One More Thought On Petra, For Now

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I think it was only my third time watching Rainer Werner's Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant last night, but it was my first time seeing it on a big screen with a large audience and that stirred something unexpected in me. Namely, jealousy. It was the right audience for the film, it being part of the Queer/Art/Film series, they seemed to know what they were in for, so everybody was totally into it. Which should be great! They got the humor, which is so terrifically bizarre and specific and arch - the sight of Petra shuffling in her frilly bondage-dress was a riot; indeed on a big screen you notice the languid ballet of the movement even more. The way characters slide and shuffle around each other pointlessly; the way Petra becomes more and more unable to lift herself off the floor as weariness takes her over. It's hysterical! But it's also sad, horribly horribly sad, and the audience got that too.
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But watching Fassbinder's been such a solitary experience in my life - other than my boyfriend being there sometimes I've watched 98% of these movies exclusively at home cooped up alone - and I didn't quite realize I'd built up such a possessiveness towards Margit Carstensen specifically as struck me last night. She's mine! And here was this audience of people adoring her. Of course she's worthy of adoration - her performance in this film, not to mention several other Fassbinders that I've seen, is magnificent. Even though it's Hanna Schygulla that's usually thought of as the preeminent Fassbinder actress I don't think any of the actresses he worked with got his style and embodied it so relentlessly as Margit did. I'm not knocking Schygulla, she's a wonder, but a smidge too soft, a smidge too lovely, to represent for me all of what Fassbinder was about. Give me sharp-boned cruel-eyed Margit any day. One second she's casting a withering glare, the next second she's falling apart, and all of it with that precise icy Fassbinderian remove that comments upon itself like hall of mirrors.