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"Where there's no war, you have to make one." Ingolstadt, Frankenstein country, a provincial boredom occasionally interrupted by military boozing and brawling and balling. Madonna and Mary Magdalene in miniskirts, one (Hanna Schygulla) takes up tentatively with the soldier suffering from "moral depression" (Harry Baer) and the other (Irm Hermann) takes up enthusiastically with the rest of the platoon, "eine moderne Frau." Bridge-building is but a cruel reminder of everybody's lack of connection, a parodical diminution of Lean's River Kwai has the grunts smacking and hacking the same wooden beams over and over. ("Your hammering sounds like a goat shitting on a drum skin," barks Klaus Löwitsch's loudmouth sergeant, whose comeuppance comes by way of a long-shot gag in the middle of a lake.) Elsewhere, the boss' hapless son (Rudolf Waldemar Brem) playacts at being a tough-guy saboteur and gets pummeled by a trio of louts for his trouble. Servants and masters, servicemen and commanders, the many power structures numbly accepted by people and keenly analyzed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The pitiless void of a park bench at night (Bertolucci's La Commare secca), the battleground of emotional brutality that is a simple dance between a visiting officer and a tiny Lana Turner wannabe. Hitler's future army, downtime at the pub means an interminable panning shot past card players, groping couples and passed-out lugs. "You've made my heart even heavier now." The maid deflowered and abandoned on the ground is a final image revisited in Fox and His Friends, Claire Denis in Beau Travail benefits mightily from the labors. With Günther Kaufmann, Walter Sedlmayr, Carla Egerer, Elga Sorbas, and Ulli Lommel.
--- Fernando F. Croce |