Flamboyant cult German director, belatedly appreciated
After a long, fallow period in German cinema, there emerged, in the late 1960s, a new wave of directors, including Werner Schroeter, who has died of cancer, aged 65. What separated Schroeter from most of his contemporaries, such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog, was his almost complete rejection of realism, social and political, and his espousal of high camp.
Schroeter lived by Oscar Wilde's dictum: "Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess." His mixture of flamboyant, gender-bending minimalism and stylised melodrama, inspired by 19th-century Italian bel canto opera and the music of German romanticism, often juxtaposed with popular song, blurred the distinction between art and kitsch. His eschewal of conventional narrative made him a marginal figure, but towards the end of his life, with several retropectives at festivals and cinematheques, he gained a wider audience of cinephiles. He kept a faithful,...
After a long, fallow period in German cinema, there emerged, in the late 1960s, a new wave of directors, including Werner Schroeter, who has died of cancer, aged 65. What separated Schroeter from most of his contemporaries, such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog, was his almost complete rejection of realism, social and political, and his espousal of high camp.
Schroeter lived by Oscar Wilde's dictum: "Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess." His mixture of flamboyant, gender-bending minimalism and stylised melodrama, inspired by 19th-century Italian bel canto opera and the music of German romanticism, often juxtaposed with popular song, blurred the distinction between art and kitsch. His eschewal of conventional narrative made him a marginal figure, but towards the end of his life, with several retropectives at festivals and cinematheques, he gained a wider audience of cinephiles. He kept a faithful,...
- 4/22/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
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