Veronika Voss (Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss). 1982. West Germany. Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With Rosel Zech, Hilmar Thate, Cornelia Froboess. In German; English subtitles. 35mm. 104 min.
Equally inspired by Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. and the death of real-life actress Sybille Schmitz, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss is a scabrous indictment of his homeland in the long shadow of World War II. Set in Munich in 1955, the story follows the eponymous Voss (Rosel Zech), once a nationally recognized star of Nazi propaganda, now a struggling has-been embarking on an ill-advised romance with a dodgy journalist named Robert (Hilmar Thate) while held captive via morphine addiction by her vampiric doctor (Annemarie Düringer). Veronika Voss is not unique among Fassbinder’s films for evoking the look and feel of classic cinema; Xaver Schwarzenberger’s high-contrast black-and-white cinematography conspicuously references the golden era of UFA and film noir. Released mere weeks before Fassbinder’s untimely death at the age of 37, Veronika Voss clarifies the difference between the nostalgic and the elegiac; moving through the city like a phantom, Veronika is a walking testament to Germany’s failure to exorcise its Nazi demons.