Amgonst the 66 movies that R.W. Fassbinder made in his only 37 years long life (the single episodes, none of them less than 1 hour, counted as singles), "Querelle", his last work (1982), seems to march to a different drummer. This impression is reinforced because, except Günther Kaufmann who plays Nono, none of the "Fassbinder family" is in the leading roles (although one can see in the background, almost reduced to extras, some of the Old Garde). Not only is the whole movie set in a more artificial than artistic environment (a masterwork of Oscar winner Rolf Zehetbauer), but especially the treatment of homosexuality has nothing to do, f.ex. with that in "Fox and this Friends".
Nonetheless, the omnipresent mirrors suggest that there are points of contact with such movies like "The Stationmaster's Wife", "Chinese Roulette", and especially "Despair". The latter movie whose German subtitle is "A Trip into the Light" seems over big passages to be a preparatory work of some central issues in "Querelle": 1. The search of identity. 2. The Doppelgängers(Theo/Gil, Querelle/Robert?). 3. The problem of sexual might/force in relationships (cf. "Warum Läuft Herr R. Amok", "Martha", "Fear of Fear"). New is the strong mystic symbolism: Seblon as godfather (?), Lysiane as overthrown goddess (?). Then, again as a sequel of the last scene in "Despair": the landscape that looks as if the sun would rise constantly: In "Querelle", we are not anymore only in a Trip into the Light, we have reached the Light: it is a picture of hell.
Nonetheless, the omnipresent mirrors suggest that there are points of contact with such movies like "The Stationmaster's Wife", "Chinese Roulette", and especially "Despair". The latter movie whose German subtitle is "A Trip into the Light" seems over big passages to be a preparatory work of some central issues in "Querelle": 1. The search of identity. 2. The Doppelgängers(Theo/Gil, Querelle/Robert?). 3. The problem of sexual might/force in relationships (cf. "Warum Läuft Herr R. Amok", "Martha", "Fear of Fear"). New is the strong mystic symbolism: Seblon as godfather (?), Lysiane as overthrown goddess (?). Then, again as a sequel of the last scene in "Despair": the landscape that looks as if the sun would rise constantly: In "Querelle", we are not anymore only in a Trip into the Light, we have reached the Light: it is a picture of hell.