a century after they were first envisaged. In fact, of all the Bauhaus masters, Schlemmer was the one for whom the human form was most central. He actually went on to teach a course at the school titled “The Human Being” and, writing in his diary in 1915, he put forward his views regarding the elemental geometry of the human form which he then went on to explore in his later work: “the square of the chest, the circle of the belly, cylinder of the neck, cylinders of arms and thighs, sphere of the joints at elbow, knee, armpit and knuckle, sphere of the head, the eyes, triangle of the nose. The line that links heart and brain, the line that links sight with what is seen, the ornament formed between body and outside world, its relationship to it symbolised.” In “Glass Dance” which was performed by Carla Grosch in 1929, for example, the dancer wore a skirt hooped round with suspended glass rods, whilst her head was covered by a glass globe and she carried glass spheres in her hands. This costume, which obviously severely restricted her movements, then resulted in her moving in a necessarily mechanical fashion. Similarly, Schlemmer’s pantomime “Treppenwitz”(Staircase Joke) was performed on a staircase and included a Musical Clown in a huge padded costume, the left leg of which was dramatically transformed by a huge funnel-like sleeve. His right leg then had a violin hanging from it and his arms were impeded by him carrying an accordion, a paper shaker and an umbrella reduced just to its spokes. Colleagues in the dance wore face-covering metal helmets and carried large sword-like instruments and batons so that they appear more sculptural than agile in their demeanour.

    

A review of another piece, “Metal Dance”, when it was performed in Basle, Switzerland in April 1929 reported thus: “The curtain rises. Black backdrop and black stage floor. Deep down stage, a cave lights up, not much larger than a door. The cave is made of highly reflecting corrugated tin plate set on edge. A female figure steps out from inside. She is wearing white tights. Head and hands are enclosed by shiny, silvery spheres. Metallically crisp, smooth and shining music sets the figure to performing crisp movements...the whole thing is very brief, fading away like an apparition.” It could be Hot Gossip or Legs & Co. dancing to Kraftwerk, or even Dee D. Jackson, couldn’t it? Très modern! Finally, in a dance called “Game With Building Blocks”, three figures dismantled a wall from behind which they had crawled, throwing the discarded bricks in a chain formation across the stage. Having eventually built a small tower in the centre of the stage, the abstract performance then took place around their creation. Judging by the photographs, I think many of the more outré late seventies/early eighties pop stars learnt one or two of their poses from here.

    

However, the piece for which Schlemmer is most famous is his “Triadic Ballet” which was actually first performed at the Württembergisches Landestheater, Stuttgart on September 30^th 1922, although it has now become synonymous with the Bauhaus. Over a period of about a decade, the ballet which has been described as “a combination of dance, costume, pantomime and music” was performed on only a small number of occasions, both in Germany and a few other cities in continental Europe, and was seen by only a thousand or so people in total. However, it has become the stuff of legends with many of the costumes now being on permanent display at the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart (Some of them even crept over to London in 2006, too, for the V&A’s wonderful “Modernism 1914-1939 : Designing a New World” exhibition). The  “Triadic” element of the ballet stems from the fact that it comprises three sequences, made up of twelve dances, which were performed by three dancers (one female and two male) who worked their way through eighteen costumes which were riveted, soldered and reinforced with papier-mâché. It was Schlemmer’s belief that his dancers, or “figurines” as he referred to them, should be geometrised abstractions of the human form and that attempts to achieve verisimilitude were not at all what the theatre should be aiming towards. However, the triadic aspect also relates to: the three basic elements of form, colour and space; the three dimensions of space – height, depth  and breadth; the three basic geometric forms – the ball, the cube and the pyramid; the three primary colours; and three components of dance, costume and music. As the ballet, which lasted about an hour and has no plot, moved through its three sequences, it also developed atmospherically, progressing from the jokey to the serious. The opening sequence, for example, was performed against a yellow background and was intended to portray a “cheerful, burlesque” ambience. This was then followed by the “festive and solemn” second segment which was performed against a pink background and then proceedings culminated with the final scenes, performed against a black background, the intention being to convey an atmosphere both “mystical and fantastic.” A film of the “Triadic Ballet” floats around on the internet and what is described above is wonderfully evident, as you can see the dancers, who also represent types such as The Diver and The Turk, following geometrically plotted trajectories in just such a manner. Apparently, the ballet is occasionally re-staged today.

  

Even though The Theatre Workshop closed its doors in 1932 and Schlemmer died just over a decade later, his legacy and influence is massively tangible beyond the confines of the Bauhaus. Casting aside roughly contemporary pieces, such as Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”(1927) and Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times”(1936) which must owe a direct debt to his work in places, would Kraftwerk’s “Man Machine” have been quite the same thing without his having pathed such a route before them?  Similarly, Grace Jones has owed a huge debt to Oskar Schlemmer and Bauhaus imagery in her time, most notably during the Jean-Paul Goude era of the late seventies and early eighties. In fact, when she played in Manchester early in 2009, she was still crashing across the stage with a huge cymbal strapped to each hand, highly reminiscent of the Türke character from “The Triadic Ballet.” And, did Leigh Bowery really stumble across his enlarged padded limbs and figure-altering costumes intuitively or was Oskar Schlemmer floating somewhere in his consciousness as he chopped away at blocks of foam in his council flat. I dare say Bono Vox even goes around saying Oskar Schlemmer has been an important influence on himself and that band of his, as he seems to do with everybody else, in an attempt to curry some degree of credibility and detract from the sorry reality of the “heroic” shit-rock he churns out. Anyway, that cretin aside, Oskar Schlemmer’s paintings and sculptures are very nice, too, and worth exploring if you don’t know them already and if you’re ever in Germany visiting the Bauhaus building in Dessau, a short walk round the corner will bring you to the Masters’ Houses where you can have a bit of a wander around Schlemmer’s old living quarters, as well as those of Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger and Georg Muche. So, there you have him – Oskar Schlemmer. Wasn’t he brilliant?

     

Andreas Dorau-Todesmelodien

Yesterday was a brilliant day as Andreas Dorau's new album "Todesmelodien" dropped through the letter box and, today, I've had chance to give it quite a number of listens through in its entirety. As anybody who knows me will tell you, I've got a big thing about Andreas Dorau and have had for many years so the arrival of this, his eighth album depending on how you count, was very much highly anticipated and it hasn't disappointed in the least. In fact, I'd already stick my neck out and say that it's one of his very best.

The sound is, for the most part, the highly appealing, unadulterated  and unashamed pop which anyone familiar with his work will have come to expect, unchallenging verse/chorus song structures, Dorau's instantly recognisable and slightly childish voice, elements of electro-pop and disco basslines on some tracks, backing vocals straight out of the seventies throughout and a seeming disregard for the fact that the outcome never quite fits in with current trends. However, compared to his last album "Ich bin der eine von uns beiden"(2005) the songs on "Todesmelodien" seem a lot more crafted, with plinking pianos playing quite a significant role where samples last time were at the heart of a number of tracks.

The album might at first appear light, but, as the title ("Deathmelodies") suggests, the lyrical content is quite dark, pulling in a very different direction to the poppy and sometimes breezy surface matter and this is most obvious on the songs where Dorau has provided the lyrics himself, which is the majority of them, although it's nice to see that he has collaborated with Der Plan's Moritz Rrrr on one track ("Neid") and that Wolfgang Müller, he of Die Tödliche Doris fame, is still contributing lyrics as he has done for several of the last albums.

In fact, if we can read Dorau's words as autobiographical and if the level of my German hasn't led me to miss subtle ironies, he doesn't appear to be in a very happy place at all on this release as, besides songs about the unpleasant character traits of envy  and egomania ("Neid" and "Größenwahn"), on another he repeatedly tells us about the indescribable pain he feels inside himself as he lies on the sofa with his hands locked together in front of him ("Es Tut So Weh"). Elsewhere, he sings of a house which once contained a bright light which didn't burn for very long, it presumably being the home of the family whose journey on the autobahn got interrupted by heavy rain, this then leading to their car hitting a tree at high speed ("Es war hell"). Then, in another he describes himself as being positioned on a precipice between words and action in a world where nobody seems to hear or understand, telling us that it's all too late anyway ("Und dann"), whilst in "Stimmen in der Nacht" he describes being haunted by the voices which awaken him in the night, these stemming from a departed person whose semi-darkened room, double-locked from the inside, is now empty apart from a photograph on a shelf and the wallpaper which they once found so pleasing. Presumably they are dead as he tells us that their life was all wrong. It all sounds a bit worrying, actually, the more I trawl through it, a bit like the spirit of Ian Curtis may have slipped into our Andreas. 

As usual, there are quite a number of collaborators and contributors on this album as, besides those already mentioned, the majority of the music has been written with Tim Lorenz on some tracks and Mense Reents (Die Goldenen Zitronen) on others, both being new to the brew this time round, I believe. Long-term collaborator Justus Köhncke is also back, having co-written another, whilst backing vocals on "Schwarz Rot Gold" come courtesy of Francoise Cactus from Stereo Total and Inga Humpe, once of Neonbabies and, more recently, 2Raumwohnung appears in the same role on quite a number of others. It's a bit of an old school party, it seems, albeit a rather solemn one.

As mentioned earlier, Moritz Rrrr features in the procedings which fits quite nicely because, as we all know, several of Dorau's earliest releases came out on Der Plan's Ata Tak label, something that's being referred to in some of the imagery that accompanies this album's release, the download single ("Größenwahn") having a "sleeve"  which revisits Dorau's debut "Tulpen und Narzissen" from 1981 and I'm not entirely convinced that the "Todesmelodien" cover isn't an homage to Pyrolator's "Inland" which was released on the label in 1979- see what you think. (Talking of Pyrolator, he's got a new album out very soon, I've just heard.)

      

Well, there you go, some quick initial thoughts on another great Andreas Dorau album. To round things off, here's a couple of tasters which were put out prior to its release. I hope everyone reading this is as enthusiastic about them as I am.

Stinky Toys-Birthday Party

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was French and so were Stinky Toys. This is for some of my most beloved friends who have all had their birthdays in the last few days or so and for another couple who have theirs coming up. If I'd have known how to, I'd have made them all a Chinese birthday cake.