"Whity" is the mulatto butler of the dysfunctional Nicholson family in the American southwest in 1878. The father, Ben Nicholson, has an attractive young wife Katherine, and two sons by a previous marriage; the homosexual Frank, and the retarded Davy. Whity tries to carry out all their orders, however demeaning, until various of the family members ask him to kill some of the others.
Уайти, 威迪
Germany16
Germany
Fassbinder’s only western project, which is primarily a melodrama. I liked this one a lot more than I expected. The theme of racism is mainly treated in more detail here, but also the themes of sexuality, love and family. Günther Kaufmann and Hanna Schygulla were my highlights alongside the omnipresent score. Some scenes went on too long and sometimes I would have liked more energy. However, the calm and minimalist narrative style was also very suitable for the plot. It reminded me a bit of Django at times and as always, Fassbinder shows that each of his films was ahead of its time.
Fassbinder films I’ve seen ranked: boxd.it/sCe9q
Fassbinder's Brechtian Western deconstructs many elements of the genre: its use of garish lighting and even worse makeup casts the wealthy, cloistered family at the film's core as a pit of Habsburg vampires, incestuous and imploding as petty greed consumes them. So rarely does a scene take place outside, yet the frontier weighs heavily over everything, a means of cutting people off and forcing them to fend for themselves. Individualism is bypassed for solipsism.
Its greatest observations, though, concern race. Set in 1878, the film more or less treats slavery as if it never stopped, with the mixed-race illegitimate son/servant of the film's title bound in servitude and whipped for any transgression. WHITY undermines the stereotype of the slave/servant as…
5th Rainer Werner Fassbinder (after Satan's Brew, Querelle, The Marriage of Maria Braun and Lili Marleen)
Great Director Misfires- 19/27
Like Salt and Fire, Whity is a potentially brilliant film that feels thoroughly rushed. The production of this Brechtian-Western-Melodrama was so traumatic and haphazard that Fassbinder would himself mine the experience to create Beware of a Holy Whore, the last of his first period films. It also had the ignominy of being never given a full release, merely given a festival screening where no distributor would touch it. It certainly qualifies as a commercial misfire, but it shows Fassbinder moving in new and interesting directions that prefigure his later works, especially the use of Technicolour. Whity's blood red uniform stands…
As with any film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Whity takes a lot of big swings. In this case, however, as many of them miss as connect, which results in a movie full of big ideas that don't always come to fruition.
Set in the American southwest after the Civil War, Whity explores a family in social, sexual, and moral turmoil, the only sane member of which is Whity (Günther Kaufmann), a mixed race, mistreated product of a rape. Positioned as the family's lone manservant, Whity is alternately belittled and desired; cajoled and manipulated. He's beaten without a hint of remorse, and harassed and teased with similar disregard. It is made clear, however, that this treatment has little to do with…
I don’t believe that melodramatic feelings are laughable - they should be taken absolutely seriously.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Probably the most fascinating and entertaining outlier in Fassbinder’s astonishing oeuvre, this is his weird and wonderful approximation of a Western, produced at a time when at least the Italian models were still hugely popular. It’s got the costumes, the décors and the looks, as well as many of the classic Western conventions, it’s even shot in Almeria, location for literally hundreds of Euro Westerns, but, not surprisingly, in Fassbinder’s hands, the genre gets twisted and perverted almost beyond recognition.
The resulting movie feels more like an overheated, offbeat Southern gothic melodrama, modulated to fit the director’s own, unmistakable style and preoccupations.…
"I remember a lot of fights, but I always remember that I admired [Fassbinder's] genius from the beginning on because he was always right, he had great ideas. I mean, he wasn't always right about, you know, jumping the line, but he was right about the style and I learned a lot from him. And he explained things to me, he explained why he was doing things, and that was fascinating in a way because it was very stylized, this movie, very stylish, and he always had a reason for doing things, like in one shot or not cutting. And that was a big learning process because I started in television in Germany and so it was all about, you…
Fassbinder's vicious take on American racism (and the Western genre, but I'm less interested in that) is deeply uncomfortable. From the opening moments showing a black woman in blackface to the exploitatively offensive moment of crossdressing to the repetition of racial slurs, it is unflinching in its social transgressions. Fassbinder presumably wanted to make a point with his parade of visual and verbal assaults, but there are too many moments that spoil any possible themes. This is a film that overshoots.
Perhaps it's because Fassbinder's viewpoint is so far outside of the realm he seems to be critiquing that this comes across so poorly. His harsh melodramatic lighting turns the Old West into one of his bleaker settings, heightening the…
A western in the same sense that A Woman is a Woman is a musical -- Fassbinder is using the setting and some of the stylistic trappings of the genre as the framework for a script that, more than anything, feels like something by Andy Milligan, replete with a dysfunctional family, twisted sexuality, and charged with a sadomasochistic undercurrent. It's kind of a mess, but in the best possible way -- overstuffed with ideas and direct provocations, and with a garishly gorgeous style all of its own. Michael Ballhaus is the secret MVP, providing a (literally) showstopping near-360 dolly shot that feels like a dry run for that famous shot in Martha.
Also, good god, Günther Kaufmann in this.
Alas! The first near-masterpiece I've seen from Fassbinder, and boy is this one sick and twisted, not to mention surprisingly tender. Already this feels light years ahead of his previous work, a technical marvel conceived and executed with a striking amount of control and exquisite design. Fassbinder's brand of spaghetti western is subversive and disturbing as hell. I mean seriously, who includes vampires in this genre to get at deep, uncomfortable truths about distinctly American forms of racism? Who tethers homoeroticism and bestiality to the myth of the cowboy in order to showcase familial affection? Above all, who's using the iconography of the Western (bar Jodorowsky) to explore issues related to gender identity, incest, gay parasites, prostitution, sadomasochism, and gold-digging…
O que o David Rodowick situa como tendo ocorrido nos anos 1970 começou mesmo nos 60, a partir de vários dos filmes acima, dentre os quais Vinyl
A partir disso, sugestão de uma sessão tripla:
The Singer Not the Song
Quién sabe?
Whity
Onde o filme do Fassbinder remonta tanto aos de Ward Baker e Damiani (e onde o Damiani, por sua vez, remonta ao de Ward Baker) quanto ao de Warhol.
E onde um filme do Fassbinder, por uma vez, é o menos interessante de um conjunto de filmes. Ou, se preferirem, o menos potente, o mais necrosado.
O que não é uma deficiência do filme; é parte do seu projeto, é por onde e para onde ele projeta…
A western by Fassbinder? Yes, a western by Fassbinder. But rest assured, it's a twisted one. Whity fits into Fassbinder's early work as it is another genre film, but unlike his gangster films, this one is less of an hommage and more of a deconstruction. His focus is less on the rich Nicholson family living in the 1870s American South, but on the titular Whity, their black butler, who is secretly a son of the patriarch. He is clearly the sanest person in the entire house (give or take his mother, who works as the Nicholson's cook), and in the course of the film, members of the family keep asking him to kill other members of the family. His own…
On various forms of oppression, hate and abuse. Fassbinder’s even more than usual meticulously precise mise-en-scene accentuates the cold detachment that underlies the film. So much brutality in the silences and pauses.
