Tuesday, November 25, 6:00 p.m. | Throughout the mid-1970s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid repeated homage to the then-maligned "women's pictures" of his hero, German émigré Douglas Sirk. Passions that roiled just beneath the surface in Sirk's films became open wounds in Fassbinder's acerbic treatments—sometimes operatically so, but always retaining a layer of compelling inscrutability. In this lesser-known work from his florid middle period, originally made for television, the madman of Munich continued to explore the terror of domestic alienation. Margit Carstensen, a Fassbinder regular, portrays Margot, a put-upon, valium-popping housewife who drifts into a kind of nameless psychological torture during her second pregnancy. Life around her moves along like a horrifying dream, one whose meaning Margot is somehow not allowed to plumb. (CFS) Preceded by: HOUSE CLEANING BLUES (1937, Dave Fleischer, 6 min., 16mm).
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu