So back to we goβso much for chronological order and linear momentum. And each has helped me to make a little more sense of those preoccupations. The first of these, The Niklashausen Journey , is the most unusual and, though tedious and pretty dated in its political rhetoric and not all that much fun to watch , intellectually the most interesting. This is an agit-prop historical allegoryβnot an ounce of melodrama anywhere in sight!
This for me was interesting in itself and a relief from the Gunther Kaufmann Love Triangle that has dominated so many of these early films see below.
A: The people. Q: Who makes the revolution? Q: Who prepares the ground for it? A: The party. Here, the Black Monk realizes, is the perfect mouthpiece for the revolutionary cause: handsome, charismatic, people listen to him. The message is not enough to incite the people to revolt, in other words; the people must desire the messenger in order to act. Fast forward to βthink Steve Schmidt and Sarah Palinβand you get a perverse sense of how prescient Fassbinder was.
And so their campaign begins. This seems to work, for a while. The film ends with the original cadre, led by the Black Monk, taking the long view I think. People, the film suggests, cannot be educated or persuaded to free themselves, only seduced. Rio das Mortes retreads painfully familiar territory.
Henpecked by her mother, her sole ambition in life seems to be to get Michael to marry her. She spends a lot of time on her make-up and poses like Dietrich in her Weimar underwear while talking to her mother on the phone. Small wonder Michael is bored.
