Veronika Voss movie review & film summary (1982)
We observe Veronika's frantic relationship with Katz, who berates her sadistically, and extracts details of the hours with Robert Krohn. Finally Veronika is shown to her narrow, cell-like room, and given the drugs she craves. In this room, and throughout the clinic, we hear incongruous American country & western songs ("The Battle of New Orleans," "16 Tons"). In "Maria von Braun," where Günther Kaufmann plays Maria's G.I. lover, similar music is heard, probably via Armed Forces Radio, a reminder of the presence of American occupying forces in postwar Germany. At Veronika's own "farewell" party, she performs "Memories Are Made of This," in a low, throaty torch-song voice perhaps intended to remind us of Marlene Dietrich. Indeed, Fassbinder's focus on Rosel Zech's reminds me of von Sternberg's Dietrich in "The Blue Angel."
When Robert Krohn returns that day to his own apartment and girlfriend Henriette (Cornelia Froboess), he is almost proud to tell her where he spent the night, and she, also a writer for the newspaper, accepts this as an expression of his nature; she wants to know what Voss was like. Krohn, whose beat is hockey, convinces his editor he has lucked upon a major scoop about the decline and fall of a star.
Throughout Fassbinder's work we find such figures, great stars, mannered, decadent, in various stages of their decay. This film was inspired by the real life of Sybille Schmitz, a German star of the 1930s who also fell athwart of a clinic supplying drugs. Many critics look at Veronika Voss and are reminded of Gloria Swanson in Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard." Perhaps the association is intentional. When Veronika finally, with great difficulty, wheedles a bit part from her former agent, the director of the scene (Volker Spengler) wears glasses and has his hat pushed back on his head, Wilder-style. She only has two lines in her scene, but blows them again and again. She's rattled and craves a fix. She is watched by Robert Krone and by her ex-husband Max Rehbein (Armin Mueller-Stahl), who wearily explain to the sports writer that his former wife is a hopeless addict.
Two other patients of Dr. Katz figure importantly: A sweet elderly couple named the Treibels. Their story figures tragically in the history of Germany, as you will find. The psychiatrist, indeed, seems poised at the center of a cynical web of postwar corruption, including drug authorities and the police; when they twitch the web, she senses it immediately.
Fassbinder (1945-1982) was an immensely productive filmmaker. In his 37 years he directed 40 features, 24 stage plays and two long TV miniseries (notably "Berlin Alexanderplatz"). His death seems to have interrupted this flow in mid-stream. Powerfully influenced by the heavily stylized works of the German-Danish-American director Douglas Sirk ("Written on the Wind"), he may have worked at a feverish pace but his films always look carefully planned. In this film, for example, he evokes period b&w with a diversity of wipe shots, iris shots, pans, tracking, and the careful positioning of foregrounds. In other films he often uses zooms-in to underline dramatic points. His films are visually mannered, formal, and far from seeming improvised; the visual strategy of "Veronika Voss" suggests he was moving even closer toward the classic Hollywood style.
