Like a Bird on a Wire (1975 TV Movie) User Reviews

weird'n'funny personality show

[Hankoegal · 8/10 · 3 November 2006]

this is a curiosity within the Fassbinder-oeuvre. It is a personality-TV-show for German actress Brigitte Mira - the main actress in ALI - FEAR EATS SOUL. In different TV-studio-settings Brigitte Mira sings some popular songs starting with Leonard Cohens BIRD ON A WIRE in German language WIE EIN VOGEL AUF DEM DRAHT - the title of this show. Others I remember are KINDER HEUT' ABEND, DAS SUCH' ICH MIR WAS AUS, a song originally sung by Marlene Dietrich, as far as I remember from the BLUE ANGEL-period. Then Brigitte Mira sings EGON, known by Evelyn Künneke. During this song she is in her living room, drinking alcohol and getting more and more drunk. Between the songs she tells the story of her life briefly. A small bitch fighting scene is showing her with Evelyn Künneke on a train ride. Next scene she is walking the catwalk during a fashion show. One scene shows here singing to a bunch of leather guys in a gay bar. Fassbinder's scene. Another scene she is a in a gym with lots of muscular men working out in their tight pants - very camp and gay. During the last song a b/w-photography of Fassbinder himself is cut in for some seconds. The whole show is very 70ies, somehow cute and a homage for the great actress. A must-see for Fassbinder-fans.

The Mother of the Nation

[semiotechlab-658-95444 · 10/10 · 26 February 2010]

According to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the mother of the (German) nation was not Inge Meisel, but Brigitte Mira. She was already 64 old and 59 years on stage and in film, when she had her break-trough in Fassbinders "Ali: Fear eats the soul" (1974) for which she got the "Filmband In Gold" in 1974. One year later, she also played the main role in Fassbinder's anti-communist drama "Mother Küsters goes to heaven". Shortly before, in occasion of her 65th birthday, Fassbinder filmed a "show" as it is called, "Like a Bird on a wire", approximately 40 minutes long, and which shows Brigitte Mira telling out of her life, drinking (what she loved), but most of all singing her "couplets", especially in the circle of homosexuals. Amongst the guests we see Kurt Raab who also was responsible for the decoration in this movie.

Brigitte Mira was basically a cabaret singer or "Operet Soubrette", as she called herself, but she appeared through the decades in innumerable short, yet characteristic roles mainly in comedies and Heimatfilms. In the present "show", she likes to present herself as aged "Femme Fatale", coquetting especially with very young men and glamorously stylized like a fairground-lady. F.ex., she asks one man of a homosexual couple about his partner: "Do you still need him?" - Answer: "Yes!!" - Mira: "Ahh, too bad ...!". This may be a side that nobody would have expected from her who had only seen her in the two mentioned major long films under the direction of Fassbinder. In an interview, actually her last one, printed in the year of her death with 95 years in the memorial volume "Das Ganz Normale Chaos/The Quite Normal Chaos" (ed. Juliane Lorenz, Berlin 1995, pp. 324 SS.), she said that Fassbinder was the "perfect charmer", that she had never been treated as courteously as by him and that he was a truly beautiful man.

Tremendous work from Mira and Fassbinder

[Horst_In_Translation · 10/10 · 26 August 2016]

"Wie ein Vogel auf dem Draht" or "Like a Bird on a Wire" is a 43-minute short film from 1975, so this one had its 40th anniversary last year. The director and one of the writers is Rainer Werner Fassbinder and you will find some familiar faces in here, such as Fassbinder's lover El Hedi ben Salem and Kurt Raab on some occasions. But they are really just part of the scenery that elevates Brigitte Mira's lead performance here. She is the heart and soul of this little movie here. I personally may be a bit biased as Fassbinder's work with Mira are among my favorites from the filmmaker in general as I really like the old lady, but also the many songs displayed to us in here were exactly to my liking either because they are just so big classics or because of personal preference (huge Leonard Cohen fan here). I thought this film is exactly what a transition from stage to screen should look like. Mira performs in various locations and here and there in-between we also see her in an interaction with another woman and this one was a fine example of how "friends" interact in the Fassbinder universe. In general, also in terms of the texts and costumes and sets, this movie is easily to identify as a work from Fassbinder. It actually makes me sad that he did not make any musicals in his very short, yet very prolific career. This one here is among his least seen, but I personally consider it one of his very best achievements. Highly recommended.