SHADOW OF ANGELS is the film adaptation of R.W. Fassbinder’s last and most controversial play, “Garbage, the City, and Death,” which was banned in Germany. The story concerns Lily, a prostitute too beautiful to have clients and the real estate speculator she befriends. Lily is paid to listen to her customers’ despairing monologues about politics, power, corruption, and guilt. SHADOW OF ANGELS is quintessential Fassbinder, a fable about victims and victimizers and not so nascent neo-Nazi sympathies in post-war Germany.
Tag: 1970s
When a scientist at a research lab is passed over for a promotion, he creates a clone of himself to attempt to seduce the wife of the man who got the job.
Hotshot film student Tony Hall wins a prize for his short film and sets out to break into Hollywood. When financing for his documentary does not come through, Hall hits the streets alone to film, searching out moments of genuine humanity and truth. However, Hall’s definition of truth is slippery, and he sometimes manufactures incidents in front of the camera to obtain results. Eventually, his personal life starts to suffer, as well as his burgeoning professional career.
In spite of looking a mess (as though it had been subjected to some sort of butchery), this remains a weirdie of the first order: a perverse religious allegory in the form of a Western. The Kid is a vicious psychopath given to laughing a lot, an actor manqué (anyone who doesn’t like his ‘performance’ is shot) who leads a gang of looters and rapists, and is incestuous with his father to boot. The town’s resident Mater Dolorosa, madam of the brothel, hires her lover Marcado (meaning scarred: ‘We all have scars, and the ones inside never heal’), a tight-lipped killer in the Eastwood mould, to kill the Kid, who is of course her son.
The championship battles between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling in 1936 and 1938 were legendary, as they pummeled each other in their efforts to attain the heavyweight title.
An enthusiastic young woman runs away to Chicago to start a new life. She is soon confronted with the emotional coldness of the big city, and has to search for her place in the scheme of things.
Three toseinin, low-class wanderers who follow the yakuza code, go from village to village ready to work or fight for anyone who will give them food and lodging.