I am a great fan of director Werner Fassbinder, but I found myself a little impatient with this overly long and lugubrious film.
The faded diva at its heart, Veronika Voss (Rosel Zech), creates an interesting persona and has some good lines as an actress trying to make a comeback but doomed by her addiction to morphine and predatory doctor. Hilmar Thate is also good as Robert Krohn, a sports reporter who somewhat inscrutably risks everything to try to save her.
The film starts strongly in a dark and rainy woods -- could this scene have inspired another copse-based interlude in the much later Germany-set movie "Suspiria"? -- as the dour working man and neurotic drama queen cross paths by happenstance. It's the beginning of an unhealthy relationship during which Krohn's cynical girlfriend -- "Do you love her?" "We get along" -- is emotionally abused but keeps going back for more.
The story gets uncharacteristically dull, for Fassbinder, as we have to slog through grim scenes involving Veronika's callous physician, Dr. Katz. Much of this seemed like self-serious fodder to me, time wasting in order to stretch the film out to feature length. The movie ends on a down note of fatalism and futility in the face of evil.
There are some valuable messages here, but I expected more of the psychologically ambitious Fassbinder.
Some of the better lines in this film...
From a newsroom colleague to Krohn: "Sports are always about the winners, and I'm interested in the losers."
Veronika's world-weary husband, nicely played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, notes at a certain point the difference in the spouses' motivations for drinking -- he imbibes to calm down; she knocks them back for a pick-up. Rather than being jealous of Krohn, this character is saturnine about the scribe's "love" for his ex: "For one night of bliss, (you) would give everything...She will be your downfall. She will destroy you."
From Veronika we also hear, "Farewells and arrivals are the nicest things in life." (She could be right about that.) And, regarding Dr. Katz, "I have always known where I stand with you." (This recalls Maya Angelou's wise words: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them -- the first time.")
This film is wryly scored with several American hits from the Fifties, including "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Dean Martin's "Memories are Made of This."
The faded diva at its heart, Veronika Voss (Rosel Zech), creates an interesting persona and has some good lines as an actress trying to make a comeback but doomed by her addiction to morphine and predatory doctor. Hilmar Thate is also good as Robert Krohn, a sports reporter who somewhat inscrutably risks everything to try to save her.
The film starts strongly in a dark and rainy woods -- could this scene have inspired another copse-based interlude in the much later Germany-set movie "Suspiria"? -- as the dour working man and neurotic drama queen cross paths by happenstance. It's the beginning of an unhealthy relationship during which Krohn's cynical girlfriend -- "Do you love her?" "We get along" -- is emotionally abused but keeps going back for more.
The story gets uncharacteristically dull, for Fassbinder, as we have to slog through grim scenes involving Veronika's callous physician, Dr. Katz. Much of this seemed like self-serious fodder to me, time wasting in order to stretch the film out to feature length. The movie ends on a down note of fatalism and futility in the face of evil.
There are some valuable messages here, but I expected more of the psychologically ambitious Fassbinder.
Some of the better lines in this film...
From a newsroom colleague to Krohn: "Sports are always about the winners, and I'm interested in the losers."
Veronika's world-weary husband, nicely played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, notes at a certain point the difference in the spouses' motivations for drinking -- he imbibes to calm down; she knocks them back for a pick-up. Rather than being jealous of Krohn, this character is saturnine about the scribe's "love" for his ex: "For one night of bliss, (you) would give everything...She will be your downfall. She will destroy you."
From Veronika we also hear, "Farewells and arrivals are the nicest things in life." (She could be right about that.) And, regarding Dr. Katz, "I have always known where I stand with you." (This recalls Maya Angelou's wise words: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them -- the first time.")
This film is wryly scored with several American hits from the Fifties, including "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Dean Martin's "Memories are Made of This."