The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Original title: Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant
IMDb RATING
7.5/10
11K
YOUR RATING
A troubled fashion designer starts a relationship with a much younger woman.A troubled fashion designer starts a relationship with a much younger woman.A troubled fashion designer starts a relationship with a much younger woman.
- Awards
- 3 wins & 3 nominations
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaRainer Werner Fassbinder wrote the entire screenplay for the film by hand during a single 12-hour flight from Berlin to Los Angeles.
- Quotes
Petra von Kant: I think people need each other, they're made that way. But they haven't learnt how to live together.
- Crazy creditsGewidmet dem, der hier Marlene wurde. (Dedicated to the one who became Marlene here)
- ConnectionsFeatured in Fassbinder in Hollywood (2002)
Featured review
Key Film From The German Master
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.
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.
helpful•557
- shanejamesbordas
- Aug 22, 2006
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Also known as
- Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- DEM 325,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $8,144
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $11,623
- Feb 16, 2003
- Gross worldwide
- $9,978
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Top Gap
By what name was The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) officially released in Canada in French?
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