Lola (1981) User Reviews (25)

Unconventional, creative and fascinating.

[sunheadbowed · 7/10 · 12 May 2017]

A common and probably unfair criticism of Fassbinder is that his film-making displayed a darkly misogynistic streak. Truthfully, rather than a misogynist, Fassbinder believed that both sexes were worthy of a good kicking -- he had no political reservations preventing him from showing women at their ugliest and most manipulative. Fassbinder, a man who had sex with both men and women and had complicated and unconventional relationships with members of both sexes, most likely viewed the distinction between men and women as a thin and hazy line; he based 'The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant', a lesbian melodrama with absolutely no male actors in the entire film, on his own experiences with men, after all.

Fassbinder wanted to expose the ugly truth wherever it may lie: in response to a question he was once asked by Karlheinz Böhm as to where his political allegiance lay, he stated, 'No matter if it's on the right, left, top or bottom, I shoot in every direction.' Furthermore, some of Fassbinder's films display men at their ugliest and women at their most sympathetic, such as 'Martha', which features Margit Carstensen's character psychologically and emotionally tortured and gaslighted by her monster of a husband (the aforementioned Böhm) to such a degree that she ends the film both emotionally and literally crippled.

'Lola', however, is almost certainly one of the films that will attract the 'misogyny' label from many. The film's protagonist is, simply, a whore. She is unsympathetic, vain and manipulative. Everyone in the film knows that she is a whore (even her own embarrassed mother), with the sole exception of Armin Mueller-Stahl's character, a naive and ageing 'moralist', who falls in love with a mirage, a contrived, fictional version of her.

When Lola finally realises that the wealthy and respectable Von Bohm has fallen in love with her, her reaction is not one of joy or relief, or one of belief that she could potentially escape the ugly world she is trapped in -- instead she coldly realises she has another man with capital to exploit to the emotional bitter end, except this one comes with a ring.

'Do you want to live in a world without morality? A world that's only bad and rotten and corrupt?' Lola is asked. 'I would love to. My only problem is that they do not allow me to take part' is her darkly serious reply. You get the feeling that Lola chose the gutter, that the gutter didn't necessarily choose her; this is in contrast to many films about the 'liberation' of prostitutes.

The film is set in the strange era of immediate post-war Germany, a period in which an entire country awoke from mass hypnosis, literally bombed back into reality; a nation that had to rebuild itself, rediscover its dignity and learn to come to terms with its morass of guilt.

The use of colour filters in Fassbinder's late films is distinctive and powerful, creating a queasy and sleazy mood of the garish underworld; along with 'Querelle', 'Lola' is a great example of this. It's as if Fassbinder took the melodrama of his beloved Douglas Sirk and placed it right in the hungry stomach of Hell.

'Lola' is a strong film: unconventional, creative and fascinating, but it doesn't quite reach the level of brilliance of the other two entries in his 'BRD Trilogy' -- the outstanding 'The Marriage of Maria Braun' from 1979, and the tragic and near-perfect 'Veronika Voss' from the year of his death, 1982.

Lola

[random_avenger · 8/10 · 14 August 2010]

West Germany, late 1950s: Lola (Barbara Sukowa) is a singing prostitute working in a brothel that the town's bigwigs, even the mayor, like to frequent. To the annoyance of the corrupt construction entrepreneurs, especially a crass man named Schukert (Mario Adorf), the town's new building commissioner von Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is an honest and idealistic man who tries to clean up the building license politics from bribery and cheating. One day Lola approaches von Bohm, piques his interest and eventually leads him to dream of marriage with her – but how will he react when Lola's true profession is eventually revealed?

Lola was my first Fassbinder film, so I don't know how it compares to his other works or the other two films in the BRD trilogy, but I can say that I was impressed by the unique style. Almost all of the scenes are lit with very bright and coloured lights, frequently painting the characters in different colours even when in the same frame. The music is also light in tone, often highly comedic, making the serious-sounding tale of corruption appear as silly and petty games of fooling each other. Various characters also provide plenty of over-the-top comedy; particularly Schukert whose dancing in the brothel with the singing Lola on his shoulders provides perhaps the most outrageous scene in the whole film. Nevertheless, it's not all comedy, as the characters' serious emotional development is also examined. Besides von Bohm's realization of the true nature of things, Lola's confusion about what to do with the men surrounding her is also absorbing to see.

All in all, Fassbinder's exaggerated and satirical approach to Germany's era of post-war rebuilding is thoroughly entertaining thanks to the visual style and the lovely music. The actors, from the obnoxious Mario Adorf to the enigmatic Barbara Sukowa, do a good job too, and I consider the film a both delightful and thought-provoking piece of cinema that has definitely got me interested in seeing more of the director's work.

Fast, funny, flippant, furious, fabulous Fassbinder. (possible spoilers)

[the red duchess · 8/10 · 11 August 2000]

Fassbinder's glorious penultimate film is a giddy fusion of all his influences: Jean Genet and Jean-Luc Godard (the use of a brothel as a metaphor for capitalist society, exchange and demand; role-play); Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (the very 1920s political analysis; the sardonic comedy, where all ends happily for the characters, dismally for humanity and society; the horrified, bitter humour; the charismatic villains and compromised 'heroes' (Von Bohm's, and Germany's, residual Nazism is very telling)); Josef Von Sternberg ('Lola' is an update of 'The Blue Angel', another story about a Lola degrading a respectable citizen - here we cut off at the marriage; there is no need for public humiliation in an amoral society); Douglas Sirk (the use of the reviled form, melodrama, packing it with meaningful compositions, febrile camerawork, and dazzling, yummy colour - all with the intent of mocking the film's (and society's) 'reality', showing how it is constructed.

This is a wonderfully entertaining, accessible, funny film, and if Lola sometimes gets lost in the rather misogynistic mix, than such is the nature of boygenius.

The memory of love

[hasosch · 10/10 · 3 January 2010]

Von Bohm is from East-Prussia, his two "weaknesses" are "East-Prussian human beings and West-Frisian tea", he tells to Lola's mother who works as his house-keeper after he has been elected as the new head of the construction department by the city of Coburg. Coburg - as any German city in the time of the "Wirtschaftswunder" - is a place "where people have an outer and an inner life, and both have nothing to do with one another". Although Von Bohm agrees, he has not a ghost of an idea that the elegant and beautiful young lady who gets his hand-kiss is in her "inner" life the attraction of the local bordello where the "crows" (major, police president, politicians, heads of the governmental departments) and the "vulture" (Schuckert) reunite every evening while their wives are knitting at home or are already asleep.

It is amazing what Fassbinder made out of the Heinrich Mann-Von Sternberg drama "Professor Unrat" or "The Blue Angel", respectively. Fassbinder's Lola is not a man-murdering and at last unreachable "beauty" like the (not so beautiful) Marlene Dietrich, but a girl who has to nourish her little daughter and still has the hope for a better live. She is "open" for everybody and does not flirt with the distance. In the opposite: On the stage she goes from hand to hand and is something like a collective propriety of the "Creme De La Creme" of the little city. (The figure of Esslin - whose name is close to Enslin -, who quotes Bakunin in Lola's Boudoir, is probably the rest that remained from the original protagonist character of Professor Unrat.) Therefore, Fassbinder's Lola is not about the decrease of a society member by entering the "wrong" society, but about her way to become a part of her society and Von Bohm's desire to possess his beloved "object". This is managed in an almost fairy-tale-like style, typically (and ironically) for the Germany of the Adenauer-era, so that in the end everybody looks happy, since everybody got what he wanted: Lola says to Mrs. Schuckert: "Now I belong to you". Schuckert earns his 3 millions of D-Marks from the "Lindenhof", the Mayor will be reelected, and Von Bohm gets Lola. Then, Lola's little daughter asks him: "Are you happy now?". Von Bohm answers a bit hesitatingly by "Yes". Unlike Professor Unrat, he does not pay with his life for his love, but probably with his soul.

Lola gets her man {Rainer Werner Fassbinder}

[Stanley-Becker · 21 July 2011]

Satirical to the core, this movie is interesting in its realistic illustration of post-war small time corruption. Fassbinder has an extraordinary light touch, and it is a fascinating ride through the endemic connivance's of the petit-bourgeois wheeler-dealers of a small German city. One can actually hear Fassbinder giggling in the background as he brings the universal character of the average conformist-hustler to the screen.

Barbara Sukowa as Lola, is a magnificent actress, especially where she accepts the humiliations of her life, but will not allow them to transform her into the brutalized animal level of behavior, that she observes all around her. Always optimistic, she pursues her goal {to escape from the prison of degradation, she is in}. We, {the viewers}, follow her journey, as she overcomes obstacle after obstacle, to eventually triumph, and take her place as a citizen of her particular Peyton Place.

How she does it is colorful and informative. Fassbinder gives you all the different strata of class prejudice, as the money men are in cahoots with the bureaucrats, who are all, in turn, driven by libidinal desires. Mixing up cabaret elements, together with the controlling power of money, blended in with, the huge heart of those that earn their crust as sex workers {this, is so obviously where Fassbinder's sympathies lie}. Fassbinder has used high cinematic values in this movie, where all the characters, {ultimately}, believe that "Cash is King". Kitsch is displayed with the usual Fassbinder panache and as with many other movie portrayals of prostitution, the more sordid side, such as violence and intimidation, and the risk to health, are not mentioned, giving the otherwise sharp satire of the corrupt financial world, a rather fairy tale gloss.

Fassbinder, who always understood the paramount need to entertain, still manages to convey the malaise, that the aftermath of the Nazi demolition of all moral standards, which had left an entire nation bereft of a natural ethos of right and wrong. Fassbinder gives you entertainment and awareness, a difficult tightrope to straddle.

Fassbinder, like Diogenes, was always in search of an honest man. He had a celebratory attitude to life, and his mirth is infectious.

Lorelei and the Man Who Understood and Admired Her

[Galina_movie_fan · 10/10 · 11 August 2006]

"Lola" (1981), the second chapter of Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy is an update and a remake (in a way) of "The Blue Angel"(1930) directed by Josef von Sternberg with magnificent Marlene Dietrich as a singer Lola Lola but Fassbinder's film is marvelous by itself. Like "Marriage of Maria Braun" (1979) and "Veronica Voss" (1982) "Lola" tells the story of a strong and beautiful woman and her survival and search for love, success and happiness in postwar Germany. It's superb and dazzling and I kept smiling all time while I was watching it. It's an old story (and what is new in this world? Carmen had been dead and Lola Lola is old) but the style, the approach, the times, the place, his use of colors that seem to sing, to smile, to scream and to touch you gently are unique. Did he sell his soul to the Devil for these colors? The dresses, the songs, Barbara's voice, her legs that grow from the ears, her hair, oh my God, her and Hanna's (in "Marriage of Maria Braun that I will finish watching tonight) golden hair, these witching Loreleis, the walking sensuality - Fassbinder understood and admired women and I admire him for this.

"Lola" is a combination of many genres- satire, drama, comedy, and musical. It mixes glamor with very serious themes. Striking Barbara Sukowa is a singer-whore Lola who sets up to seduce the incorruptible local building commissioner, unbelievably blue-eyed Armin Mueller-Stahl. Lola went through many losses, humiliations, and disappointments during the war and right after it and she wants to be an independent business woman for which she decided to win over the man everyone kept telling was not for her.

As Barbara Sukowa recalls, Fassbinder told the critical stories but he did not make them dry or theoretical. He did not use the intellectual or academic approach to his stories. He hated gray "kitchen" naturalism and he was mixing Hollywood glamor with specific German realities creating his own style that was sexy and appealing. While many German film makers of his generation were influenced by the American directors like Martin Scorsese and John Cassavetes, Fassbinder was very impressed by Douglas Sirk and his style.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder died at the age of 37 just as he was completing his last movie, "Querell". He had made over 30 films during 12 years. He began directing in 1969 revealing in his work New Germany, often heartless and materialistic. Fassbinder's talent and the quantity and quality of his output are incredible. It is like he knew he would die young and he was obsessed by finishing as many films as it was physically possible, majority of which (including "Lola") were way ahead of their time.

fable of the incorruptible man

[SnoopyStyle · 7/10 · 23 May 2016]

It's 10 years after the war in West Germany. Lola (Barbara Sukowa) is a lounge singer/prostitute at a bordello run by corrupt builder Schuckert, the father of her daughter. Herr von Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is a new righteous building commissioner and Schuckert needs to add three floors to his building. Esslin works under von Bohm and is the corrupt mayor's man. Lola's mother is von Bohm's landlady. Lola seduces von Bohm as proper lady with her real name Marie-Louise. When Esslin brings him to the bordello, his incorruptibility is tested.

Barbara Sukowa is terrific as the brassy broad reminiscent of the old classic goddesses like Marlene Dietrich. Armin Mueller-Stahl is always Armin. There are other great performances. This is a morality fable. It has a slightly surreal melodramatic feel. It's all very intriguing.

wonderful and mostly heartbreaking melodrama from Fassbinder

[Quinoa1984 · 9/10 · 2 October 2008]

Lola is a singer, and a sometimes-prostitute, in the whorehouse run by Schukert, a big vulgarian who also happens to have a land deal coming up and has such a reputation that he won't be hassled by a cop when at a checkpoint. A new building commissioner is in town, Von Bohm, and he's a very pure soul, non-corruptible, sensible, a 'moralist' if ever there was one. But he's soon entranced by a 'chance' meeting with Lola (who is, actually, put on the spot to charm the straight-arrow Von Bohm), and soon he becomes enraptured with her, to his possible demise. If this premise is pretty much similar to the Blue Angel, it's intentional so much so that I would consider this a full-blown remake- Blue Angel set this time in post WW2 Germany instead of pre-War, and with some extra doses of socio-political context thrown in (and, of course for Fassbinder, some added sensuality that works magnificently as classy-raunch, if that makes sense).

Fassbinder's film Lola, one of his last and the 2nd part of a BDR trilogy he made, is sumptuous melodrama, filmed with such a vibrant and eclectic and varied sense of color with the lighting and sets and costumes- on the faces and bodies and sets- that one can just look at any scene in this and find something fantastically stylized about it. It should be a real horror-show fable, but Fassbinder is something much of a realistic-romantic, if that also makes any sense, in that he thrusts naturalistic actors alongside a few 'personalities' (one of them a great actor playing Schukert, Mario Adolf), among such vibrant sets like the inside of the nightclub and amid the turmoil of the post-war German setting where the economy is finally back in boom (if not for everyone).

Occasionally some of the musical choices- or just the abundance of them in nearly every scene- is a bit much, and I was thrown off by what seemed like maybe too much of a happy ending considering everything tragic that has preceded it (Fassbinder doesn't let his characters completely off the hook, but it feels too clean-cut as well). However Fassbinder is also working on some prime material with a real eye for the harrowing scope of a tragic romance and the means of 'fitting-in' to a urban landscape where, according to Lola, Von Brum doesn't really fit in. It's also got Barbara Sukowa as the title character, obviously in a career-high-point, and Armin Mueller-Stahl in another of a long series of really interesting roles where he can show emotions but very wisely and carefully and appears to be reserved- sometimes deceptively reserved like in Eastern Promises- and for Von Brum it's one of his best.

Anyone who loves a juicy drama of romance and building-capitalist intrigue would do well to watch this. I'm sure it'll be one of Fassbinder's best. 9.5/10

All about Lola

[kosmasp · 7/10 · 22 September 2011]

Saw this at the Berlin International Film Festival in their Retrospective selection. Armin Mueller-Stahl is always a joy to watch. Even in movies I don't enjoy that much. In this case, the movie felt right too. You might see quite a few things coming (I wouldn't really say it feels that original now, can't say how it felt back then), but it still makes up for good entertainment.

And while I don't usually associate Fassbenders name with entertainment in the strict sense, I think you can do it here. The actors are all really good and enjoy the drama as well as the comedy that is involved in the whole movie.

Cinema Omnivore - Lola (1981) 8.2/10

[lasttimeisaw · 8/10 · 24 May 2021]

"Fassbinder has no scruples to satirize the ever scandalous falling-in-love-with-a-prostitute trope, and he does so with flair and tongue-in-cheek irreverence, when the dust settled, things are miraculously squared away, the status quo remains, even Von Bohm is made the co-owner of the brothel, how about that? Stiff morality is frown upon, and Lola gets what she wants, so fully and exuberantly embodied by Sukowa, she radiates with an aura of her Teutonic fiber, bedazzled by veils, furs, earrings and organdies. Subversively, Sukowa's Lola is nothing if not inviolable, a true Fassbinder heroine head and shoulders above her seedy milieu. So in the end of the day, you don't feel sorry for Von Bohm, who is astutely and vigorously portrayed Mueller-Stahl, but give him your blessings, their union is a godsend. Also, a squirrel-like Helga Feddersen (wearing a pair of high heels with contrasting colors, how avant garde!) is a lollapalooza as Von Bohm's secretary Miss Hettich, hilarious without self-consciousness, the role in a cliché but Feddersen is a comedienne on steroids."

read my full review on my blog: cinema omnivore, thanks.

A cynical tale

[gbill-74877 · 7/10 · 10 August 2019]

Loved the critique of the elite of this post-WWII Germany town, who make money through corruption and controlling building contracts. It's a pretty cynical tale, as a new building inspector (Armin Mueller-Stahl) only begins to consider exposing them when he gets jealous of the attentions of a prostitute, Lola (Barbara Sukowa). There are several characters here that have false respectable fronts, and who sell a part of themselves for money. The garish colors that Fassbinder gives us are meant to go with the garish human behavior, but to me the look of the film was not all that appealing, and I also thought it could have been about a half hour shorter for its simple plot. Not bad, and I credit him for what he was going for, but not one I'd probably want to revisit.

Favorite exchange: Do you want to revolutionize our economic system? I reject revolution. I'm a humanist. You reject revolution. You're a humanist. Then you'll have to put up with crows and birds of prey.

rotten foundation

[dromasca · 8/10 · 14 September 2018]

An untimely death cut short in 1982, at the age of 37, the life and cinematographic career of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. We can only wonder at how much he succeeded to achieve in such a short time and we can only speculate on how his cinema work and the thematic of his films could have looked like in the years of and after the fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany. The films that he left are still amazing cinematographic achievements and some of the sharpest and critical visions of the recent past of Germany. He bluntly explored fascism and corrupt politics, family relations, sex and sexual orientation, race and morality. 'Lola' which was made the year before his death is a cynical and sarcastic look at what he perceived as the corrupt foundations of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In this film Fassbinder frontally attacks the sacred cow myth of the German post-war renewal. The story is set in a small German town about one decade after the end of WWII. The war seems to be a memory that most people try to bury, the city rides on a development wave, ruins disappear and make place for modern buildings, life improves. Building contractors and the 'new politicians' who support them are the persons of the day. And yet, many things did not change that much. 'Lola' has two sources of inspiration, the 1930s masterpiece The Blue Angel directed by Josef von Sternberg with Marlene Dietrich in the lead role, and Gogol's 'The Government Inspector' (or 'Der Revisor' as it is known in German). The first connects the story in the film with the past of the pre-war Germany, its moral and political corruption that nurtured the conditions of the rise of Nazism. The second broadens the vision to the more universal theme of the powerful stranger coming to a closed community, questioning its foundations, shaking its twisted rules and trying to change the unfair ways of doing things.

The two principal heroes, the singer-prostitute Lola (Barbara Sukowa) and the building inspector Von Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl) seem also directly inspired by the lead characters in the two works, it is their bringing together and the un-probable relationship that develops between them that dominates in an original manner the script. Lola is forced as many other widows of the time (and heroines of the films of Fassbinder ) to descend into prostitution to sustain her family (daughter and mother), however she is not only a victim, but rather a complex and manipulative character who tries to use her beauty to achieve social recognition. Von Bohm becomes a character of equal weight in the film, his honesty and integrity being put at test by the social environment and his falling in love with the wrong woman. The acting of both Barbara Sukowa and Armin Mueller-Stahl is superb and remains the best part of this film. Also beautiful and expressive is the camera work, just watch the games of colors and the lightning of the characters. Some other parts of the film did not survive that well the 37 years since the film was made. Mario Adorf 's interpretation of the local tycoon seems to gross and grotesque for the tastes of today. The motivations of the characters and their changes in mood are not that clear. The important aspect however is that the rage of Fassbinder is here, as visible as ever, and the critical flame that he lit with his works, never avoiding or running away from a good controversy, are still a model for German cinema.

immorality levels safely restored

[christopher-underwood · 7/10 · 19 November 2020]

This looks absolutely wonderful throughout with astonishingly colourful lighting and much use of red and blue. The drawback is that with all the scenes similarly lit with bright colours a certain level of artifice is created. This is fantastic for the most effective night club scenes but becomes rather distracting elsewhere when we are being asked to take seriously the Blue Angel inspired antics of the well meaning older man and the flighty young dancer. It also distracts somewhat from the financial shenanigans. Overall, however, we get the drift and Fassbinder is once more trying to bring some awareness to a German population in denial, that they did not only loose the war but their very identity in the aftermath with all the divisions brought upon the nation by Russia and the West. Barbara Sukowa stars as the Dietrich type figure and very well she does too as she flirts with the corrupt property developer and the supposed socialist leaning reforming inspector. Awash with the benefits of the 'economic miracle' much helped by the funds plowed in for the rebuild, her actions ensure that the old man gets what he wants, the developer similarly and she sails off into the sunset, immorality levels safely restored.

Everyone's a whore....

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 15 June 2016]

Rainer Werner Fassbinder is a difficult director for me to categorize. Some of his films I adore, such as "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" and "Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven" whereas I completely hate some of his films, such as "Querelle" and "Effi Briest". There seems to be no real middle ground for me and his films...though perhaps this one comes closest. It's an extremely cynical film...one that probably played better in its native Germany.

The film is set in Germany ten years after WWII ended. Most of the characters in the film are corrupt. While Lola is the most obviously corrupt since she's a prostitute, her lover and his friends in the government are really no better. For them, it's all about making money at any cost. However, an unimposing building commissioner is a cipher. He might just be a decent man...and Lola is bent on seducing him. Throughout the film it's uncertain as to whether or not corruption or decency will prevail...but given Fassbinder's track record, the very dark ending didn't surprise me at all...and that is the film's biggest weakness. Additionally, the picture is just not particularly enjoyable or likable. Now I don't need to like every film and every character in order to appreciate it, but to me this is just another dreary world created by Fassbinder, albeit not as dark and slow as many of his other films. Not my cup of tea, so to speak.

A heart-breaking look at obsession and pity

[ThreeSadTigers · 28 March 2008]

Lola (1981) was the second part of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's celebrated trilogy of films that looked specifically at the period following the end of the Second World War, and in particular, the socio-political and economic re-birth of Germany following the Wirtschaftswunder. All three films in the trilogy look at these situations through the eyes of a strong-willed, arrogant and determined female-protagonist who strives against all odds to achieve the kind of lifestyle that she has always desired, but, once she does, finds herself still feeling empty and lacking in spirit. The characters in these films come to represent Fassbinder's own feelings about the Germany of this particular period, whilst simultaneously acting as an allegorical portrayal and deeper interpretation of the qualities and characteristics of the country itself.

Typical of the director's later works, Lola is a giddy fusion of the filmmaker's key cinematic inspirations and his then political concerns. It was a style and personal ideology that Fassbinder had been building up to with films like In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) and Despair (1978), showing the director's continuing attempts to subvert the conventions of the melodrama by way of narrative experimentation and visual stylisation; a cinematic device that would be further tinkered with in his final films, the bitter Veronika Voss (1982) and the deeply surreal Querelle (1982). Whereas his early films, such as Fear Eats the Soul (1974) and The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972), had developed an astute sense of character, dislocated from a reality that was, in some way, categorically our own, these later-period Fassbinder films seem to disregard actual reality for a more expressive and cinematic depiction. So, whilst those early films may have once given us a depiction of small town life, boardrooms and bordellos that could have easily sprung from a documentary, Lola (and these later films in general) give us a surreal detachment and an arcane theatricality, with music being used to create both mood and atmosphere, as well as scoring the underlining emotions, which, when coupled with that roving camera and sumptuous 'chocolate box' photography, creates some dynamic and astounding moments of cinematic spectacle.

As with most films that can be categorised as melodrama, the story of Lola is deceptively simple. On the one hand the film is a remake of The Blue Angel (1930), replete with similar scenarios, characters and thematic concerns, though the whole thing is elaborated on by the director's interest in social issues, gender roles, human emotions, politics (both modern day and historical) and, as with other filmmakers of the German New Wave, particularly Herzog and Wenders, the role of 'New Germany' under the bleak and unforgiving shadow of the past. Fassbinder couples these issues with the themes of unrequited love, social disgrace and personal tragedy - elements that were so internal in his early work, like Fear Eats the Soul - and makes them external here, tying it all into that gloriously giddy mise-en-scene. This is the kind of film where even the performances are stylised; wavering from understated longing to over-the-top bursts of elation, though never belying the intent of the story of the believability of the character. We also get a separate viewpoint for the story as well, with Fassbinder opening out the proceedings in a way that goes against the original version of The Blue Angel in order to give us more focus on the character Von Bohm - the lonely, up tight businessman who comes to represent a beacon of morality - who falls in love with the showgirl, only to see his initial plight subsequently perverted by those that Lola manages to wrap around her finger. The ultimate rejection and realisation by Von Bohm of Lola's callous manipulation is one of the most crippling and emotionally heart-breaking scenes of Fassbinder's career.

Here, we find Armin Mueller-Stahl as the tortured Von Bohm, staring ahead, his face bathed in red light, the background awash with blue, being given the external visual representation of his hate, anger and general outsider status by Fassbinder's cinematography. From this, we see the strands of corruption and greed, love and longing, jealousy and deceit as the strongest themes of the film, with Barbara Sukowa (as excellent here as she was in von Trier's Europa a decade later) managing to pull off this multi-faceted role that seems to incorporate every single one of those disparate characteristics. Because of this, some have stated that Lola, as a character, is too hard to relate to or sympathise with and, as a result of this, Fassbinder's central message falls flat. I disagree. I believe you have to really analysis Lola's relationship to the town and her relationship with Von Bohm to really understand the contradictory dimensions of the character in relation to the director's sub-textual ideas about Post War Germany, etc.

Lola exists in very much the same cinematic universe as the two other films that would come to form the backbone of what would eventually become known "the BRD trilogy"; though Fassbinder himself had often talked of plans to make more films in a similar vein - analysing post-war German history through to the present day - but was unable to continue the theme due to his untimely death in June of 1982. My only complaint is that the film seems to move a little too slowly on first viewing, but that just means that the viewer will have to work a little harder to follow the plot without being diverted by that sublime cinematography. Lola is, inarguably, one of the high points of latter-period Fassbinder and represents something of a second crossroad within his all-too-short career that - judging from that sprawling epic Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) and the later, surreal and disturbing Querelle - could have really taken him anywhere!

One of my favorite classics!

[KatieC55 · 9/10 · 4 November 2020]

Lola is an authentic classic film! The plot and characters were so unique compared to other movies of the 60s. You'll find yourself rooting for Roland and Cecile despite their differences in feelings and Roland's immaturity. Must watch!

This movies is the finest of Rainer Werner Fassbinder

[ongoam · 10/10 · 24 March 2023]

Lola was a movie that felt like I was watching a Japanese Anime Show, Samurai Champloo; it tells the story of a young German Prostitute named Lola, who lives in a Small Town in West Germany in the late 1950s; I love this movie because this movie is lovely and very sexy and this movie is the finest remake from the 1930 film at the same name, I know that I like this movie because it is sexy and so cute. The Actress who plays Lola is very cutie, and I love this film because this movie is lovely and very sexy. I love it, and I know that this movie is very rewatchable, and I love it good and It very beautiful.

Lola wants

[bob998 · 6/10 · 31 May 2007]

This is for me the weakest of the three films making up the BRD Trilogy. I don't think Fassbinder could have had much interest in retelling the Professor Unrat story that Von Sternberg had done fifty years before with Dietrich. The garish Technicolor tones and the feverish acting don't disguise a lack of involvement on the director's part.

The actors do come out of this with distinction. Barbara Sukowa tears into her part with great gusto, if not much taste. Her rendition of The Fisherman of Capri is wonderfully energetic, both physically and vocally. Armin Mueller-Stahl is required mostly to be shy and calculating--that he comes out with the prize at the end is a surprise. Mario Adorf is one of my favorite actors and he doesn't disappoint here: vulgar, sly, subtle and conniving, he steals the show. Watch for Hark Bohm as the mayor, he's like a German Wally Cox, quite funny.

You Can Take The Girl Out Of The Whorehouse But --

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 25 January 2014]

This is definitely not a clone of "The Blue Angel", not even an up-dated remake. It carries only the faint echo of the original -- a man of high respect falls in love with a hooker and makes himself ridiculous.

That's about as far as the resemblance goes. Armin Mueller-Stahl is not a professor but rather a bureaucrat, the Director of Buildings, or something, in the Germany of 1955, during the prosperous and corrupt times of the economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder, when the whole world was being flooded with VWs, Blaupunkts, and Zeiss cameras. Germany was rebuilding itself and the air was scented with mint.

Mueller-Stahl sits on top of construction and he's a stern and precise man. He arrives at eight in the morning and expects his slightly dizzy secretary to be in the office one minute before he gets there. So far, so good. Then he meets accidentally Lola, Barbara Sukova, a beautiful, well-dressed woman half his age. Improbably, he is possessed by her and her perfume. He has no idea that she's a night club singer and hooker in a local dive. Every time he dates her, she's properly dressed, perceptive, and a little prim.

Then he finds out her nether identity. He gets drunk and I get lost. The original ended with the professor imitating a rooster in the night club act. I followed that just fine. But this one has Mueller-Stahl marrying Sukova, evidently allowing the corruption to continue, if there actually IS any corruption, while Sukova runs off in her wedding gown to jump into bed with her pimp. In the final shot, somebody asks Mueller-Stahl if he's happy now, and when he replies, with a satisfied smile, "Yes -- I am happy," it reminded me of Shylock's exit line in "The Merchant of Venice." Shylock has just been stripped of everything he believes in, including his religion, and he says, "I am content." Well, I'm not.

Muller-Stahl went on to make a number of films in America and he was always distinctive in a nice, likable way, as he is here. Sukova makes no particular impression. She's just another pretty girl, in a role in which Marlene Dietrich was a presence. Mario Adorf is a bulky greaseball who stands to profit most from the new construction. He smokes cigars and looks villainous. Hugh O'Brien beat hell out of him in a remake of "Ten Little Indians" -- and I'm glad. The colors are lurid and we don't really get much of a sense of place.

I understand that Fassbinder is a highly respected director who died young, and I've always enjoyed Armin Mueller-Stahl, but this effort strikes me as only a bit more than routine.

Sex and Money

[ramon-636-319205 · 9/10 · 26 August 2020]

LOLA Entertaining political melodrama that combines a love story, a heartbreak story and a portrait of the German bourgeoisie that, in the same way that it collaborated with Hitler, also did so in the reconstruction of Germany. Of course, with a lot of corruption and little ethics. The Cabaret where the characters meet, including the mayor of Berlin, has a life of its own and there you can see Fassbinder's esteem for the stories. Photography and artistic direction recall the later ones of Pedro Almodóvar. Recommended for lovers of the German Melo, recent German history and Fassbinder fans.

A visually striking combination of heartbreaking drama and sharp socio-political commentary

[kokkinoskitrinosmple · 6/10 · 17 April 2024]

Lola is a heartbreaking drama, reminiscent of the classic German movie Der blaue Engel, which actually was the maini source of inspiration, but at the same time a sharp socio-political commentary on post-war West Germany and the so called Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle).

Von Bohm (Armin Mueller-Stahl) arrives in a small city and assumes the office of the building commissioner. His goal is to promote building and economic growth without compromising his integrity but things take an unpredictable turn after he meets Lola (Barbara Sukowa), who is a cabaret artist, desperate to escape her miserable life and become accepted as a member of the upper class, but he has no idea. As a result, his romantic adventure that soon becomes an obsession directly affects his fight against corruption and "the system".

There is a variety of contrasts that form the foundation of the movie and provide food for thought: mind/reason and soul/emotions, bureaucracy/legality and capitalism/progress, tradtional and modern, elite and pleb, real and fake identity, private life and professional life, theory and action, realism and idealism.

The movie also stands out thanks to its visually striking portrayal of the '50s, the colours, the lighting, the set design, it's all a sight to behold.

A profoundly depressing movie

[steiner-sam · 7/10 · 4 June 2021]

"Lola" is set in 1955 Germany, and is a satire of Germany in the 1950s, portraying deeply-rooted corruption at the local level.

In the film, a straight-laced city planner, Von Bohm, comes to the city and threatens the cozy relationship between local politicians, press, and developers. The primary developer, Schukert, also owns a well-used, high-class house of prostitution that all the city leaders frequent. The singer and the most expensive prostitute is Lola.

Von Bohm and Lola develop a relationship outside the whorehouse; they actually sing together in a church several times. He does not know her nighttime job. When he discovers who Lola really is, he threatens to expose the rampant corruption, especially that of Schukert.

Von Bohm creates a scene in the whorehouse, ends up marrying Lola, but finally is himself in the pocket of Schukert.

This was a profoundly depressing movie; I didn't like any of the characters and ended up feeling sullied by the whole thing.

I liked only some parts

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 5 July 2016]

"Lola" is a West German 2-hour movie from the years 1981 and it is among the final works of writer and director Rainer Werner Fassbinder before his untimely death one year later. You will find familiar faces from Fassbinder's films here (Kaufmann), but there are also famous German actors in here that are not too well acquainted with Fassbinder, such as Sukowa, Adorf or Mueller-Stahl. So it's a bit different from the usual Fassbinder film, but only in terms of the cast. In terms of writing, the characters and the sets, it is immediately visible who made this movie. My favorite aspect of the film was probably Mario Adorf's performance. He had such great screen presence and talent also back in the day. But the negative deal-breaker is Barbara Sukowa. I have seen some of her works and liked her in none. The good thing is she is not as cringeworthily over the top in here than in other (especially more recent works) and over-the-top is something you find in many Fassbinder films, so it should help her in creating an interesting character, but she was entirely forgettable and seemed really desperate in making an impact without having the talent to do so. I also cannot understand what awards bodies see in her. She also received a German Film Award for her portrayal here (or maybe also for another film) and it was not deserved. For Mueller-Stahl, the nomination may have been enough too. As a whole, the bad outweighs the good, so I give this one a thumbs-down, but then again i am not the very greatest Fassbinder fan anyway and in combination with Sukowa, he really hits rock-bottom. Certainly no way to say goodbye, watch something else instead.

The Economic Miracle in a Blue Angel Light

[aliasanythingyouwant · 22 August 2005]

Beneath the whorey garishness of Fassbinder's Lola beats a battered, world-weary heart. The image, splashed with colored light, sugar-purple and jade-green, is all painted up for the evening, but underneath lies the dragging melancholy, the mirthlessness of Petra Von Kant (whose painted face looked like a doll's). The only happy man is Von Bohm, the building commissioner, who knows his place in the world, his purpose: Re-build Germany at all costs; cover over the scars of war, the raw wounds of Fascism, with new development, new steel towers. Von Bohm the shameless capitalist (follow the surface rules, break all the underlying moral ones) is even in love - he just doesn't know who his lover really is. If he knew it would be different - if he were aware of the innocent, psalm-singing, polka-dot-dress wearing frau's real life as a singer/whore steaming up the nightclub scene with his dissipated, morally constipated colleagues, then he would not be so in love. For Von Bohm is a romantic, the last one maybe, the last decent man in Germany. There is steel in his eyes (Fassbinder shines slashes of light across his face, showing us the steel) and there is steel in his heart, at least at first.

Barbara Sukowa plays Lola, the temptress of many guises. There are moments of delirium in her performance to bring back memories of Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles, the parody of Marlene Dietrich, but mostly there is raw carnality wedded to a strange, predatory ugliness not far from Hanna Schygulla's in that supreme Fassbinder masterpiece, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (the thesis statement of a philosopher of manipulation). The Emil Jannings to Sukowa's Dietrich is Armin Mueller-Stahl (in later years the poster-boy of Eastern European grandfatherly gentleness), a dignified man doomed by his lusts, his inability to assimilate lust into his picture of a balanced, just world. What makes Lola different, not The Blue Angel, is how Fassbinder ties the scenario, the downfall-of-an-uptight man, to politics, to the realities (his version of them anyway) of The Economic Miracle. Lola the whore tempts Von Bohm the upstanding man, and upon discovering her true identity Von Bohm, sent into a tailspin of grief, rebels against the callously capitalistic forces behind the re-construction, the new hope of Germany. He becomes an unwilling socialist. He seeks to reform the department. But then there are his lusts, which care nothing for his dignity, his honesty, his judgment. There can only be one outcome, this being the jaded, supremely cynical world of Fassbinder. In the end there is no decency that can withstand the forces of capitalism; there is no morality that can withstand the charms of the whore.

If it were not so schematic it might be brilliant, but Fassbinder, desperate to get his point across, resorts to didacticism. Mostly the film is an opportunity to bathe in comic-strip colors more bold and garish than anything seen since the hay-day of sixties excess. There is not a true flesh-tone in the entire film. There is a decadence too rotted to be voluptuous but enjoying itself anyway, enjoying its moments of ecstasy, its commensurate plunges into despair. The film's point is too obvious, too boldly underlined, too all-pervading, but there is life beneath the themes, the politics, the anti-capitalism. There is Barbara Sukowa in her underwear, showing off her fantastic body, and there is the poignant optimism of Armin Mueller-Stahl, none of Jannings' overwrought play-acting, his expressionistic self-indulgence. There is class-consciousness, the brutal comedy of a dinner-party prepared by an East Prussian housekeeper, her native cuisine mocked by a narrow-minded German elitist (Irm Hermann, less moribund than usual). There is the satire of a bourgeois man's first television (it gets only one channel). There is a rollicking-but-sad song to recall Dietrich, the song of the nightclub girl all the men love but none respect; the song of past-midnight longing, of hopes hopelessly lost.

Hormones and local government

[federovsky · 21 December 2008]

Part of his loose BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) Trilogy - portraits of women in German society after the war - this late Fassbinder is based on the same story behind Sternberg's Blue Angel. Lola is a nightclub singer and prostitute, personal whore of larger-than-life property developer Schukert, at a red-light establishment favoured by the mayor and his cronies. Into this cosy, corrupt world comes a new Building Commissioner, Von Bohm – a meticulous character that the others cannot draw into their circle. With plenty of building going on in Germany during the 50s, Von Bohm is an important official whom the mayor must somehow get around in order to continue bending the rules on lucrative construction deals. By coincidence, Von Bohm meets and falls in love with Lola, unaware that she is a prostitute. When he finds out, he is devastated, but finally, by way of pragmatism, a moral compromise is reached – boy, are they compromised - and the film comes to rest on a somewhat absurd moral sandbank.

None of the characters are likable – they are all seedy local politicians, after all, but they slowly grow on us. Schukert, in particular takes some getting used to. Fassbinder takes delight in showing us that everyone is corrupt – even apparently incorruptible people. Everyone has a weakness, which is their price. Both money and desire corrupts and debases – it's inevitable - you might as well be practical about it, take pity on yourself and embrace it. In particular, corruption is the price of having eroticism in the world – and that's something we can't do without.

As the film goes along, the darkish tone gives way to levity once you realise that nobody is really going to get hurt. There are some genuinely pensive and romantic moments as well as some fairly gently humour - Von Bohm's neurotic secretary is quite funny. Very little is convincing though - particularly the Von Bohm's infatuation (he seems a little too old, and a little too naive) – and the outcome is even less so. There's very little reliable sociology going on here. Women are viewed as chattels and Lola herself is not really given an adequate personality – nor was Barbara Sukowa noteworthy in the part.

It's worth watching if only for it's striking visual design. The film is lit throughout in lurid primary colours – even outside in broad daylight faces are bathed in coloured light. Perhaps these colours spread outwardly from the nightclub's red light, diffracting through the ordinary world into rainbow hues. It is sometimes intrusive, but mainly effective and attractive.

Fassbinder has extracted one aspect of social behaviour and amplified it to absurdity here. This is not the way the world is, but is perhaps the way he would like it to be: fallible and corrupt, but erotic and benign.