Edition Filmmuseum 61: Der Bomberpilot / The Bomber Pilot (1970), Neapolitanische Geschichten / The Kingdom of Naples (1978) 2 x DVD9
on September 15th, 2015 at 17:18
Fassbinder famously wrote, in 1979, of his colleague's cinema: "Werner Schroeter will one day have a place in the history of film that I would describe in literature as somewhere between Novalis, Lautremont, and Louis Ferdinanad Celine; he was an 'underground' director for ten years, and they didn't want to let him slip out of that role... His films were given the convenient label of 'underground,' which transforms them in a flash into beautiful but exotic plants that bloomed so unusually and so far away that basically one couldn't be bothered with, and therefore wasn't supposed to bother with them. And that's precisely as wrong as it is stupid. Werner Schroeter's films are not far away; they are beautiful but not exotic. On the contrary." Schroeter's cinema is a studied melange, fusing the seemingly associative nature of avant-garde film production with the exquisite, aesthetic rigor of German theatre or opera forms. His cinema speaks through its often breathtaking images. Schroeter was a timeless aesthete with the ability to traverse a full range of extravagant epochs in a singular frame, while remaining defiantly trained on the contemporary. His panache for the excessive and the hysterical nature he commanded of his performers gave way to a new brand of melodrama and an unprecedented potential for allegory in the cinema.
The 2-disc DVD set presents new restored versions of two rare classics by Werner Schroeter connecting private stories with history: Der Bomberpilot tells the story of three eccentric women in Germany during the Nazi period who try to become show stars in America after the war. Nel Regno di Napoli is a chronicle of post-war Italy told from the perspective of a Neapolitan family. Additional features are an interview with Werner Schroeter by Gerard Courant, a video showing Werner Schroeter in a talk with the audience at the Austrian Filmmuseum, and stills from the shooting of Nel Regno di Napoli by Digne M. Markovicz.
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