Reviews & Ratings for
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant More at IMDbPro »Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (original title)

Filter:

Best Chronological Prolific Authors Loved It Hated It Hide Spoilers:

Page 1 of 3:

[1] [2] [3]

Index

22 reviews in total

---

33 out of 38 people found the following review useful:
A searing reminder of what a galvanising experience cinema could be., 26 March 2001

Author: Alice Liddel (-darragh@excite.com) from dublin, ireland

The archetypal mid-period Fassbinder film of the kind so lovingly pastiched/parodied in Francois Ozon's 'Water Falling on Burning Rocks'. Like much of his early work, the film is based on his own play, which 'limitation' Fassbinder compounds by refusing to open it out - imprisonment and immobility being central Fassbinder themes, as well as providing the metaphors that theatre provokes - role-playing, dual/multiple identities, staging.

The film is like a prison drama - its four acts never leave Petra's preposterously ornate bedroom, filled with dolls, mannequins (she is a fashion designer), and the kind of obtrusive decor that allows Fassbinder to compose intricate multiple-frame tableaux - and neither does Petra. In the 'real' world of the film, she is a jet-setter, attending celebrity shows, photo-shoots, but in the film world, she is paralysed, stuck not only in this bedroom, but in a circumscribed series of poses and movements, not to mention stock phrases and attitudes.

if she makes any progress at all, it is a negative one, as she declines from empty rhetoric about freedom to a horrified admission of her own self-entrapment, appropriately visualised in the bars of her bed-frame, and the mirror that reflects her back on herself, consumes her, like Narcissus, sucked into her own self-love, her gestures at role-play doomed attempts at consolidating her own egotistical power.

What's worse, other characters seem as imprisoned as her, but they can come and go, even if they are doomed to return, condemned to the same relations with Petra, even if power-relations shift. Only one character seems to break free - Karin - and that is by using, humiliating and ditching Petra. Like 'All about my mother', 'Bitter Tears' is a loose remake of 'All About Eve' - Petra is even paying alimony to a certain 'Joseph Mankiewicz'. Karin is the rising star who submits herself to an elder mentor for as long as it suits before dumping her when she has taken what she needs. Of course, Fassbinder elides any Hollywood melodrama inherent in such a set-up: each 'act' involves a large time gap, so that Karin's turning nasty seems disturbingly abrupt.

Stylistically, the film's closed world is matched by the restricted camera movements and murky colours. Fassbinder constantly distances us from the melodrama, by compositions at once comic and mocking - the tears of two women being framed by mannequins etc. In one brilliant scene, Petra talks to Sidonie while looking into her hand mirror so that she appears to be talking to herself, both Sidonie and her 'reflection' interrogating her.

The women's bodies are undermined not only by unflattering framing, but by the fetishistic, limbless plastic figures surrounding them. Most incongruous of all is the large wall size painting that forms a background to the film, a large classical subject with abandoned child, prone woman and upright man, continually ironising, mocking, undermining the narrative, even provoking it, as characters pose in a similar fashion. There is one crucial difference - the man - the crucial absence from this male-mediated female psychodrama.

Well, one of two. Another is the speech of Petra's long-suffering servant Marlene, who may, or may not, be the real creative force behind Petra's success, who exists in a Beckett-like relationship with her mistress as the latter, like Hamm in 'Endgame', winds down towards inertia. Like the audience, she is mute, and observing. She is also the one sympathetic character, her isolation and anguish eloquently expressed in some very moving composions as she stands behind screens, unable to say no.

---

19 out of 23 people found the following review useful:
Fassbinder at his finest! Cinema at its finest!, 3 February 2000

Author: markboulos from Brooklyn, NYC

This film is an elegantly constructed classical tragedy that explores the erotics of cruelty and the manipulation of sexual power. Deeply perverse, its portrayal of the complexity of sexual desire is an inversion of all Hollywood romantic tropes, which are thus exposed as comparatively frivolous and dishonest. It is a lesbian love story set in the fashion industry. Though some may find it slow paced, the rest of us will appreciate the meticulously choreography, the stunning cinematography, and the precision with which the actresses mimic the mimicking of womanhood.

While "The Bitter Tears" is heart-wrenching, devastating tragedy, a greater intellectual high is hard to find in movies or elsewhere. Among the very best films of Fassbinder's career, this movie demonstrates (yet again) that Fassbinder is one of the truly great artists of our time.

---

17 out of 20 people found the following review useful:
Caustic, Venomous But Strangely Poignant, 26 October 1999
Author: Bishonen

The one-apartment setting for this film creates a very appropriate sense of claustrophobia and confinement. Fassbinder and actress Margin Carstensen masterfully detail the progression of Petra's deterioration. The schematic framework of this film is not apparent at first; nothing initially indicates Petra's vulnerability and neuroses which makes her ultimate psychic annihilation more poignant. Fassbinder's view of human relationships was egocentric and borders on the cynical---however his work resonates because the approach is so unsentimental and Carstensen is unafraid to make the character unsympathetic, even pathetic as she pines for the return of an absent lover (Schygulla) in the devastating latter half of the film.

The production design and cinematography (by the great Michael Ballhaus-"Bram Stoker's Dracula") are magnificent in that instead of creating great vistas or otherworldly visions, they remain firmly entrenched in a context of confinement and claustrophobia. The artifice (note the outlandish outfits!!!) and overhyped hothouse atmosphere of the film contribute to a feeling of imprisonment; Petra is trapped by her loneliness and neuroses. There's no freedom, no exits, no light, no room to breathe.

The final shot, overlaid with the rock song "The Great Pretender" on the soundtrack, haunts.

A difficult, challenging, at times tedious work, with characters who are human in some very unpleasant ways. Not for an action-movie crowd or people who dig Spielbergian easy answers. "Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant" deserves applause for walking so unflinchingly on the dark and lonely side of the street.

---

14 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
"I think people need each other, they're made that way. But they haven't learnt how to live together." - Petra von Kant, 27 August 2006

Author: Galina from Virginia, USA

"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.

9.5/10

---

18 out of 23 people found the following review useful:
Great film, glad I don't live there, 1 May 1999
Author: Lexo-2 from Dublin, Ireland

One reviewer described Bitter Tears as "a high camp lesbian slumber party", and that sort of sums it up, except that the blankets are like the dressing gown Medea made for Jason's wife - dipped in acid. Fassbinder adapted it from his own play and basically filmed a performance - there's only one set, Petra's apartment, and the characters come and go exactly as in the play, with one crucial difference in the last minute of the movie. All the usual suspects are here; Margit Carstensen has a ball as the Swansonesque Petra, Hanna Schygulla slinks and drawls as Petra's lover, Irm Hermann is at her beaky best as the watchful Marlene. It all culminates in the birthday party to end all birthday parties. A tough one to get into, but you'll never see anything like it anywhere else.

---

13 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Key Film From The German Master, 22 August 2006

Author: Shane James Bordas from United Kingdom

Claustrophobic, talky and highly inventive – The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is a key film in the development of R.W. Fassbinder's art. According to longtime colleague Ulli Lommel, Fassbinder wrote the entire work (which also became a play and, posthumously, a modernist opera) during an 11 hour plane journey from Germany to LA. Excited by this flush of creativity, Fassbinder ordered his entourage to head straight back home and shot the entire film in a extraordinary 10 days.

Set wholly within one room in the home of successful fashion designer Petra Von Kant, the film deals with the destructive love affair Petra (Margit Carstensen) begins with aspiring model Karin (Hanna Schygulla). As one of Fassbinder's early forays into the reexamination of 1950's Hollywood melodrama, the film has the tendency to polarise audiences with it's highly stylised and almost stagy approach. Even the lack of incidental music may jar with those not familiar with the director's work. Rather than using a swelling score giving cues to the emotions the audience is meant to feel, Fassbinder opts instead for selective natural sound (a typewriter endlessly clacking away in the background during an important scene, for instance) and records from Von Kant's (i.e. Fassbinder's) record collection. Without this trapping, we watch Petra's self-destruction with a certain ambiguity and a more considered response is elicited from the viewer. More space is also given to the magnificent dialogue and inventive camera-work (shot in long, winding takes) which allows the fine ensemble cast to to plunder the depths of emotional despair, all the while dressed in Von Kant's wonderfully outrageous designs.

This is all the more fascinating when read as a thinly veiled confession of Fassbinder's domineering ways with those in his inner circle. As also pointed out by Lommel, the film's exclusively female characters were actually all based on men. Fassbinder, however, mostly preferred to work with women as he felt they were freer to express extreme states of emotional truth and more open to the requirements of high melodrama. As a primer for the great director's work, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is an excellent example of Fassbinder's over-riding theme: how the hunter can quickly become the victim and that the universality of desire and need within all human relationships is a constant, regardless of status, sexuality or age.

---

7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Follow the penis, 23 August 2007

Author: kwiggins from Reynoldsburg, OH

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

For those of you who have seen this movie and were bored to death, I can only say: You have not seen enough Fassbinder! This is one more tale of lost love but Petra could never attain true love because she is a dictator looking for victims to dominant. But, as in many a Fassbinder film, the tide turns against her when she meets Karin. Petra heartily gobbles up Karin's tale of lower-class woe and is soon a pathetic mess. This is an extremely well crafted film and each shot is thoroughly composed. Pay close attention to the positioning of Marlene, to the mannequins and, of course, the penis (symbolizing the male-dominated world of which all woman are victims). The penis even gets the spotlight over Hannah Schygulla at one point. In the Fassbinder world, we are all victims, all someone's prey, because we need love and will jump headlong into the abyss to attain it. We will humiliate and degrade ourselves. Petra becomes more and more like a mannequin as the movie unfolds symbolizing her degradation and emotional turmoil. I gave this movie a 10 because, while not Fassbinder's best, it still beats most of what Hollywood has put out in the last 30 years and many of the movies that have wound up in IMDb's top 250. Lastly, for the uninitiated and the unbelievers, Fassbinder challenges the viewer constantly to look closer and dig deeper into human relationships and whether real, true, lasting love is even attainable. He pushed the limits of what a movie is and what it can achieve, failing several times along the way. The result is some of the most thought-provoking, intense movies ever made.

---

7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Interesting early Fassbinder film, 27 October 2003

Author: rosscinema (rosscinema@comcast.net) from Oceanside, Ca.

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Rainer Werner Fassbinder started to get some notoriety with this film and it's a film version of one of his own plays. This story strongly represents Fassbinder's own bitterness towards love and relationships. This film takes place in the apartment of Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen) who is a fashion designer and she spends her days verbally berating her mute secretary/slave Marlene (Irm Hermann). Petra is a lesbian and divorced with a daughter in boarding school and one day Petra's friend Sidonie (Katrin Schaake) mentions that an acquaintance is stopping over. Sidonie's friend turns out to be Karin (Hanna Schygulla) and she has just gotten back to Germany after spending some time out of the country. Petra offers her the opportunity to be a model and she agrees to be schooled by her. Soon Petra is deeply attracted to her and asks Karin to move in which she does. After time passes Petra finds out that Karin still sleeps with men from time to time and then Karin's husband calls and asks her to come stay with him. Karin says yes and asks for money for her trip. Petra gives it to her but is deeply hurt and starts drinking heavily and becomes very depressed. She lashes out at everyone around her and it takes some time for her to function again.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

Some critics of this film say that its just too talky and that its just another bad filming of a stage play. But there are other things going on when you watch this film and the cinematography is exceptional. The cinematographer is the great Michael Ballhaus who worked on about 15 productions with Fassbinder. The use of color is very evident in this film even though it takes place in a rather modest apartment setting. The color of red is used effectively when the actors are wearing primarily white and the background usually has large pictures hanging on the walls to give it some interesting depth. Fassbinder has a solid background in theater and when he made films he could work as both director and set designer. It's a striking film to look at and Fassbinder always had a strong view of how his productions should look. The performances are all solid and Carstensen is very strong in the title role. One of the more interesting parts in this film is by Hermann as Marlene. She never speaks in the film and its not known for sure if she's a mute or not. She's basically Petra's slave and it's suggested that they're relationship is founded on Petra's domination of her. At the end of the film Petra tells Marlene that she is giving her freedom. Marlene responds by packing her bag and leaving Petra for what we think is for good. They're relationship was about possession and when that has ended then it's over for them. This basically was what Fassbinder wanted to show everyone and he has always been fascinated by human emotions in dire situations. Petra wanted to possess Karin but she fooled her from the start. She used her and left her without any remorse at all. This film also gives viewers a look at a very young Eva Mattes who plays Petra's daughter Gabriele. Mattes would become a very well known German actress and is probably best known for her work in a couple of Werner Herzog films. This is certainly not Fassbinder's best film but it is a fascinating character study with some very colorful visuals. Fassbinder was one of cinema's greatest directors and this early effort is interesting to watch from start to finish.

---

8 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Typical Fassbinder film, 31 March 1999

Author: Mefisto-4 from Ghent, Belgium

This is a typical Fassbinder movie: very strong psychological characterisation of the main characters, lot of talking, nearly no action. All the scenes of the film are located in the bedroom of Petra von Kant, a rich fashion designer. In that bedroom people are discussing life, love, ambition, frustration, despair and so on. So, a lot of talking although one of the most important characters does not say one word. It takes some effort of the spectator to follow the film but it is quite an interesting film. You should be glad if you see one such a film a month.

---

9 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
One of Fassbinder's most intense films, 24 August 2003

Author: Lars Gorzelak Pedersen from Aarhus, Denmark

Petra von Kant is Rainer Werner Fassbinder at his very best. Every single cut in this film looks absolutely gorgeous, the photography is stunning, and the actors look as if they haven't got a single feeling left to feel - except bitterness. It's also one of Fassbinder's most relentless and uncompromising dramas; the atmosphere of despair and loneliness is intense and effected me deeply, and the humor one finds in some of the director's other films is almost totally absent. Disney fans should probably think twice before viewing.

---

---

Page 1 of 3:

[1] [2] [3]

Add another review

---

Related Links

Plot summary	Ratings	Awards
External reviews	Plot keywords	Main details
Your user reviews	Your vote history