Love Is Colder Than Death

'Liebe ist kalter als der Tod (= German for 'love is colder than death'), from 1969, is Rainer Werner Fassbinder's first film.

Shot in black and white, it sometimes shows a little 'wooden' and imperfect. Nevertheless it surely contains all well-known Fassbinder features: a very German setting, slow speed, serious, with a strong touch of realism & pessimism.

Although Fassbinder himself extensively acts, female lead Hanna Schygulla by far adds the greatest value here. After 'Liebe', she should feature in many other Fassbinder-productions.

This film's somewhat weird title nevertheless fully covers its joyless plot. Strangely this lack of fun is somehow accentuated by Schygulla's brief nude appearances. They make an unusual contrast, already revealing Fassbinder's genius at this early stage in his career.

R.W. Fassbinder's debut feature Love is Colder Than Death was shot on a very limited budget and it shows. For the most part Fassbinder seems to have made the lack of budget work for him rather than against him however. Faced with a lack of funds, Fassbinder apparently decided to make this film as austere as possible. The film is shot in black and white but it uses less blacks and greys than any other film I can think of; the use of white (especially in backgrounds) adds to the film's stark tone as does the lack of camera movement. I've never seen a film in the crime genre that utilizes long takes and the stationary camera the way this one does.

In general I don't like crime movies that focus solely on the criminals but I found this one fascinating because these people didn't seem to be acting out of the usual petty motivations; rather, each of the three main characters seemed to be harboring a hatred for mankind. This is expressed in the contempt they show when they steal some trivial items in a store; rather than quietly pocket these things they choose to go to elaborate means to distract the shopkeepers and steal things right in front of them. It's not enough to take something from someone else: they also have to prove their superiority while making their victim into a fool. I found their misanthropy horrifyingly fascinating and that alone sets this film apart from other, similar films.

This film has been compared to the work of Jean Luc Godard and with good reason: these characters reminded me of the ones in films like Breathless and Pierrot Le Fou. Still, the characters in Love is Colder than Death are fundamentally different from the ones in those films because Godard's characters come across as lazy and selfish people who can't fit in while Fassbinder's characters come across as more ideologically motivated nihilist misanthropes.

The film's Spartan aesthetic is used to accentuate the characters' cynical attitudes in at least a couple of ways. The characters are often seen in front of structures so white they resemble the void: thus the exterior of the places they inhabit reflects the emptiness felt by these people who have no purpose or emotion. Another nice touch is the lack of visual representation of the gunshot wounds. At first it seemed like this lack could be entirely explained by budgetary concerns but on further reflection that's just silly: Fassbinder didn't have to show the bodies after they were shot but he usually did because he had a purpose in doing so. The gunshots seem to have had no effect because the shooters have no empathy for their victims, they care so little about them that the wounds don't even register with them.

Robotic, detached, static...this exercise in style holds fascination for the patient cinema goer. The influence of early Godard is evident, along with a Warholian aesthetic of minimalism in both plot and action.

The black and white cinematography is beautiful to look at, while the blank stares of the cast exude a frigid, mannequin-like quality. The atmosphere is Teutonic and bleak, while the glacial pace and extended pauses in both action and dialogue bring to mind the Iranian school of slow cinema. Film noir elements add a flavour of low-rent glamour.

For serious cinema buffs and Fassbinder enthusiasts only.

This film is not for every one. If you are mostly familiar with American Fim Noir or Gangster movies... Don't Go Here! This is one dark, moody, cynical and depressing film. Yet, that being said, every lingering shot and silent moment has more layers in it then most entire movies do today.

The story here is very simple; two criminals meet when they are recruited by a crime syndicate. They become friends, we find out one is a pimp and the other is a killer for hire. Later, needing a place to stay, the killer falls in love with the pimp's girlfriend (also a prostitute). The three begin to work as a crime trio with the killer doing most of the dirty work.

But the focus here is not the story. Fassbinder subtly allows the three character's relations towards each other become the real story. The people in this film have sold their souls to criminal life a long time ago. Yet, like everyone else in the world, they still struggle for there inner desires, and the need to feel something real.

This movie quite obviously had a very low budget. As a person is shot we, rarely see an exploding squib or even a blank cartridge being fired. The prime focus is the actor facial expressions and reactions. (Equally as powerful, yet more creative then seeing blood) The camera work is extremely minimal, yet far more revealing of the characters subconscious as they walk down a park or into a supermarket.

This is not your modern day first time film maker or film school graduate. Don't expect a Chris Nolan or a Quinten Tarentino. LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH, does borrow from certain film genres but it is so uniquely its own film, and creates such a beautiful sense of detachment that has rarely been attempted in film.

In this first feature from RW Fassbinder, which is among the movie titles that should be preserved in a National or World Archive of the movie titles that should be remembered a thousand years from now (if such a thing could be done), it's like he decided, as the Godard-phile that he was, to take Bande a Part and emphasize most of the parts where the characters do nothing and make it look cool (all of his early features, until he discovered Sirk at a festival when he was about 26 - I didn't know this until recently, but it explains why there isn't much by way of melodrama until Merchant of Four Seasons). The only problem is Fassbinder is also working here without a firm script - or, as he told Uli Lommel according to 'Fassbinder in Hollywood,' the script was all "in his head" as it were - and it shows.

This is also kind of like what one might see as what the "kids" were doing about five-ten years ago when the "mumblecore" movies were coming out, though with a crime movie twist (Lommel even has the Alain Delon look down from Le Samourai with the trenchcoat and hat, which means Fassbinder is actually homaging the homager): three aimless young people, one of who gets kicked out or has some kind of problem with a gangster "syndicate" as it's mostly called, decide to try some crime and, eventually, rob a bank or something.

I say 'something' not to sound flippant, but because Love is Colder Than Death doesn't give much to the audience aside from total disaffection - there are so many cigarettes here Better Davis at the time probably would've said to them to calm it down a little - and this "cool" attitude, which also includes the distance, at least for the most part. Actually the most interesting actor here is Fassbinder, something about his face and eyes seems to convey things about his uncertainly and yet dedication to a life of crime and/or not doing much at all; it's certainly more than Lommel does, who has one mode the entire film (even when he has a gun to someone in an wreckage field out in the middle of nowhere ready to kill for... a reason I guess, you could've fooled me!) Hannah Schygulla meanwhile, in the first of what would be a long collaboration of films, is fine though seems to not be given much in the way of direction.

I think I'm hard on this because I came to this after seeing so many of his films. It doesn't do much to say criticisms to stymie the director - he's been dead now decades - but I implore newcomers to Fassbinder to not start here, as it could give the wrong impression about his other work. And this is not to say either that there isn't some worthy direction or cinematography or cutting here, and in the last ten minutes, for the climax for what it is, there's some urgency and dread effectively communicated through Fassbinder's Malaise-of-Cinema style. And yet I can't recommend it; there are passages here where we see characters walking for five minutes, or at a supermarket for five minutes walking, or sitting around or playing pinball or seeing buildings go by for five minutes at a stretch at night or I don't know what, and there's nothing interesting about it. I'm fine with minutiae, but you got to try something - and to say Godard didn't work with a script isn't entirely accurate as a comparison basis.

Surprisingly to me, Fassbinder started and ended his career on his least impressive efforts; I couldn't watch it all in one sitting came back to the last 40 minutes a week after starting) as I felt so dulled away by Fassbinder's *anti-cinema*, which I'm sure was the intentional coming from his theater background. And I so wanted to engage with this; it's like the movie is confronting you to try and find something to connect with past its (yes, as the title says) cold exterior.