Review of Katzelmacher (1969) by Massimo S — 05 Jun 2008

This film is BLEAK. But quite good. I did not like it for the first 40 min being that I despised all of the characters and was generally annoyed by them. Seeing as how this is an early Fassbinder effort, there wasn't that inspiring sense of style that he would later develop, which could have made the dreary no good characters more tolerable. But as soon as the Greek character that Fassbinder himself plays enters the picture I found myself becoming very involved... I was anxious and worried for what was to become of him. These annoyingly useless characters suddenly became terrifying to me when in the presence of such a nice and innocent new man.

A scene involving two characters speaking blatantly of their preferred violent fate for the foreign man right in front of him was particularly unnerving. The film struck a chord with me by the end and redeemed it's first half. "Katzelmacher" is very similar to a later Fassbinder film, "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul", which improves upon the subject a great deal in many respects and is one of my all time favorite films, but this was a good jumping off point for the then somewhat fresh director.