Veronika Voss aka Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss

Veronika in hat

By a stretch the best of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s so-called BRD Trilogy, Veronika Voss stands out against The Marriage of Maria Braun and Lola because Fassbinder had the great good sense to co-opt Billy Wilder’s brilliant Sunset Boulevard to help with the telling of the story of an ageing German actress and the young man who befriends her in the 1950s, much as he borrowed Von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel with Lola. Rosel Zech plays Voss, a once-shining, now-diminished star who is lent an umbrella in a downpour by a young sports journalist (Hilmar Thate). He has no idea who she is, but, with a journalist’s nose for winkling out a story, works … Read more

Lola

Lola bathed in red and orange light

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s BRD Trilogy isn’t really meant to be a trilogy and is, in any case, in the wrong order. Take 1981’s Lola. Second of the “trilogy” to be released, it’s marked as BRD3 quite clearly in the opening titles. Veronika Voss, last of the three, was marked BRD2. Only the first one, The Marriage of Maria Braun, seems to be the right film in the right place. Here, BRD stands for Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany). As to the trilogy not really being a trio. It was never meant to be one, it’s just that Fassbinder died before he could make any more, in 1982. So who knows how many … Read more