The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) film review - a tale of desire and despair
★★★★★
In the visually extravagant ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant’, Fassbinder reveals how intimacy devolves into a battle for power and control.
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Starring: Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Irm Hermann, Katrin Schaake. 12 cert, 124 min.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) is a chamber piece melodrama of extraordinary visual and verbal depth. Taking place entirely in the bedroom of narcissistic, ageing fashion designer Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen), the film centres on her sadomasochistic relationships with the subservient Marlene (Irm Hermann) and sly ingénue Karin (Hanna Schygulla). In true Fassbinder fashion, The Bitter Tears deploys the power imbalances between its characters to reflect broader societal issues and injustices. In Fassbinder’s films, intimacy is not inherently unattainable—it becomes impossible due to the constraining contexts in which his characters exist. Despite the film’s artificial visual style and the distasteful behaviour of Petra, Fassbinder succeeds in creating moments of genuine emotion which draw the viewer, whether they like it or not, into painful identification with her bitter tears.
‘The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant’ (1972) film poster artwork
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant occupies a crucial position in Fassbinder’s cinematic oeuvre. In the early 1970s, Fassbinder became enamoured by the emotionally charged American melodramas of Douglas Sirk, seeing their potential as vehicles for social commentary. The most well-known of Fassbinder’s ensuing experiments in melodrama are his BRD trilogy films, which each focus on a woman in post-WW2 West Germany, exploring themes of victimhood and agency. Despite this new generic focus, Fassbinder never fully abandoned his theatrical roots. The Bitter Tears is based on Fassbinder’s play of the same name, and carries a palpable theatrical influence. The film is structured in four acts, with characters dressed in extravagant costumes that seem more suited to the stage than the intimacy of a bedroom. Fassbinder’s meticulous blocking and framing techniques create scenes reminiscent of tableaux vivants, his actors frozen in exaggerated poses akin to the mannequins that litter fashion designer Petra’s decadent apartment.
The viewer is introduced to Petra via her authoritarian demands of Marlene, a fellow designer who appears to function as a live-in slave. Marlene’s silence and eerie, blank, doll-like face with painted lips demarcate her as a mannequin amongst many others. While she does not talk, Marlene’s presence in The Bitter Tears is pronounced. Permanently clad in black, she lingers in the background of most shots like a shadow. When she is not visibly present, she makes herself known through her furious, relentlessly audible typing. Marlene thus becomes, over the course of The Bitter Tears, a symbol of unerring devotion. That this devotion is consistently spurned by Petra is alluded to be a result not only of the underlying sexual nature of their relationship, but also of class difference. The distinction between the two women is often represented by their physical positioning; Petra lounges above on the bed in a clear position of power while Marlene works tirelessly below.
What we learn about Petra we learn through her relationships with others. In conversation with her cousin Sidonie (Katrin Schaake) at the start of the film, we learn about Petra’s failed marriages, marriages she speaks of with a haughty, self-satisfied air, repudiating men for their weaknesses. The Bitter Tears thus opens with an image of a woman in absolute control of her life, both financially and sexually. That this image is full of cracks, fragile and superficial, is evidenced by the affected, constructed nature of Petra herself; her makeup and outfits are garish to the point of being grotesque, her smile strained, her every movement and utterance poised for collapse. Upon meeting the beautiful young Karin, this collapse is set in motion. Fassbinder playfully indicates Karin’s role as a femme fatale with her dramatic entrance, which is accompanied by the sharp shadows of venetian blinds. Offering to support Karin and make her a model, Petra ironically takes on the masculine role she earlier sneered at, appearing more like a desperate, leering older man than the stable, successful woman she is.
Despite the film having an all-female cast, The Bitter Tears is not just a film about women. Men are inescapable, as omnipotent as the blown-up reproduction of Nicolas Poussin’s painting ‘Midas and Bacchus’ which looms over Petra’s suffering mockingly. There is a strong sense in which Fassbinder, himself a queer man, seems to be commenting on the unavoidability of patriarchal norms, despite the determined sexual nonconformity of Petra. Indeed, the most pivotal point in the narrative is affected by a man, occurring when Karin’s offscreen husband Freddy phones her from Zurich. At this point in the film, the power dynamics between Karin and Petra have swung, pendulum-like, in the opposite direction. Karin, lazing on Petra’s bed, utters subtle violences about her time spent with different men and refuses to respond to Petra’s insipid ‘I love yous’, managing a mere unconvincing ‘I like you too’.
Fassbinder employs close-ups sparingly, establishing a distance which mirrors the frustrated attempts at physical intimacy of the film’s characters. Yet when Karin’s cruelty becomes apparent, Fassbinder zooms into Petra’s stricken face, framed by a bright orange wig, alabaster skin marred by a single tear. It is an image of pure desolation and pain, and one that connects Petra’s victimhood to that of Marlene. Earlier in the film, as Petra recalls the breakdown of her marriage, Fassbinder likewise zooms into Marlene’s lovelorn face.
Having been abandoned by Karin, in the fourth act of The Bitter Tears, the stage is quite literally set for the ultimate self-destructive breakdown of Petra’s life. The bed, which has up to now functioned as the centre of the room and therefore the centre of the film, has been conspicuously removed. It is later revealed on the lower level of Petra’s apartment. Two mannequins are frozen in a coital act within it while a third, seemingly a stand-in for the voyeuristic Marlene, watches on.
The film’s excruciating climax showcases Petra’s furious, gin-fueled attack on the key women in her life—her daughter Gaby (Eva Mattes), cousin Sidonie, Marlene, and her Mother (Gisela Fackeldey)—and culminates in the most visually striking shot of the film. Once the puppeteer of her own life and others’, Petra is now reduced to a mere object. Resembling the plastic doll she lies on the ground beside in a blonde wig and startlingly green dress, she is physically dominated by every other character in the frame, including the naked spectre of masculinity adorning her wall.
Yet The Bitter Tears ultimately concludes on a hopeful note, offering a tentative happy ending which is unusual for Fassbinder. Stripped of her adornments, Petra is visited by her Mother in bed, to whom she apologises for her outburst. Petra’s abrupt recovery affirms her earlier assertion to Sidonie: ‘People are terrible. They can bear anything’. In a seeming return to her old, self-assured demeanour, Petra approaches Marlene, intending to open up a more balanced dynamic between the two of them.
The final shot of the film depicts Marlene in profile, silently packing her suitcase, and striding out of Petra’s apartment—presumably for good. In many ways, Marlene is the most intriguing character in The Bitter Tears. Her life story is not only withheld from Petra, but also from the viewer. Whether her departure signifies a reclaiming of her agency or a refusal to forge an identity of her own that would allow her and Petra to become equals, there is power in the ambiguity of her exit, and in the playful way it rounds off Fassbinder’s remarkable exploration of the dark contours of human relations.
It is impossible to finish writing on this spectacular film without briefly touching on the extent to which it is perhaps the most autobiographical of Fassbinder’s oeuvre. The Bitter Tears is allegedly based on the director’s own relationships with actor Günther Kaufmann and composer Peer Raben, to whom the film is dedicated. With this information, Fassbinder’s aesthetic interrogation of Petra’s character becomes a strange attempt at self-psychoanalysis. Perhaps this is why The Bitter Tears represents one of Fassbinder’s most accomplished cinematic contributions. Scathing, witty, and visually rich, it navigates the coveting of youth and beauty and the agony of unrequited love with an honesty that lingers long after the curtains have fallen.