Veronika Voss

Winner of the Golden Bear for best film at Berlin in 1982, Fassbinder's penultimate film is a flamboyant tribute to Germany’s giant UFA studios and to Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, and completes the corrosive trilogy on West Germany's postwar “Economic Miracle” begun with The Marriage of Maria Braun and Lola. Marlene Dietrich-look-alike Rosel Zech stars as the eponymous heroine, a washed-up former screen idol now being exploited by an unscrupulous doctor who has her addicted to morphine. Hilmar Thate plays Robert, the young sportswriter who tries to save her. Veronika Voss is loosely based on the life of Sybille Schmitz, a prominent German actress who committed suicide after the war. Shot in glorious black-and-white, it is one of Fassbinder's most visually dazzling works. "A chilly, tough, wicked satire disguised as the sort of schmaltzy, black-and-white 1950s melodrama that its characters, with one exception, would never bother to see" (Vincent Canby, New York Times). B&W, 35mm, in German with English subtitles. 105 mins.