At the time he shot Querelle<\/em> in March 1982, Fassbinder was coming off two magnum opuses: the BRD Trilogy of The Marriage of Maria Braun<\/em>, Lola<\/em>, and Veronika Voss<\/em>, and the 14-part miniseries Berlin Alexanderplatz<\/em>. The latter was the result of an extended, year-long production and was his most ambitious project since the \u201cfamily series\u201d Eight Hours Don\u2019t Make a Day<\/em>, five movie-length episodes released over six months in 1972\/73. That was followed by the two-part science fiction epic World on a Wire<\/em>, which further demonstrated Fassbinder\u2019s need to stretch himself and push his collaborators (on- and off-screen) to the point of exhaustion and beyond. Some burned out or sought opportunities elsewhere, but Fassbinder was the locomotive. If you wanted to work with him, you had to be prepared to hop aboard and hang on for dear life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of all the behind-the-scenes personnel who toiled on Querelle<\/em>, the one with the longest track record was Peer Raben, who composed the music for nearly all of Fassbinder\u2019s features, starting with his debut, Love Is Colder Than Death<\/em>, in 1969. In addition to Querelle<\/em>\u2019s eclectic score, Raben also wrote the music for the Razzie-nominated songs \u201cEach Man Kills the Thing He Love,\u201d based on a poem by Oscar Wilde and sung by Jeanne Moreau, and \u201cYoung and Joyful Bandit,\u201d which Moreau wrote the lyrics for, but did not sing. That fell to G\u00fcnther Kaufmann, one of Fassbinder\u2019s many former lovers and a fixture of his early features. The two parted ways after the 1971 western Whity<\/em> (in which he also sang the theme song), but Kaufmann returned to the fold for 1978\u2019s In a Year with 13 Moons<\/em> and remained in the fold to the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much of the action takes place in and around the Hotel Feria Bar, a whorehouse owned by Kaufmann\u2019s Nono and his wife Lysiane (Moreau), a cabaret singer whose current lover happens to be Querelle\u2019s estranged brother Robert (Hanno P\u00f6schl). Also in the mix is Querelle\u2019s commanding officer, Lieutenant Seblon (Franco Nero), who is besotted with him and pours his thoughts into a Sony tape recorder since he can\u2019t reveal his desires to their object. The hothouse atmosphere Fassbinder evokes is unlike anything he had put on film before, foregrounding the artificial nature of the studio-bound production. Like William Friedkin\u2019s Cruising<\/em>, which was nominated for three Razzies in its first year (and is also featured<\/a> in Criterion\u2019s series), it\u2019s unafraid to put gay sexuality front and center, even at the expense of alienating potential homophobes in the audience. It\u2019s tempting to think the Razzies chose not to nominate Fassbinder for Worst Director out of respect for the dead, but as respectfulness is not what they\u2019re known for, it\u2019s more likely there was simply too much competition<\/a> that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With its brazenly phallic architecture and well-sculpted young men in Tom of Finland<\/a>-inspired outfits, Querelle<\/em> would go down as the most homoerotic film in history if Genet\u2019s own Un chant\u00a0d’amour<\/em> didn\u2019t exist. Knowing Fassbinder, he may have tried to top it were it not for his fatal drug overdose on June 10, 1982, two months before Querelle<\/em>\u2019s belated debut at the Montreal Film Festival. That was a warm-up for Venice, where it was in competition for the Golden Lion, but lost to Wim Wenders\u2019s The State of Things<\/em>. It was a very different result than the hat trick Fassbinder envisioned when he won Berlin\u2019s Golden Bear in February with Veronika Voss<\/em>. While Querelle<\/em> was still being edited (a process that dragged on much longer than he was accustomed to, thanks to demands for heavy cuts from his American distributor), he expected to the take the Palme d\u2019Or at Cannes with it and shoot his next project in time for it<\/em> to compete and win at Venice. Not the first time Fassbinder\u2019s ambitions got ahead of him, but it turned out to be the last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cQuerelle\u201d can be found straddling the line between art and commerce on the <\/em>Criterion Channel<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>Tubi<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/querelle-1024x576.jpg\")
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In a way, the beginning of the end was Despair<\/em>, which came right before 13 Moons<\/em> and represented Fassbinder\u2019s big swing for mainstream success outside of Germany. Filmed entirely in English \u2013 a first for him \u2013 from a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, Despair<\/em> boasted a major international star in Dirk Bogarde and was his most expensive film to date. When it failed to recoup its costs, he regrouped with Maria Braun <\/em>and worked his way back up to another shot at the brass ring. That was Lili Marleen<\/em>, an even more expensive project (also made in English) he embarked upon right after Berlin Alexanderplatz<\/em>. His third attempt was an adaptation of the Jean Genet novel Querelle de Brest<\/em> starring Brad Davis of Midnight Express<\/em> fame as the title character, an oft-shirtless sailor who turns the heads of everybody he meets and has a lucrative sideline in opium smuggling, along with the occasional murder to cover it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n