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Veronika Voss (1982)

#Veronika Voss #Rosel Zech #Rainer Werner Fassbinder #film #1980s

Veronika Voss 💀🍷Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss, 1982

A forgotten actress, trapped between the memory of fame and dependency, is slowly consumed by a system that keeps her alive only to exploit her. 🌹

#rainer werner fassbinder #Rosel Zech #Hilmar Thate #cult classic

On this day in European art cinema history (18 February 1982): Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s despairing black-and-white masterpiece (or should I say “meisterwerk” in this context) Veronika Voss (Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss or The Longing of Veronika Voss) was released in German cinemas. The film is pretty much saturated in premonitions of death: it was Fassbinder’s second last movie, and the last one released during his lifetime. (His final film was his adaptation of Jean Genet's Querelle – released posthumously - which I also love. The New German cinema auteur died on 10 June 1982 aged 37). Veronika covers the bleak circling-the-drain final days of the titular drug-addicted and doomed Nazi-era film star. It feels loosely inspired by Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) (Veronika’s demented melancholy evokes both Norma Desmond and Blanche DuBois) and is based on the true story of German actress Sybille Schmitz (1909 – 1955). The late Rosel Zech (1940 - 2011) is astonishing in the tragic lead role, especially in the musical sequence where she evokes Marlene Dietrich, throatily warbling the Dean Martin standard "Memories Are Made of This." In conclusion: If you must take a fatal overdose of pills, you might as well do it in a beautifully stark and minimalist all-white Art Deco room. And as John Waters puts it, “Seeing a Fassbinder retrospective is better than drugs, liquor and sex put together”.