Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) User Reviews (14)

An Interesting If Obscure Film About Fassbinder and His Friends

[jsmog · 8/10 · 24 December 2007]

The disparity in the comments for this film really speaks to how much Fassbinder is a matter of taste, although a lot of the complaints might be due to all the references within the film to other films and to Fassbinder's own life. I'll just add that I loved this film, but I enjoy all of Fassbinder's work, even to the point where they make you dizzy or despise the man and all he wants to say. He is definitely NOT for most people...especially those who don't appreciate dry German humor. I was laughing through this whole thing...especially the way he mocks the way the traveling film company treats the local Italians (the film was set in Spain, but I believe it was actually shot in Ischia.)

You might enjoy it more if you understand a few things I noticed about it: 1) No one really pointed out how autobiographical it is...to an extreme. Since Fassbinder is using many of the friends he worked with in experimental theatre, they are essentially all playing each other, and obviously enjoying it. This makes the movie essential for Fassbinder fans. 2) There's Eddie Constantine, so this, technically, is Fassbinder's contribution to the Lemmy Caution series, much as Godard did with "Alphaville". 3) Another cinephile noted the reference to "Last Year at Marienbad"; the entire broken style of the end of the film seems to me a gentle mocking of all the Nouvelle Roman and experimental film coming out of Europe at the end of the 1960s. 4) This makes an interesting comparison not just with "Day for Night", but also "The State of Things", Wim Wenders film-within-a-film. I've also seen this film called boring, and it certainly could be seen as such; making movies IS boring. Fassbinder's interpretation is actually racing along compared to Wenders', but Wenders always has his exquisite cinematography to fall back upon. If you call it "boring", it is only because you've failed to accommodate the intent of the film. If it was trying to tell an exciting story, yeah, you would see it as a failure. But as a character study of a film company on location (I believe they were actually filming "Whity" at the same time in Ischia), this is relatively quick, to the point (less!) and a great opportunity to see how the earliest Fassbinder envisioned his own early success.

The insanity of filmmaking

[meathookcinema · 8/10 · 19 November 2020]

Fassbinder's 1971 film about a German film crew waiting for a production to start whilst on set in a Spanish hotel lobby.

The film starts with the verbal recanting of a Goofy cartoon. This is possibly the most linear part of the entire film's narrative but that's not an insult. The rest of the film shows fragments of how the characters interact on many different levels. The movie also shows the power relations and how these shift throughout the film's duration.

The film crew resemble a Germanic version of the trope of superstars Warhol used to use. With waiting comes emotions ranging from an utter lack of enthusiasm through to explosive rage about proceedings not starting when they should or crew members not doing what they should when filming does actually begin.

This film was based on Fassbinder's experiences of making the film Whity. It must have been hell for him judging by the events depicted here.

If you're looking for a film with a linear narrative, a 'start, middle and end', if you will, this isn't for you. But if you're looking to be swept away by Fassbinder into a film that is more of an experience, then you'll love this.

an unusual and perverse fascination abounds in this episodic 'making-but-not-making-of' movie

[Quinoa1984 · 7/10 · 11 October 2008]

It's amazing to see that Rainer Werner Fassbinder made this picture when he was just 26 (and, perhaps not too oddly enough due to his reputation, looks all of 41 as the producer Sascha) and it has the kind of sad insight that an older, more experienced director would have. But from everything I've read, he was already this experienced, for better or worse, as the director depicted in the film, Jeff (Lou Castel). Jeff is hot or cold, sometimes both, and can either be sullen or deep in thought or just going completely off on someone and throwing them off the set. In Beyond a Holy Whore he's shooting- or trying or not trying to shoot- some movie starring Eddie Constantine in a role that sickens the veteran French star, and most of the crew and women around him languish in a sea of distilled despair: will the movie actually get finished? Where's the money? Who's sleeping with who? What will be the consequences of this or that?

In terms of the storytelling, I was thrown off at first by Beyond a Holy Whore. It's not really very uniformly put together, and makes 8 1/2 look about as lucid as a Hollywood Golden Age picture by comparison. It's not really dreamlike, but it's got a sad, perverse streak of rotten existentialism going on (or maybe what Fassbinder thinks it is). So, from time to time, it is a little choppy, as one scene goes into the next without much of a sense of where the story is. But after a while I got into the modus operandi; this is by design a story of this man, Jeff, and his producer, Sascha, along with various groupies, gay folk, disgruntled actors, going along with a flow that never seems to be taking any charge. What becomes clear, in segments that occasionally have comedy to them (I just started laughing at one bit where Jeff was losing it and crying hysterically while directing a scene) and sometimes have a lonesomeness as via the characters, is that film-making can be a rotten enterprise when the creative well runs dry.

But it's not just about creativity or lack of inspiration for Fassbinder; it's also a kind of mood that he sets which is important, of going through a similar self-imposed brutality that the director wants depicted in the film within the film. As far as "director self-commentary" pictures go, it's not one of the best ever made. But it is an interesting picture all the same, one that grows on the viewer accepting of its loose form and sad notes - not to mention fine points of irony like the sweet Leonard Cohen songs playing over the decay at the bar.

Christ.

[FilmBoy999 · 19 February 2003]

I saw the restored print today at the film forum it was stunning and lush and beautifully photographed. If you can't understand that Fassbinder's early films came out of his experiences in the theater in Germany, and the plays he wrote very often featured a group of people standing around talking, then you'll never understand this film or Fassbinder. This film is about Fassbinder, and like all his films it crosses genres widely mixing the obvious Warhol influence with films about films like Contempt, Day For Night, 81/2. It does feature a large cast of people and like the Chelsea Girls sitting around talking about nothing for four hours, Beware Of a Holy Whore features a large group of people doing whatever they want and catches them in various states of anger, sadness, drunkenness, etc. The dialogue is often amusing, but the monotony of the experience is what's important - again the link to Warhol. Moreover the director character in the film seems to me to be exactly a representation of Fassbinder and by the final half hour you really come to feel his frustration at everyone and life itself. This was Fassbinder when he directed, screaming , shouting at everyone. His reputation was widespread. In this film Fassbinder realizes his ridiculousness and decides to do it up - and that's where the self-parody comes in. If you want to see this movie for a comedy experience, next. The film is impressive, interesting, beautifully shot - one exceptional moment was the sunset shot where Jeff gets punched in the stomach. And the editing of the film half really worked well, cutting between scenes the way they did. Quite Effective. Really.

Not My Favorite

[gavin6942 · 6/10 · 1 August 2016]

On a film set there are two things missing, the film material and the director. So the actors and actresses as well as the crew try to make the best out of the situation. When the director arrives the material is still missing and so they still wait and try to make the best out of the situation. When the material finally arrives all folks involved into the film find themselves in a weird situation.

I love that Ulli Lommel appears as Korbinian, the manager. At this point, Lommel might have been a respected actor, but now (2016) he is better known for directing pure rubbish. He clearly did not pick up skills from Fassbinder.

The idea of the "meta" film is always fun, and I like the idea that the film is or isn't working because of shortcomings. But this really isn't my favorite Fassbinder. I like when he goes for that "Sirk touch", and that is noticeably absent here.

Watch for the jokes on Last Year at Marienbad

[zetes · 7/10 · 10 September 2003]

Fassbinder's wry comedy about the trials and tribulations of filmmaking. It's gorgeously shot and very well acted (especially by Fassbinder himself and Lou Castel, who plays the director), but, truth be told, a bit on the dull side. I guess most of Fassbinder's early films are a little dull. Only fans will want to pursue them. There is plenty to like, though. The best element of the film seems to be lost on all those whose reviews I've read. The film is set mostly in an opulent Spanish hotel, and, at least for one sequence, it lapses into a deft parody of Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad. I think that, if I tried to describe it, my explanation would be too wordy and would not convey it well enough. So, if you ever do happen to watch the film, make sure to keep an eye out for that joke. 7/10.

Auto-Psychogram of the Fassbinder family

[semiotechlab-658-95444 · 10/10 · 24 March 2010]

"Warnung Vor Einer Heiligen Nutte" (1971) is everything else than an obscure, hermetic and highly stylized movie. Before you watch this masterpiece of the middler Fassbinder, you should read the biography by Peter Berling, "Die 13 Jahres Des Rainer Werner Fassbinder" (1992). Peter Berling was also the producer of the "Holy Whore" and acted a part in it. It is a very precise description of practically all members of Fassbinder's troop since the time of the "antiteater". However, the persons have been exchanged. So, f.ex. Magdalena Montezuma plays "Irm", i.e. Irm Hermann, who also is the dubbing voice of Montezuma. She accuses "Jeff Kocsinsky", the director of the picture "Morte o Patria", of having stolen her years, promised to marry her and have children with her. Jeff is of course Fassbinder, while Fassbinder himself plays the role of "Sasha", probably an invented role. However, it is astonishing that Fassbinder's family agreed to unwrap their own and not only personal but highly private problems in front of the public. A highlight in this respect is "Fred" alias Kurt Raab. He is the artistic director of the movie - as he was in his real life, a weak and subordinate creature depending on love or hatred of his always changing lovers. It shows anew what a magnificent actor Raab was. Lou Castel as Fassbinder alias "Jeff" does a very great job. The same man who is determined to make a movie against brutal state force is using on the set all imaginable means of force up to terror against his actors and staff. Concluding, I would even say that "The Holy Whore" is a example of bravura of how one can make a movie with basically nothing, if there is a group who is determined to create something together.

Una Cuba Libre Por Favor

[ricardojorgeramalho · 7/10 · 13 February 2024]

Fassbinder ends this film with a quote from Thomas Mann that expresses his tiredness in representing the human species, without being part of it. This could well be the key to interpreting not only this film, but almost all of Fassbinder's work.

In a world divided between capitalist tyranny and socialist hypocrisy, there is no real place for Fassbinder and his troupe, representative of a generation that wants to be above bourgeois values, but finds no alternatives, falling into nihilism and depression.

In retrospect, we can believe that Fassbinder's discomfort stemmed, in large part, from the rejection of homosexuality, whether by fascist moralism or socialist progressivism. The sexual freedom of the sixties did not yet include homosexuality, and Fassbinder, using shock therapy in his films, was one of the staunchest critics of this hypocritical sexual revolution.

The film tells the story of a film production, which takes place in a haphazard manner, in a Sorrento painted in Francoist Spain, as a metaphor for a society and a revolution of mentalities, which is also slow to happen.

Meanwhile, Cuba Libres are drunk, in honor of the revolution.

Living in Oblivion for eggheads

[matt-201 · 10/10 · 5 May 1999]

Fassbinder wasn't known for comic hijinx (if you've sat through SATAN'S BREW, you'd remember it), but probably the most sheerly pleasurable of all his movies is this rather premature but quite welcome self-parody.

The maestro's Bavarian-slob ripoff of Warhol's Factory is keenly lampooned in this oh-so-languid art-movie take on TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN. Fassbinder plays a grubby and wildly sadistic producer holed up in a half-swanky, half-tatty seaside hotel with half a movie in the can and no finishing funds. That's the Beckettian setup for a lobby full of achingly sexy and heroin-esque Fassbinder heroines, pretty boys getting their feelings hurt, drinks swallowed and thrown, and a lot of people getting yelled at in public. If that sounds like par for a familiar course, the difference is that here it's all played for yuks--but with such an exquisite deadpan you can practically hear R.W.F. smothering his guffaws behind the camera.

Fassbinder missed it on this one.

[ocaastro · 3/10 · 10 June 2005]

This film is supposed to be about the frustrations of film making. It certainly frustrated me with its endless boredom. The setting is an attractive Spanish seacoast resort with his usual large cast. The script is very poorly written or maybe there was no script. Just all ad-lib.

A far superior film about the frustrations of film making is Francois Truffaut's "Day For Night" made in 1973. It shows all the delays and how the cast can misbehave in an intriguing manner. It doesn't bore the viewer and you gain sympathy for the director who somehow must complete the film.

One will love or loathe-I love

[Ore-Sama · 8/10 · 23 July 2016]

The film's story can be summed up as a cast and crew being stuck making a film that seems like it will never get off the ground: whether it's getting the film stock they need or getting the director to do his job instead of finding some other reason he can't shoot right then. During that time, the crew find ways to amuse and busy themselves.

This was a transitional period for Fassbinder: he was moving away from the abstract, visually interesting but ultimately empty Godard inspired works like "Love is Colder than Death" and "The American Soldier" and just starting to phase over to melodrama, where his great works reside. Thus this film falls somewhere between the two styles.

With the exception of a couple of scenes, there is no music. The performances, for the most part, are very low key. Only Sacha, the producer, and the director express any flare. This in of itself can be alienating, especially for those accustomed to more mainstream comedies, but there's also the looseness of the writing. There's no real arc or build up to anything. Scenes simply happen. Characters A and B might be having a fling in one scene, but two scenes later it's A and C, and it's as if A and B were never together. We'll have a scene of the director stating definitively he can't finish the film, but goes on making the movie with no obvious explanation. Yet there will be other moments that ARE followed up on later in the movie, even if only for a scene. Scene order is some times completely random. One scene of the director screaming at his crew he doesn't want to be near them could've been placed anywhere in the movie.

All of this together and it becomes easy to see why the movie is so polarizing: it is often emotionally flat, has a very slow pace(which is the opposite of what one expects from a comedy) and barely has a narrative. This is why you see reviews saying nothing happens, saying it's a waste of time or that it feels like improve.

So then why is it loved by others? Speaking as someone who loves the movie, I can answer.

First, the characters themselves. The director and producer are the highlights, but there's a wide cast of personalities and whether the film is going anywhere or not, it's a joy just to see all the various interactions between them. If you're willing to follow along and show patience for what's occurring, you'll grow to love watching these people, kind of like a family you wouldn't want to live in but watch from a distance. The unappreciated unit manager, the poor, abused translator, the often perplexed Eddie Constantine, they all bring something to the film and since there's such an abundance of them, none of them wear out their welcome.

Secondly, the movie is funny. It's sense of humor is somewhat dry, partially thanks to the mostly flat delivery, but it's there. The highlights of course being the director himself, whether flaunting his pretentiousness or screaming at the screw for often inane and petty reasons, the movie's laughs are earned. The randomness of the scene order also plays a part of this. The topic of the scene can be humorous or heavy, but it's all played out in the same way.

But above all else, even when it isn't funny, it's interesting. Whether just seeing what they'll do next or the ambient atmosphere, I never found myself bored with this movie. If you can get accustomed to it's style, it's a fascinating sit through.

This is certainly a film that requires a bit of work on the viewer's part, but I think it is well worth it.

Film on film, sadly forgettable for the most part

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 6 July 2016]

"Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte" is a West German German-language film from 1971. Director and writer is Rainer Werner Fassbinder and he was still in his mid-20s when he shot this movie. For this age, it is a decent achievement, but it's really difficult to appreciate this film otherwise. Basically, the entire film we watch the cast and crew of a movie and how they spend their time while somehow (not) trying to move forward with their common project. It is a mix of drama and comedy as it is often the case with Fassbinder's films. And once again, he also appears himself in here. Other than him, the cast includes Lou Castel, Eddie Constantine playing himself and also a handful of actors who regularly appear in Fassbinder films, such as Margarethe von Trotta before she focused on directing, Hanna Schygulla, Ulli Lommel and Kurt Raab. I am quite a fan of the latter and there is no denying he was a scene-stealer in here once again as he usually is. His haircut and the once again entertainingly over-the-top approach he gave his character easily made him one of the positive aspects. Funnily enough, the job his character has here is something that he also frequently did in films, also many times for Fassbinder. Raab was much more than an actor. Unfortunately, his portrayal is one of not too many highlight in this film. The first 15 minutes were extremely entertaining, but then it goes south fairly quickly and that's where it stays for the most part. Yes here and there, there are still some entertaining scenes and moments, but for a 100-minute film, it just wasn't enough overall. "Beware of a Holy Whore" is nowhere near my favorite (or least favorite) Fassbinder works and the reason is maybe also that there were just too many characters in it and it becomes confusing if you don't know the actors. I must say I cared very little about their relationships and interactions with each other. Thumbs down, not recommended.

Fassbinder and Truffaut

[spazyouth · 5 March 2006]

Nearly all of the reviews I have read about this film mention its "dullness" or "boredom". Someone compared him with Truffaut earlier, I think it is important to remember that although Fassbinder was certainly influenced by French New Wave, he was essentially a German film-maker with a completely unique approach to his work. So, if u find his films boring because you are expecting to watch another Jules et Jim, then I think u set yourself up for disappointment. I think the slow pace of the film re-creates an environment (namely the filming of the previous Fassbinder film, whitey) and achieves its purpose masterfully, combining all the sexual, emotional,and mental frustration of making a film.

Fassbinder tries for 8 1/2, make it to 1 (maybe)

[m_a_singer · 11 August 2002]

I'll accept the previous reviewer's comments that this was supposed to be a self- parody. If so, then this shows why one of the shortest books in the library is "500 Years of German Humor."

I've loved most of Fassbinder's films, but this pretentious attrocity is an absolute void. Nothing happens, though some of the actors look like they think they should *think* that something is happening. Some have the grace to look embarrassed, but they may just have been stoned. Worse, it looks cheap - the framing is off on most of the shots (no, it's not an alienation effect - it's just sloppiness), and the print currently on video is terrible, though I doubt it looked much better in '71. Probably more was spent on glassware for the bar and cigarettes than on anything else.

The only positive things I can say are that the opening credits are nice, and that if you need a reminder of how awful early 70s clothes were, this is it.

You can have more fun digging wax out of your ears than you can watching this movie.