The American Soldier

Viewed March 8, 2022. Fassbinder pares down the noir to its just most recognizable symbols and archetypes, rendering a familiar cinematic world in much more alienating terms. Fassbinder didn't become a great filmmaker by continuing in this minimalist mode, but there are certain ideas here that he would carry with him, namely the reflexive play with genre tropes, the exacting sense of space and motion, and the rigid compositional techniques.

Veers wildly, scene to scene, from idiotic to compelling, and probably wasn't the best place to start with Fassbinder.

Deconstruction of Melville's Le Samouraï, involving typical Fassbinder themes like social alienation, repressed homosexuality and depressed German culture. A very cerebral movie, shouldn't be watched as an introduction to Fassbinder.

O Soldado Americano estreava há 50 anos no Festival de Mannheim-Heidelberg. Esse sem dúvida é o melhor dentre os primeiros filmes do Fassbinder, um noir bem peculiar que nunca deixa de nomear os cineastas que homenageia: Fuller, Lang, Murnau, Praunheim, Ophuls e Walsh. Box Obras-primas do Cinema Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

"Well Fassbinder would disagree with you about Kurt Raab, he put on his list..." http://illusionpodcast.blogspot.com/2015/05/episode-58-first-fassbinder-episode.html

ugh, another gangster film? In which RWF further deconstructs, lampoons, analyzes. Parts are pretty funny [/spoiler:/ did that lady stab herself to death with a dildo? I don't even know], and, reading sex/romance as a form of power struggle, RWF with yet more dumbasshole men beating up silly, acquiescent women [played by a cast that has more of caricature to it than character] seems to be saying... something. "At the end of the day," though, as they say, just another stupid gangster film.