Veronika Voss

Shooting a film in black and white immediately renders the canvas an otherworldly landscape. Directors know this. Color stock has been available since the early 20th century, when 3-strip Technicolor rather artificially brought moving images to life. As the century progressed, color seemed to be used mainly for reality, not art. Most films, but not, say, THE WIZARD OF OZ. But most. Color was a novelty in the earlier days. B & W was always cheaper and for years just merely tolerated by many, I would surmise. It was how film and television looked.

From the 60s and 70s onward, if someone (especially someone backed by a major studio) shot a film in black and white, it was looked upon as pretentious at worst (see Soderbergh's KAFKA). Occasionally as art. It was one thing if you were trying to evoke images of the past, but what of Woody Allen shooting late 1970s NYC in glorious black and white? I could imagine MANHATTAN in color, but the moody romanticism, so key to that film's appeal and merit, would be lost. What films have you seen in color that you feel should have been in black and white? BIRD? ROUND MIDNIGHT? IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE? STORMY MONDAY?

Woody would also use B & W for several other films such as STARDUST MEMORIES, BROADWAY DANNY ROSE, and CELEBRITY. To what end? Does this choice suit the material in each case? One can argue. I don't think anyone can quibble with Scorsese over his decision to film RAGING BULL that way. We don't need to see Jake's blood (or sordid life) in color to feel the pain. In fact, it's much bleaker this way. More than just a stylistic whim. We're drawn into a world that is at once sober and mystical.

Others used color to present the past, a manner in which people perhaps were not accustomed to seeing on film, but I'm pleased that German writer/director Werner Rainer Fassbinder frames his 1982 VERONIKA VOSS sans verdancy and scarlet, appropriate (arguably) as color photography might have been. Black and white celluloid is the medium through which Germans saw Veronika (Rosel Zech) in her big screen glory, not quite real. That is not entirely inaccurate, as the faded celebrity of this story is but a mere shadow of herself anymore in mid 1950s Munich, lost in a cloud of opiates courtesy of a rather sinister neurologist, Dr. Marianne Katz (Annemarie Düringer). I'll resist exploring the paradox of the meaning of the words "black and white" in various contexts when describing reality. One could drive themselves a bit mad.

There is melodrama. Dr. Katz has essentially enslaved her famous patient by providing a steady stream of narcotics, then denying them until Voss more or less hands over her estate. The cycle is damning and illustrative. Voss had spent a career being noticed, consuming attention and fame, thrown into hellish withdrawal when she wasn't recognized. I suspect many famous people, for all of their posturing about privacy, actually feel this way. Like Norma Desmond, Voss retreats into a fantasy of a triumphant comeback, a glorious red carpeted return to marquee royalty. Medication makes this more vivid. A predator like Dr. Katz knows it all too well. Voss has been subject to co-dependence for perhaps her entire life, whether the narcotic was fame or morphine.

The drama plays out, perhaps much like that of one of Veronika's wartime weepies. A journalist (Hilmar Thate) takes a shine to her, and her to him. She's fascinated that he does not know who she is. Perhaps a delicious challenge? A tantalizing opportunity for seduction? Maybe even a chance for a relationship based on genuine care rather than superficial name dropping. How novel. The journalist gets closer and discovers Veronika's bondage to the physician. His efforts to intervene are of course, tragic, leading to at least 2 fatalities, with the toxic medical provider the victor. The implications of this are doubtless riddled with meaning for a country still ravaged by war, yet still in a period of "economic miracle." The ravages, Fassbinder would elucidate, were on the human soul. What price ____?

VERONIKA VOSS was the 3rd in a trilogy that began in 1978 with Fassbinder's greatest international success, THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN and continued in 1981 with LOLA. Each film deals with the tools of commerce, sex, and notoreity for manipulation and power plays. The protagonist of each film victimizes/is victimized by society that initially seems ripe with opportunity but in time only reveals its thorns. Those thorns are also found from within, the antihero of each film finding they are part of the very society that would serve to knock them down. We've seen over and over how those we look to as bright lights, mentors, those we even may deify will eventually suffer the fickle wrath of their followers.

The director himself would suffer from his own demons, passing away after directing only one more film a few years later.

The climax of VERONIKA VOSS is heartbreaking. Dr. Katz is about to play her final hand, offering to a desparate former startlet one final dose. The night prior to that, in a sequence of stark calculated cruelty by Fassbinder, we will see a lavish party thrown for Ms. Voss, filled with people who give nary a damn about her, nonethless lauding her with praise, serenading her with song. Veronika is content, if just for a few hours before her final bow. All in high contrast black and white. Crushingly perfect. It says everything we need to know about the sad case of Veronika Voss.