Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
This film was made for German TV (I have never seen something as daring as this on American TV, nor do I expect to). It's strictly for medieval shepherds on the look out for stray sheep. It twists a true story around to look something like a cross between Godard's Weekend and Buñuel's Simon of the Desert. An unwieldy avant-garde 15th century religious drama that's played out as an allegory on the political situation in the turbulent late-Sixties. What Fassbinder and his stock company were rebelling against seemed to differ from what I was rebelling against in America, as he was primarly concerned with class warfare and religion as the opium of the people while mine was a protest against the Vietnam War and a freedom of dress issue. In a 'Theater of the Absurd' way it combines medieval and contemporary imagery as the story follows Hans Boehm (Michael König), a shepherd who believes the Virgin Mary talks to him and wants him to be the Messiah to start a proletarian revolution in a place called Niklashausen. Fassbinder appears in his trademark black leather jacket playing the Black Monk, the rebellious instigator who stirs things up and catches the attention of a bunch of pilgrims who become followers of the shepherd. The shepherd gives up his humble farm home and declares his wife Johanna (Hanna Schygulla) is the Holy Virgin, and moves into the home of a bourgeois admirer where he entertains his loyal followers in style.
The movie veers from street-theater set pieces, rants against the oppressive nature of capitalism, arguments over what's a fair wage and the laws of "supply and demand," a defense of the Black Panthers (which looks dated and misplaced at this late date), quotations from Camillo Torres, diatribes against the racism in bourgeois society, the wisdom of a socialist revolution where the wealth is divided equally among all, preaching revolutionary slogans such as "Long live Lenin, smash fascism!", Margit Carstensen as the Countess hostess who goes into a heated frenzy over wanting to make love to the Messiah, the Messiah extolling the values of humanism while hoping to eliminate those he hates such as the wealthy and powerful in both the secular and church world, the oppressive pastor (Walter Sedlmayr) who opposes such radical humanistic ideas and throws his support to the the fascist ruling party, play acting among ecclesiastical and royal types who are in elaborate costumes and represent something decadent to Fassbinder and the creating of an atmosphere that's filled with doom. The would-be Messiah upsets the ruling class of the community in his social and religious uprising and pays the piper as he's crucified in a junk car lot and his followers wiped out by the local ruler, while the epicene Bishop (Kurt Raab), a ridiculous stereotypical 'diabolical sissy' type used by Hollywood to show gays in a bad light, survives to give the martyred shepherd the last rites.
It's unbearably strident, childish, not fully realized as drama, more tedious than humorous but, nevertheless, it strikes me as sincere, audacious and hyper in its visualizations (revolution must be continuous, constantly learning from its mistakes and influenced by the art world). A so-so Fassbinder that's still better than most good Hollywood takes on the Sixties revolutionary fervor.
REVIEWED ON 5/24/2006 GRADE: C+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
This 1970 allegory about allegory veers from intellectual exercise into emotional exhortation and blurs the line between theater and film. Nesting complex visual strategies within simpler ones, writer-directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder (who plays a monk in a motorcycle jacket) and Michael Fengler present a series of scenes that demonstrate the martyrdom of a shepherd, who's also a performance artist and revolutionary, after his followers persuade him to abandon his sheep and take up residence in the home of a bourgeois chick who's got a big crush on him. The story alternates between this troupe—allegorical characters within the fiction of the movie as well as the street-theater pieces they perform—and a clan of ecclesiastical and royal types who seem to spend most of their time choreographing decadent scenarios in elaborate interiors. Amazingly simple editing and sound design—most scenes are complete in one shot and use only one or two sound effects or just music in addition to the dialogue—create a minimally realist and hypertheatrical vision of class conflict and potential doom.
by Lisa Alspector
Die Niklashausen Fart
"Who needs the revolution?" asks Rainer Werner Fassbinder, his black-jacketed back to the camera, in a stark Antiteater tableaux against a red brick wall. The people, of course, and in this early call-for-arms curio, co-directed for German TV with Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? pal Michael Fengler, Fassbinder mines a feudal past for present-tense guerilla fare -- for him, as for Godard and Glauber Rocha around the same period, the possibility of revolution still throbbed. Ostensibly set in the 15th-century, the story follows a hippiefied shepherd (Michael König) who claims visions of the Madonna, rallies up the masses (or at least a bunch of Fassbinder axioms, including Hanna Schygulla, Günther Kaufmann, Margit Cartensen) against an epicenely oppressive ruler, and gets crucified and burned for his trouble. Bourgeois lucidity is the first casualty of the movie's recklessly anachronistic agit-prop, so that the rehearsal of a Virgin Mary soliloquy gets interrupted by news of the killing of Black Panthers founder Fred Hampton, the shaggy Messiah caps an al fresco sermon with a fervid "Long live Lenin, smash fascism!" and the conceptual audacity of the director's camera movements far outweighs the resources of cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann. In his most explicitly politicized (though far from best) film, Fassbinder suggests a temporal continuum of thwarted upheaval that can only be addressed (and, thus, confronted) by way of frontal artistic attack -- or, as one of the languid sleepwalkers in the opening sequence puts it, "agitation through instruction and militant example." With Kurt Raab.
--- Fernando F. Croce
Though this 1970s, made-for-German-TV relic will strike some viewers as an arcane, counter-culture home movie, Fassbinder fans will be spellbound. A passion play commemorating 15th-century shepherd Hans Rohm's "Niklashausen pilgrimage," during which went from town to town claiming that the Blessed Virgin Mary had advised him to foment a holy war against the decadent church and upper classes, is an annual event in Germany. In 1970, iconoclastic director Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michael Fengler staged a new version that emphasized the story's political underpinnings. Viewers are whisked behind the scenes to witness Fassbinder's audition and rehearsal process. Fassbinder, in modern dress, seems a cool observer of his costumed cast members — almost like a teacher instructing pupils. As Fassbinder's distorted re-creation unfolds, Bohm and his disciples rail against the bourgeoisie, politicians and even the traditional Church. Fassbinder uses Bohm's religious proselytizing as a brickbat against societal conformity and repression. Ultimately, the bare bones of the centuries-old pageant rattle against the pre-conceived notions of the actors, who question its relevance to their era. For Fassbinder, Bohm's fervor reflects his own generation's contempt for the status quo, and one of the theater piece's subplots condemns the aristocracy for punishing Bohm as a heretic. Fassbinder pointedly expands the historic pilgrimage to embrace his concerns about the government's erosion of individual rights. However, as past and present clash, Fassbinder and his cast come to the realization that the more things change, the more they remain the same; it may take out-and-out revolution to finish what Bohm started. Invaluable for its depiction of Fassbinder's working methods, this chronicle of his performance-art exercise in political outrage shows Fassbinder's genius in gestation. Twisting a German tradition to his own ends, Fassbinder restyles Bohm's martyrdom as a provocateur's call to arms.
-- Robert Pardi
