Page 114 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 114
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
which favours Orson Welles’ deep focus and depth of visual field to Ei-
senstein’s montage of attractions. Indeed, his montage works through the
motifs of the novel as de-montage combining other means of cinematic
narration such as usage of darkness and light, compositions of particular
pictures in continuity and discontinuity and – perhaps in this Fassbind-
er work more than in his other films – handling of sound. Thus Fassbind-
er’s masterful TV series transforms Döblin’s very particular narrative into
a movement that joins spaces and times, language and society, and subjec-
tivity and its negative reflection as a part of the “metaphysics of social cir-
cumstances”, to use Elsaesser‘s expression. Thenceforth, understanding be-
comes a politics of images and, consequently, a placement of the imaginary
into the core of reality. In view of my quest, the most important aspect con-
cerns the drama of a shattered selfhood. Fassbinder’s film therefore forms
the character as a never-accomplished person; moreover, “/. . ./ his iden-
tity is put to the test not according to the narrative transformations that
confirm the hero in his full self-possession. Instead, the narrative ‘emp-
ties’ him, readies him for his complete merger with the social body” (El-
saesser, 1996: p. 220). Here, de-montage is at work: it is moving Biberkopf’s
personality. Therefore, Fassbinder’s reading of the novel is far from a pas-
sive grasping of the content; it is a kind of re-reading, which opens the nov-
el to a new understanding; it makes the dimension of de-montage visible
by taking a clear view on the impacts of capitalism within the protagonist’s
subjectivity. A psychoanalytical viewpoint, especially linked to women and
gender studies, is somehow presupposed and probably consciously com-
municated by the film. The entire gallery of ruined personalities from the
margins of society (thieves, pimps, prostitutes, etc.), with the central char-
acter of Franz Biberkopf, makes possible an abundant deciphering of the
novel in psychoanalytical terms.
Construction of sexual identities in the novel clearly exposes a con-
nectedness between individual relationships and social repressions, oth-
erwise visible in many of Fassbinder‘s films. What brings the novel – as
well as Fassbinder’s TV series – closer to a Lacanian articulation of psy-
choanalysis than to its Freudian source, is especially Döblin‘s presenta-
tion of the main character. Very interesting points in the narrative line are
many Biberkopf’s encounters with political agents of the Weimar Germa-
ny, like Nazis and communists, but these encounters do not result in the
main character’s adding any political attribute to his identity. One can say
that the character of Biberkopf is constructed as a negative reflection of so-
112
which favours Orson Welles’ deep focus and depth of visual field to Ei-
senstein’s montage of attractions. Indeed, his montage works through the
motifs of the novel as de-montage combining other means of cinematic
narration such as usage of darkness and light, compositions of particular
pictures in continuity and discontinuity and – perhaps in this Fassbind-
er work more than in his other films – handling of sound. Thus Fassbind-
er’s masterful TV series transforms Döblin’s very particular narrative into
a movement that joins spaces and times, language and society, and subjec-
tivity and its negative reflection as a part of the “metaphysics of social cir-
cumstances”, to use Elsaesser‘s expression. Thenceforth, understanding be-
comes a politics of images and, consequently, a placement of the imaginary
into the core of reality. In view of my quest, the most important aspect con-
cerns the drama of a shattered selfhood. Fassbinder’s film therefore forms
the character as a never-accomplished person; moreover, “/. . ./ his iden-
tity is put to the test not according to the narrative transformations that
confirm the hero in his full self-possession. Instead, the narrative ‘emp-
ties’ him, readies him for his complete merger with the social body” (El-
saesser, 1996: p. 220). Here, de-montage is at work: it is moving Biberkopf’s
personality. Therefore, Fassbinder’s reading of the novel is far from a pas-
sive grasping of the content; it is a kind of re-reading, which opens the nov-
el to a new understanding; it makes the dimension of de-montage visible
by taking a clear view on the impacts of capitalism within the protagonist’s
subjectivity. A psychoanalytical viewpoint, especially linked to women and
gender studies, is somehow presupposed and probably consciously com-
municated by the film. The entire gallery of ruined personalities from the
margins of society (thieves, pimps, prostitutes, etc.), with the central char-
acter of Franz Biberkopf, makes possible an abundant deciphering of the
novel in psychoanalytical terms.
Construction of sexual identities in the novel clearly exposes a con-
nectedness between individual relationships and social repressions, oth-
erwise visible in many of Fassbinder‘s films. What brings the novel – as
well as Fassbinder’s TV series – closer to a Lacanian articulation of psy-
choanalysis than to its Freudian source, is especially Döblin‘s presenta-
tion of the main character. Very interesting points in the narrative line are
many Biberkopf’s encounters with political agents of the Weimar Germa-
ny, like Nazis and communists, but these encounters do not result in the
main character’s adding any political attribute to his identity. One can say
that the character of Biberkopf is constructed as a negative reflection of so-
112
