CHINESE ROULETTE
West Germany, 1976, 82 minutes, Colour.
Margit Carstensen, Ulli Lommel, Anna Karina, Brigitte Mira.
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Chinese Roulette is one of the many films from the prolific German writer-director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Many of Fassbinder's films are formal studies of relationships, presented quite artificially and formally. Others echo his admiration for many of the Hollywood melodramas and soap operas. The structure of Chinese Roulette resembles his exercises in formal film-making while the presentation of characters and events is in the style of the Hollywood homage and realism. It makes for a strange mixture - provocative, questioning. Fassbinder uses many of his regular troupe of actors and actresses but has engaged the services of French actress Anna Karina, long associated with the work of Jean- Luc Goddard.
As with so many of Fassbinder's films, it can be seen as a critique of German lifestyle, the affluent post-war lifestyle of Germany. Fassbinder often indicates that self-centredness, emotional neuroses and violence are the heritage of the experience of the defeat and the post-war economic miracle.
1. The work of Fassbinder: his formal studies, the homage to Hollywood melodramas? The influences in this film? The blend of the stylised and the realistic?
2. The importance of the ensemble work of the cast? The screenplay written to highlight individual characters - and then put them into complex interreactions with one another?
3. The focus of the title: a puzzle, a game? A deadly game - the possibility of violence and death? The title dramatised as a deadly game?
4. Fassbinder's perception of Germany in the '70s? German society, affluence, lifestyle, manners and morals? Sympathy? Critique? Fassbinder both presenting and judging German society?
5. The opening formality of the film: the mother and daughter listening to music? The moving to the wider world of husband and wife? The world of adults? Betrayal and childish behaviour, lies? The focus on the crippled child and her nurse? Her will, control, havoc? The encounter of the pairs and a type of musical chairs? The atmosphere of meals. good-fellowship? Games - real, leading to reaction and violence? Whose violence? To whom? The facts of what happened to each character? The psychological violence? The mysterious ending and shot? The use of the roulette image - was this game determined or a gamble?
6. The central character of the daughter? with her mother, listening to music, her disability? The symbolism of the lame girl? Innocence, malevolence? Relationship with her nurse and companion - ultimately her being shot? The phone call. the daughter able to handle her mother and father? Her willpower? The way that she was placed in sequences. poses and postures? Her involvement in the adult game.. provocation? Growing malevolence? The writer and her taunts of him, saying his writing was not original? His ability to see through her - and that she intended violence to her mother?
7. The sketch of the parents? The echoes of television movies and series? Brittle, wealthy, busy, jet-setting, travels to Norway and Italy? Plans? Lies? The satire and comedy in each going to the castle with a lover? The detailed deception, the travel, the mod? The revelation when they met? The helpless laughter? The decision to cope - the meeting even freeing them? Manners and morals? Their regard for their lovers? To the others in the house? Settling in for a weekend, the reading at meals, the reliance on the housekeeper? The move to games, the violence of truth games? Ability and inability to cope? Husband and wife being thrown back on each other and uniting? Their daughter? The violence - to whom? At whom?
8. The lovers portrayed in themselves? As complementary to their partners? Contrasts, parallels? Their being used? Willingly going to the castle? Their embarrassment? Behaviour, coping - and caught up with the violent game?
9. The housekeeper and her discreet management, control. participation in the lies of both parties. her care for the group, her regard for her son?
10. The son and his work around the house, the androgynous type, the visit to the garage? His writing and its philosophical overtones -intelligible or not? His reading at meals? His becoming involved. the daughter exposing his writing, his exposing her, reading her thoroughly?
11. The final shot and its ambiguity? What was the audience left with?
12. The amount of talk, quality of the ideas, observation of relationships - in a German literary and cinema context? A portrayal and critique of human nature and of Germany?
