A film review: "Tag der Idioten" [1981, West Germany]

Werner Schroeter's films are pretty much like the man himself, less talked about but theatrical and larger than life in person. Among his last films acknowledged as part of the Neuer Deutscher Film canon, "Tag der Idioten" [Eng. Title: Day of the Idiots] is an exploration of people's fear of accepting their own eccentricities, idiosyncrasies and imperfections in a conformist world.











Carole (Carole Bouquet) snaps one day, unsure anymore of everything she had cared about thus far; her boyfriend, job, and standing in society. Frustrated with the real world, she leaves home, and after flushing the contents from her handbag down the toilet, orders three Viennese coffees for herself at a posh cafe, only to smear them all over her face and the table. "I need to breathe...", an angst-ridden Carole mutters.

She gets herself declared clinically insane after accusing a neighbour of being a terrorist and leading police on a wild goose chase. In order to avoid prison, she voluntarily checks into Dr. Laura's (Ingrid Caven) Victorian-era asylum; the doctor is aware that Carole isn't insane in a conventional sense, but nevertheless accepts her as a patient. She'd been experimenting on patients 'healing themselves' through anti-psychiatry and hopes it might help Carole too.

Carole finds the patients in the asylum simultaneously fascinating and repulsive, and notices among them the very woman she'd reported as being a terrorist. She 'escapes' the asylum more than once, but turns herself in each time, for she's no longer sure if the world outside is any more saner than the asylum. Carole isn't happy with either worlds and begins to find the very idea of living meaningless...

The impressionistic melodrama however abandons any attempt at making a point and gets consumed by its own madness, by becoming a voyeur to the excess on screen. The film isn't nearly as depraved as some of the exploitation films of the era, but will regardless shock viewers unaccustomed to seeing scenes of urophilia (golden showers) in mainstream cinema.

The relative obscurity of the film, despite the director's auteur-credentials and featuring a then current 'Bond girl' in a starring role, has prevented one of Carole Bouquet's most memorable performances from being seen by a wider audience. The film also features an ensemble cast that include Schroeter's long term muse and collaborator Magdalena Montezuma, the beautiful Christine Kaufmann, and Ida Di Benedetto. This might not be one of Shcroeter's masterpieces, but his signature style and feminist message is written all over the film, and for that at least, it is Recommended Viewing..!

Amazon.de 2-DVD Link
Willow Springs, Tag der Idioten [PAL]

 

The Nudity: Carole Bouquet, Mostefa Djadjam, Dana Medrická, Magdalena Montezuma, Ida Di Benedetto, and others
The film begins with a long scene of a stunning Carole Bouquet pacing up and down the room completely in the nude as her oblivious boyfriend (Mostefa Djadjam) sleeps. She appears nude in two other scenes later in the film. Czech actress Dana Medrická appears topless on a few occasions as a patient with an urge to flash in front of others. Magdalena Montezuma walks nude into a party, asking to be placed in prison for an imagined crime. Ida Di Benedetto, who plays a deeply religious nurse, is briefly seen topless while punishing herself. There is further nudity in a bathroom scene where for probably the first time in mainstream cinema, an actor is shown actually urinating on another (unlike 'Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom' where everything was simulated). The scene is nonsexual, but the shock value is in the banal manner of its presentation.



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A brief review of Werner Schroeter's "Nuit de chien" [2008 Germany, Portugal, France]

Werner Schroeter was an important director of the Neuer Deutscher Film (New German Cinema). He was also an influence on R W Fassbinder, who considered him an artistic equal. It is easy to see why - they both shared a background in theatre, and created stylised melodramas that consciously took on an operatic tone. More so Schroeter, who could revel in the camp by eschewing realism altogether.

Since I'm still in the process of discovering his early filmography, I'll start with his last film, "Nuit de chien" [Eng. Title: This Night]. I had trouble categorising it in the post because here was a French film, made by a German director, produced in Portugal, and based on a novel by a Latin American (Juan Carlos Onetti - Para esta noche). In any case, from whatever I've seen of Schroeter, this is one of his rare straightforward narrative-driven films, a literary adaptation that even retains Spanish character names and ambient music, and therefore a good place to start in discovering his work.

Ossorio, a surgeon-turned-lieutenant, returns to Santa Maria, hoping of reunite with wife Carla, and together, leave the country. It is being invaded by an enemy and there is a Cholera pandemic, and as if war and pestilence weren't enough, a turf war has broken out between opposing ruling factions in the city - the winners will get to join the government that the invading enemy forms. It is everyone for himself, and old friendships can no longer be trusted. He arrives to find that his wife had vanished only moments earlier - there's a cigarette still alight on the ashtray. Have the secret police taken her? Ossario's search for Carla takes him on a night-time odyssey of the burning city, where people he meet get tortured, killed, or both, by one or the other faction...

The novel is a political allegory written in the 1940's, partly drawn from Greek myths, and Schroeter updates it to more modern times. Since I hadn't read the novel (I'm about to now), I wasn't expecting too much, but was pleasantly surprised to find it so riveting, despite the linguistic and cultural gap between the original source and the German-French reinterpretation.

The tone of the film is set, with a lingering opening shot of Titian's final masterpiece Flaying of Marsyas, and the ambivalent brutality doesn't abate till the end. But far from trivialising violence, Schroeter's film attempts to provoke a human response against the senselessness of it all. However, for reasons unknown, it is not nearly as biting as it would have been from the same director a few years ago. It is still a well-made film, and should help people ease their way into Schroeter's world. Highly Recommended Viewing..!

Amazon.fr DVD Link [PAL]
Amazon Book Link [English]

 

The Nudity: Amira Casar, Elsa Zylberstein, and Pascal Greggory
Amira Casar plays Irène, mistress of the ousted dictator now in hiding. She's rounded up by a rebel commander for brutal interrogation, and is partially nude after what must have been a terrible time with the torturers. There is accidental nudity when Agnès (Pascale Schiller) is roughed up by one of the guards. The intentional nudity takes place during a sex scene, also the lightest moment in an otherwise bleak film, between the protagonist Ossorio (Pascal Greggory) and Maria de Souza, a friend of his wife, played by Elsa Zylberstein. They're interrupted by an indignant young girl - the former dictator's daughter, that Ossorio is supposed to be looking after.



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