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Nabaza.net-The MarketPlace - The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
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List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $5.75
Your Save: $ 14.23 ( 71% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: New Yorker Video
Starring: Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Katrin Schaake, Eva Mattes, Gisela Fackeldey
Directed By: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302041217
Format: Color
ISBN: 630204121X
Label: New Yorker Video
Manufacturer: New Yorker Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: New Yorker Video
Release Date: 1998-01-01
Running Time: 124
Studio: New Yorker Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1972
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Editorial Reviews:
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder adapted his own play for this modern twist on The Women, the great all-female Hollywood classic of sex and social conventions in high society. Margit Carstensen is successful dress designer Petra, Irm Hermann her silent, obedient secretary/servant/Girl Friday Marlene (whom she alternately abuses and ignores), and Hanna Schygulla the callow, shallow young Karin, a seemingly naive blond beauty Petra treats as part protegée, part pet, until the calculating kitten turns on Petra. Michael Ballhaus's prowling camera finds Marlene silently hovering on the borders of Petra's dramas, looking on through doors and windows like an adoring lover from afar. Bouncing between catty melodrama and naked emotional need, it's a quintessentially Fassbinder portrait of doomed love, jealousy, and social taboos. The DVD features commentary by Fassbinder scholar Jane Shattuc, the early 1966 Fassbinder short films The City Tramp and The Little Chaos, the bonus documentary Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and filmographies. --Sean Axmaker
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Be carefully what you've been asking for. You may have it!
Comment: THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (1972)
"Love is colder than death" (Other Fassbinder's early films from 1969), could be one of the epigraph of this movie. That show us that doesn't matter what sexual orientation are you directed to, love wasn't and easy task to live in.
Petra van Kant (Margit Castersen) is a Diva in fashion designer, a selfish narcissistic personality. She has a secretary and co-designer, Marlene (Irm Hermenn) that was also his lover, now is more a sado - masoquistic relationship, in the psychological arena. A beautiful girl that what to be a model was introduced by a friend. Karin a 23 years old (Hanna Shygulla), that did not know how to do really in life but to live in a parasitic way, using what mother nature gave to her.
Interestingly Marlene did not speak during the movie. She accepts her peripheral situation because she did need to decided about nothing. Except when Petra changed the way of dealing with her, after Karin dumped her. Then Marlene could not stand that and runaway from Petra's home. The desire and power, was a central issue in the film, and a gigantic painting in the wall address that: "Midas and Bacchus". Petra was born with a kind of gift for fashion design, but that is not enough for to be happy, Midas is asking for advice to a nude Baccus. So to be rich and famous it is not a receipt for happiness, a pleasure godess may have some other approach, as we will learn watching this drama.
This movie with his theatrical design and shooting, is a careful study about three female personalities, so Reinner displayed what he knew better about everything: The women soul.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fassbinder's women: Petra von Kant.
Comment: "People need each other but haven't found a way to live with each other."
Adapted from his own play, film genius Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1972 film, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant), tells the story of a gifted, self-absorbed fashion designer (Margit Carstensen), whose marriages ended in death and divorce. "He stank of man," Petra says about her ex-husband. Petra now lives in Bremen with her slavish personal assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann), but falls in love with a beautiful, 23-year-old model, Karin Thimm (Hanna Schygulla, the radiant star of Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun). To say that Petra falls head-over-heels in love with Karin would be an understatement. Wheras Petra dominates Marlene with her demands, Karin dominates Petra with her insolent temperament. Karin tells distraught Petra that she has just enjoyed sex with a well-endowed black American, and eventually both Marlene and Karin abandon Petra, leaving her to her bitter tears. This intriguing film (Fassbinder's 13th of the 33 films he made) delves into Fassbinder's fascination with doomed love, and confronts common themes of obsession, dominance and submission, and social taboos. The entire film, divided into five acts, is shot in Petra's luxurious apartment, using long camera takes. It is probably not the best starting place for the Fassbinder unitiated.
G. Merritt
Customer Rating:
Summary: She can dish it out, but she can't take it
Comment: It is always interesting watching a film where virtually every character (with the exception of Petra's daughter, an innocent victim in all this) is more or less dislikeable. More than one person has found this film inaccessible due to the fact that nearly everyone has mixed motives & hidden agenda.
This also makes it impossible to take satisfaction in Petra's personal disintegration, since Karin is equally manipulative & self-serving. Petra's supreme arrogance makes it impossible for her to consider the notion that others might be able to exploit her just as she exploits others...while the viewer may see her comeuppance in the distance, it is a true shock to Petra when she is discarded. Ironically, it is when she has gotten what she deserves that she becomes the most sympathetic to the viewer.
Nobody should go into this movie expecting a lot of action or great cinematography...the claustrophobic nature of the film very much reflects the stage origins of this screenplay. Lots of dialogue, no action, a lot of not-very-nice characters...this movie will not be for everybody, definitely. However, this doesn't mean that it is not a very fine film.
Customer Rating:
Summary: There is nothing to review
Comment: I would like to review this film but I can not because I have not received it yet. Apparently, you have sent it three times but never got to me. It is like a joke. Can you check your tracking mail number and make a claim to whoever in the post?
Regards,
Jose
Customer Rating:
Summary: "I think people need each other, they're made that way. But they haven't learnt how to live together." - Petra von Kant
Comment:
"The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" (1972) - was the first Fassbinder's film I saw many years ago in Moscow and it had started my fascination and interest in the work of the enormously talented man who was a writer/director/producer/editor/actor for almost all his movies. "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" is a screen adaptation of the earlier Fassbinder's play and it never leaves the apartment of Petra Von Kant, an arrogant, sarcastic, and successful fashion designer who constantly mistreats and humiliates her always silent and obedient assistant Marianne (Irm Hermann, with whom Fassbinder made 24 movies). As a background for Petra's apartment, Fassbinder uses the blowup of Poussin's painting "Midas and Bacchus." The use of the mural is ironic on more than one level. Nude Bacchus stands in the center of the mural and is the only male presence in a film populated entirely with women. Petra, not unlike legendary Midas wished for herself a golden girl, young and beautiful Karin with golden hair (Hanna Schygulla, another Fassbinder's muse with whom he made over 20 films). As with Midas from legend, it turned to be a huge mistake for Petra who learned herself what abuse, indifference, and humiliation meant. With just a few characters locked in the claustrophobic and suffocating atmosphere of the apartment, the film is never slow or boring thanks to the young director/writer story-telling ability and to magic camera work by Michael Ballhaus ("Goodfellas", "The Last Temptation of Christ", and "After Hours" among others). It is hard to believe that such a gorgeous looking movie was shot for ten days only. I've read that Fassbinder was able to make so many movies in such a short period of time because they were cheaply produced - no special effects, no big action scenes, no exotic locations. This is true but his movies are most certainly not cheap - highly intelligent, thought provoking, always excellently acted and beautiful or perhaps I've been lucky and have not seen the ones that don't fit the description.
4.5/10
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