Directed by:
Rainer Werner FassbinderCinematography:
Xaver SchwarzenbergerComposer:
Peer RabenCast:
Rosel Zech, Hilmar Thate, Cornelia Froboess, Annemarie Düringer, Erik Schumann, Doris Schade, Peter Berling, Günther Kaufmann, Volker Spengler, Rudolf Platte (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
A once-beloved Third Reich–era starlet, Veronika Voss (Rosel Zech) lives in obscurity in postwar Munich. Struggling for survival and haunted by past glories, she encounters sportswriter Robert Krohn (Hilmar Thate) in a rain-swept park and intrigues him with her mysterious beauty. As their unlikely relationship develops, Robert comes to discover the dark secrets that brought about the decline of Veronika’s career. Based on the true story of a World War II Ufa star, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss is wicked satire disguised as 1950s melodrama. (Criterion)
(more)Reviews (2)
From my point of view, this is a rather average drama by Fassbinder, which imitates traditional melodramas produced by German UFA studios from the period of the German Third Reich. The director uses the tragic fate of a film diva addicted to opioids to subtly remind us of the Nazi past of many German artists. The motif of drugs is interesting - Fassbinder himself tried many of them, and ultimately, shortly after completing the film, he fatally overdosed. Overall impression: 55%. In my opinion, the pace is a bit slow and the film's presentation is traditionalist.
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A killer Fassbinder over-stylized story that should be an homage but is instead just an embarrassing mockery. Outside of time and space, he rides the wave of all those Sunset Boulevards and their leitmotifs about fallen divas, whose generation was knocked out of public life no later than in 1952 (in the West) along with the garish colors of Singin' in the Rain.
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