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Claustrophobic, talky and highly inventive – The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is a key film in the development of R.W. Fassbinder's art. According to longtime colleague Ulli Lommel, Fassbinder wrote the entire work (which also became a play and, posthumously, a modernist opera) during an 11 hour plane journey from Germany to LA. Excited by this flush of creativity, Fassbinder ordered his entourage to head straight back home and shot the entire film in a extraordinary 10 days.

Set wholly within one room in the home of successful fashion designer Petra Von Kant, the film deals with the destructive love affair Petra (Margit Carstensen) begins with aspiring model Karin (Hanna Schygulla). As one of Fassbinder's early forays into the reexamination of 1950's Hollywood melodrama, the film has the tendency to polarise audiences with it's highly stylised and almost stagy approach. Even the lack of incidental music may jar with those not familiar with the director's work. Rather than using a swelling score giving cues to the emotions the audience is meant to feel, Fassbinder opts instead for selective natural sound (a typewriter endlessly clacking away in the background during an important scene, for instance) and records from Von Kant's (i.e. Fassbinder's) record collection. Without this trapping, we watch Petra's self-destruction with a certain ambiguity and a more considered response is elicited from the viewer. More space is also given to the magnificent dialogue and inventive camera-work (shot in long, winding takes) which allows the fine ensemble cast to to plunder the depths of emotional despair, all the while dressed in Von Kant's wonderfully outrageous designs.

This is all the more fascinating when read as a thinly veiled confession of Fassbinder's domineering ways with those in his inner circle. As also pointed out by Lommel, the film's exclusively female characters were actually all based on men. Fassbinder, however, mostly preferred to work with women as he felt they were freer to express extreme states of emotional truth and more open to the requirements of high melodrama. As a primer for the great director's work, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is an excellent example of Fassbinder's over-riding theme: how the hunter can quickly become the victim and that the universality of desire and need within all human relationships is a constant, regardless of status, sexuality or age.

The archetypal mid-period Fassbinder film of the kind so lovingly pastiched/parodied in Francois Ozon's 'Water Falling on Burning Rocks'. Like much of his early work, the film is based on his own play, which 'limitation' Fassbinder compounds by refusing to open it out - imprisonment and immobility being central Fassbinder themes, as well as providing the metaphors that theatre provokes - role-playing, dual/multiple identities, staging.

The film is like a prison drama - its four acts never leave Petra's preposterously ornate bedroom, filled with dolls, mannequins (she is a fashion designer), and the kind of obtrusive decor that allows Fassbinder to compose intricate multiple-frame tableaux - and neither does Petra. In the 'real' world of the film, she is a jet-setter, attending celebrity shows, photo-shoots, but in the film world, she is paralysed, stuck not only in this bedroom, but in a circumscribed series of poses and movements, not to mention stock phrases and attitudes.

if she makes any progress at all, it is a negative one, as she declines from empty rhetoric about freedom to a horrified admission of her own self-entrapment, appropriately visualised in the bars of her bed-frame, and the mirror that reflects her back on herself, consumes her, like Narcissus, sucked into her own self-love, her gestures at role-play doomed attempts at consolidating her own egotistical power.

What's worse, other characters seem as imprisoned as her, but they can come and go, even if they are doomed to return, condemned to the same relations with Petra, even if power-relations shift. Only one character seems to break free - Karin - and that is by using, humiliating and ditching Petra. Like 'All about my mother', 'Bitter Tears' is a loose remake of 'All About Eve' - Petra is even paying alimony to a certain 'Joseph Mankiewicz'. Karin is the rising star who submits herself to an elder mentor for as long as it suits before dumping her when she has taken what she needs. Of course, Fassbinder elides any Hollywood melodrama inherent in such a set-up: each 'act' involves a large time gap, so that Karin's turning nasty seems disturbingly abrupt.

Stylistically, the film's closed world is matched by the restricted camera movements and murky colours. Fassbinder constantly distances us from the melodrama, by compositions at once comic and mocking - the tears of two women being framed by mannequins etc. In one brilliant scene, Petra talks to Sidonie while looking into her hand mirror so that she appears to be talking to herself, both Sidonie and her 'reflection' interrogating her.

The women's bodies are undermined not only by unflattering framing, but by the fetishistic, limbless plastic figures surrounding them. Most incongruous of all is the large wall size painting that forms a background to the film, a large classical subject with abandoned child, prone woman and upright man, continually ironising, mocking, undermining the narrative, even provoking it, as characters pose in a similar fashion. There is one crucial difference - the man - the crucial absence from this male-mediated female psychodrama.

Well, one of two. Another is the speech of Petra's long-suffering servant Marlene, who may, or may not, be the real creative force behind Petra's success, who exists in a Beckett-like relationship with her mistress as the latter, like Hamm in 'Endgame', winds down towards inertia. Like the audience, she is mute, and observing. She is also the one sympathetic character, her isolation and anguish eloquently expressed in some very moving composions as she stands behind screens, unable to say no.

"The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" (1972) - was the first Fassbinder's film I saw many years ago in Moscow and it had started my fascination and interest in the work of the enormously talented man who was a writer/director/producer/editor/actor for almost all his movies. "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" is a screen adaptation of the earlier Fassbinder's play and it never leaves the apartment of Petra Von Kant, an arrogant, sarcastic, and successful fashion designer who constantly mistreats and humiliates her always silent and obedient assistant Marianne (Irm Hermann, with whom Fassbinder made 24 movies). As a background for Petra's apartment, Fassbinder uses the blowup of Poussin's painting "Midas and Bacchus." The use of the mural is ironic on more than one level. Nude Bacchus stands in the center of the mural and is the only male presence in a film populated entirely with women. Petra, not unlike legendary Midas wished for herself a golden girl, young and beautiful Karin with golden hair (Hanna Schygulla, another Fassbinder's muse with whom he made over 20 films). As with Midas from legend, it turned to be a huge mistake for Petra who learned herself what abuse, indifference, and humiliation meant. With just a few characters locked in the claustrophobic and suffocating atmosphere of the apartment, the film is never slow or boring thanks to the young director/writer story-telling ability and to magic camera work by Michael Ballhaus ("Goodfellas", "The Last Temptation of Christ", and "After Hours" among others). It is hard to believe that such a gorgeous looking movie was shot for ten days only. I've read that Fassbinder was able to make so many movies in such a short period of time because they were cheaply produced - no special effects, no big action scenes, no exotic locations. This is true but his movies are most certainly not cheap - highly intelligent, thought provoking, always excellently acted and beautiful or perhaps I've been lucky and have not seen the ones that don't fit the description.

9.5/10

The one-apartment setting for this film creates a very appropriate sense of claustrophobia and confinement. Fassbinder and actress Margin Carstensen masterfully detail the progression of Petra's deterioration. The schematic framework of this film is not apparent at first; nothing initially indicates Petra's vulnerability and neuroses which makes her ultimate psychic annihilation more poignant. Fassbinder's view of human relationships was egocentric and borders on the cynical---however his work resonates because the approach is so unsentimental and Carstensen is unafraid to make the character unsympathetic, even pathetic as she pines for the return of an absent lover (Schygulla) in the devastating latter half of the film.

The production design and cinematography (by the great Michael Ballhaus-"Bram Stoker's Dracula") are magnificent in that instead of creating great vistas or otherworldly visions, they remain firmly entrenched in a context of confinement and claustrophobia. The artifice (note the outlandish outfits!!!) and overhyped hothouse atmosphere of the film contribute to a feeling of imprisonment; Petra is trapped by her loneliness and neuroses. There's no freedom, no exits, no light, no room to breathe.

The final shot, overlaid with the rock song "The Great Pretender" on the soundtrack, haunts.

A difficult, challenging, at times tedious work, with characters who are human in some very unpleasant ways. Not for an action-movie crowd or people who dig Spielbergian easy answers. "Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant" deserves applause for walking so unflinchingly on the dark and lonely side of the street.

During his 37 years on Earth, the great German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder made a total of 41 films in his 13 year film career. Not counting the countless plays, TV series and acting gigs he did, his output was ferocious, much like his personal life. There have been many things written and spoken about Fassbinder - that he was anti-Semitic, tyrannical, misanthropic and homophobic (even though he was an open homosexual) - yet no-one will deny his raw genius and his place as a driving force in the New German Cinema movement. He made many fantastic films, and I don't think I would be alone is stating that he was at his best when dealing with melodrama, and more specifically, complex female characters.

Possibly his best known film, Fear Eats The Soul, is widely considered his best, but I feel that The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant shows Fassbinder at the top of his game. He usually worked with the same troupe of actors (Brigitte Mira, Kurt Raab, Karlheinz Bohm amongst others) and here he has two of his finest - Margit Carstensen as the powerful yet desperate fashion designer Petra Von Kant, and Hanna Schygulla (who played the title character in Fassbinder's other masterpiece The Marriage Of Maria Braun) as her newly appointed love interest, Karin. In my opinion, Carstensen is one of the finest actresses in cinema history, along with Bette Davis and Liv Ullmann, and is never better here. She is dominating and sadistic, yet when she opens up to her cousin Sidonie (Katrin Scaake) or her new lesbian lover Karin, she is tragic, broken and lonely. It is a tour-de-force on display, as her character changes as much as she changes her hairpieces.

Petra is residing in her apartment when we first meet her, awoken by fellow designer Marlene (Irm Hermann) who stays with her. We quickly learn that Petra sadistically treats Marlene like a slave, ordering her to bring her things and even orders her to slow-dance at one point. When she is joined by her cousin, Petra reveals how her past relationships with men have ended in disaster and resentment, and that men will ultimately leave her empty and disappointed. She is introduced to Karin, a timid model who Petra visibly becomes interested in, and eventually infatuated by. As Petra and Karin start a seemingly cold and difficult relationship, Petra's jealousy and fear of loneliness comes to the fore as she struggles to hold herself together. In one particularly powerful scene, Petra sits motionless on the edge of the bed after being told by Karin how none-existent her feelings really are, and a single tear rolls slowly down her face. Her face is as white as porcelain and as motionless as a doll, as the realisation hits her that her situation is as fake as the mannequins she decorates with her creations.

Adapted from his own play, Fassbinder never moves the action outside Petra's claustrophobic apartment, instead allowing the pent up feelings to explode within the confines of one room. The screenplay, acting, cinematography and music is absolute perfection, and in my opinion this is Fassbinder's crowning achievement. The final scene, which I won't reveal, is in turn hilarious and heartbreaking. If you are as spellbound as I am by the acting talents of Carstensen, then I would recommend both Fear Of Fear and Satan's Brew (both Fassbinder) to see the full range of her ability. Possibly the finest film of the New German Cinema movement.

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This is a typical Fassbinder movie: very strong psychological characterisation of the main characters, lot of talking, nearly no action. All the scenes of the film are located in the bedroom of Petra von Kant, a rich fashion designer. In that bedroom people are discussing life, love, ambition, frustration, despair and so on. So, a lot of talking although one of the most important characters does not say one word. It takes some effort of the spectator to follow the film but it is quite an interesting film. You should be glad if you see one such a film a month.

This film is an elegantly constructed classical tragedy that explores the erotics of cruelty and the manipulation of sexual power. Deeply perverse, its portrayal of the complexity of sexual desire is an inversion of all Hollywood romantic tropes, which are thus exposed as comparatively frivolous and dishonest. It is a lesbian love story set in the fashion industry. Though some may find it slow paced, the rest of us will appreciate the meticulously choreography, the stunning cinematography, and the precision with which the actresses mimic the mimicking of womanhood.

While "The Bitter Tears" is heart-wrenching, devastating tragedy, a greater intellectual high is hard to find in movies or elsewhere. Among the very best films of Fassbinder's career, this movie demonstrates (yet again) that Fassbinder is one of the truly great artists of our time.

Petra von Kant is Rainer Werner Fassbinder at his very best. Every single cut in this film looks absolutely gorgeous, the photography is stunning, and the actors look as if they haven't got a single feeling left to feel - except bitterness. It's also one of Fassbinder's most relentless and uncompromising dramas; the atmosphere of despair and loneliness is intense and effected me deeply, and the humor one finds in some of the director's other films is almost totally absent. Disney fans should probably think twice before viewing.

Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in.

Criterion has released the film and calls to our attention the "claustrophobic cinematography". Indeed, how can it be anything other than claustrophobic when we never leave the room? Much of the two hours takes place in a bed, with little beyond. This is quite a minimalism, and suggests the film is based on a stage play.

Fassbinder is known for his modern German interpretations of Douglas Sirk. This is one of his Sirk-inspired works. Maybe not his best, though that is all in the eye of the beholder. A second viewing may change my opinion on the matter.

One reviewer described Bitter Tears as "a high camp lesbian slumber party", and that sort of sums it up, except that the blankets are like the dressing gown Medea made for Jason's wife - dipped in acid. Fassbinder adapted it from his own play and basically filmed a performance - there's only one set, Petra's apartment, and the characters come and go exactly as in the play, with one crucial difference in the last minute of the movie. All the usual suspects are here; Margit Carstensen has a ball as the Swansonesque Petra, Hanna Schygulla slinks and drawls as Petra's lover, Irm Hermann is at her beaky best as the watchful Marlene. It all culminates in the birthday party to end all birthday parties. A tough one to get into, but you'll never see anything like it anywhere else.

"The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" is a powerful, unflinching view of a love affair gone wrong. Though Petra is not the most sympathetic of characters (note the constant berating of her mute personal assistant throughout the film, which becomes even more intense when Hanna Schygulla's character leaves), one can't help but sympathize with her a little by the end. Not stagy at all, the actors all perform in a believable way, as though they were not actors at all but real people caught in these situations (note Mrs. von Kant's incredulousness when she discovers Petra's love affair with another woman). Excellent, but certainly not for all tastes. This is an extremely claustrophobic film; does Petra ever leave her apartment? Certainly, it's the best Fassbinder film I've seen so far, though. I'm glad I saw it, as I nearly gave up on him.

People watch this because it is the archetypal mid-period Rainer Werner Fassbinder film and forget that it was made for entertainment or at least a psychological presentation. If you are looking for Fassbinder a much better presentation is "Welt am Draht" or World on a Wire (1973) TV Miniseries 1973 Not Rated 3h 32m.

The characters speak slow enough and clear enough that any German you may have picked up in school is clear and not slurred. I still had to use subtitles for some words but ignored them for the most part because whoever wrote the subtitles transliterated instead of word for word (and it can drive you up the wall.) Subtitles: Peter + Waltraut Green.

Even though there is music it is not a constant background noise that drowns out the voices. The closing scene is also done this to music.

There is a feel of a T. V. production rather than an art film. It is a little isotropic as it is all indoors. Notice only women; I suspect the same of the cats.

The film has that 1972 everyone smokes problem. Luckily, this production only has a gratuity light-up.

I watched the Criterion version with all the extras. The Extras (German with English subtitles) help explain what Fassbinder is trying to portray. Then you can go back and watch the movie again.

I have twice previously tried to watch this and fallen asleep once, to my shame, in the front row of the BFI Southbank, or NFT as it then was. I have to say, however, that there was a point this time, perhaps around the half hour point, where I felt I might slip under once again but was pulled back by the appearance on screen of Hanna Schygulla. After an extremely measured and uncompromising start, this startlingly staged and fantastically well photographed masterpiece from Rainer Werner Fassbinder gets under your skin. The devastatingly stark dialogue takes no prisoners and the fearsome young ladies before us confound and delight us as they develop before our very eyes into something more akin to tigers in a cage circling each other, daring each other and then ripping at each other. Without giving too much away, I have to say that Margit Carstensen is devastating in the central role and her manipulating manner and inclination has equally devastating consequences as she leans away from a disturbing sadomasochistic relationship to something she feels might be more satisfying with the young and sexy Hanna. What could possibly go wrong? Absolutely riveting and completely involving piece of cinema, just shy of perfect because of that slight drag early on.

'The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant' focuses on a small number of characters, all female, as we see the story of the designer who can't function in her life. Living with Marlene, her co-designer, servant/slave, a shadowy figure who sees all but never speaks, Petra wallows in selfishness and introspection, which all comes to a head when she is introduced to the equally self-centred Karin, a young beauty who is more than a match for her mentor.

Shot in long scenes with close-ups, deep focus, and dominated by a large painting of classical nudes and a selection of mannequins, this film is extremely slow but involving. Petra's life and reactions are highly stylised - her main connection with her emotions through music (three songs by The Platters and The Walker Brothers are used to excellent effect) - and it is difficult to emphasise with someone so shallow.

With an ambiguous ending and characters who are largely unlikeable, this film is problematic - sometimes a bit of a bore, sometimes causing questions to occur which are never answered - but it is worth a look.

We have to view this film without looking at the story. It is a study of a woman who has slipped into a caustic caricature of herself. She bullies and rants. She has no recognition of anyone outside herself. I guess one could call her a sociopath. She has a woman with her who does everything for her. She cooks. She serves her every whim. And she is abused. She is almost mute (though not physically). She hooks up with an equally selfish young woman who seems to have no redeeming qualities and who has had a horrible event in her childhood. Petra falls in love with her, but she is as cold as Petra. There are some amazing scenes. It is voyeur's delight. All we can do is watch the disintegration.

A Golden Bear contender in 1972, this film precisely exemplifies the expedient filmmaking mode of the ever-so-prolific Fassbinder, allegedly its script was written during a trans-Atlantic 12-hour flight, and shot in ten days with an all-female cast from his troupe, six characters altogether, maximally exploits its single location, the bedroom of our protagonist, Petra von Kant (Carstensen), a successful fashion designer in Bremen, to concentrate extremely on a succession of episode mapping out her emotional slough.

To visually offset the movie's inbred austerity, Fassbinder has reproduced the painting of MIDAS AND BACCUS from the leading classic French Baroque painter Nicolas Poussin, to occupy entirely one side of the wall in Petra's bedroom, which also underlines our early pursuit of the destructive conjoined twins: money and pleasure.

Other characters are Marlene (Hermann, performing with heightened and subservient silence), Petra's assistant, whom she treats in a sadistic fashion which will eventually apply itself as a pleasantly unconventional ending; Karin (Schygulla), a young model whom Petra nurtures her love with but eventually deserts her; then in lesser importance, there are her lady friend Sidonie (Schaake), her mother Gabriele (Mattes) and her teenage daughter Valerie (Fackeldey).

Extensively utilising single camera shot and deep focus, constantly alters the compositions to strive for a feeling of fluidity, purposefully lavishing Petra and Karin with kitschy wardrobe and wig selections (Petra is firstly introduced in her makeup-free plainness, and it is the cosmetics- applying process brings about her allure), and timely playing oldies from The Platters and The Walker Brother, an ending piece of UN DÌ, FELICE, ETEREA from Verdi's LA TRAVIATA, Fassbinder is indeed well versed in lubricating the film's rigid structure of a theatrical nature, he wrote it as a play first, and let the vagaries of a woman's sentiments run the show.

In the beginning, Petra has just recovered from a failed marriage, and is spurned by the cheap sympathy from Sidonie's condolence and rebuffs the latter's advice of a more pragmatical view on love and marriage, aka. humility, she touts her implacable resolution that "love must be beautiful", she simply cannot endure lies. But in her tentative move to woo Karin, she gracefully throws concept of humility to impress a lesser sophisticated mind, and when she is hurt by Karin's blunt frankness (a black man with a huge cock), she pleads her to lie to her, a sardonic betrayal of her pride and principles. The subsequent fits of fickleness and servitude barely can erase a feeling of fatigue born out of the treacly theatrics and broad-stroke tediousness, a straightforward nervous breakdown should have arrived sooner than later.

Speaking of performances, Carstersen's soliloquy-prone grandstanding never totally transcend into something ravishing to behold, maybe because Petra is a far cry from a character we can easily project sympathy onto, a deeply-flawed diva's sado-masochistic narcissism is psychologically overbearing for schadenfreude. Schygulla, on the contrary, retains something brutally honest in Karin, cast a distinguished shadow of self-awareness against Petra's maudlin temperament; and Hermann conveys Marlene, a permanent on-looker in the maelstrom of melodrama, with expressionless glare and stare, she robotic-ally types, eavesdrops, serves until dissolves into a subconscious existence simmering with suppressed orgasm, only until Petra finishes with that, Fassbinder's intricately personal and uninhibitedly experimental psycho-drama dares to close its curtain.

This movie is reputedly an autobiographical fictionalization of Fassbinder's own "menage" between himself, his lover, and his secretary. While the homosexuality is retained the gender is transformed to female.

Petra von Kant, is, like Fassbinder a product of upper middle class circumstances. She is artistic and ambitious. She is a rising force in the German Fashion "couture" and the movie opens with a bibulous Petra waking up late, and behaving in a superior and demanding manner towards her submissive and obedient secretary/design assistant/maid, the long suffering Marlene. Petra's selfish and narcissistic character is thus immediately established. The viewer is left in no doubt concerning her sybaritic, pampered demanding nature.

The next scene features a visit from her friend the Baroness Sidonie, whom she hasn't seen in years. The talk is focused on Petra,s failed marriage and Sidonie's curiosity about the underlying reasons for its failure. Petra claims that her husband resented her success and could not chauvinistically come to terms with her financial dominance. At no time does she refer to sexual orientation and gender preference as factors.

Enter the Baroness's young and beautiful friend Karin. Immediately Petra becomes interested and seductively attracted towards her. In classic bourgeois style, she flatters and tempts the impoverished Karin with her wealth and connections {"I'll make you my model"}. Karin, a heterosexual embraces bisexuality and embarks on an affair with Petra.In the background throughout the entire movie Poussin's "Midas and Bacchus" reproduced as a backdrop against an entire wall looms symbolically over the unfolding drama.

We are now moved on in time. Petra is now hopelessly infatuated with Karin, who, although she is affectionate towards Petra, her heterosexuality precludes her reciprocating. What Petra desires is a grand passion, which,like a moth being drawn to a flame is then consumed by it. The requited love that Petra insists upon, remains unsatisfied. The situation comes to a head when Karin's husband returns and Karin walks out of her relationship with Petra and rejoins him.

We now have the core of this tale as Petra fragments in agonistic convulsion. A fantastic sequence of humiliation and degradation, emotionally convincing, is magnificently pulled off by Margarit Carstensen who plays Petra and also by Fassbinder's tight direction. The scene takes place on a shaggy long piled white carpet,{fashionable in the 70's} a bare room and the backdrop painting. An utterly masterful and absorbing display of emotion at the edge. Phew, what an affective scene, leaving the viewer quite exhausted. After the catharsis of all the "descent into hell", Petra recovers, seemingly cured of the "mad love", and supposedly, through the pain and suffering, she now offers her long suffering slave cum assistant, a new relationship - her freedom from servitude, and from now on a partnership of equality. This political resolution was taken by this particular viewer {that is, myself} with a pinch of salt, as I find it highly optimistic on Fassbinder's part, that Petra would so easily embrace a new persona

There is very little action in this movie but the authenticity is riveting. Sure, it's an Art Movie, stagey, with the dialogue telling most of the story, but it's a great movie nevertheless.