MOVIES

Dieter Schidor on Querelle:

Genet as Tom of Finland

Dieter Schidor was producer of Rainer Fassbinder's last film, the homoerotic Querelle, based on the Jean Genet novel. He also acted in the movie and made his own Querelle documentary, The Wizard of Babylon, which contains an interview with Fassbinder, shot just hours before his death. Schidor was in Sydney last month for the Australian premiere of Querelle and his own film and BARRY LOWE spoke to him.

WHAT attracted to you to the concept of filming Genet's novel?

I started studying law when I was 18 and read the novel in northern Germany and it sort of frightened me and fascinated me. It was a way of looking at things I'd not known before, which I felt in me, but because of the barriers bourgeoise society puts on you you don't dare think that far. I forgot about it after that until I was doing a film Cross of Iron, with Sam Peckinpah and I was sitting in Yugoslavia for three months and hating it. So I thought "I want to produce a film and just do what I want to do." And right away the book came back into my mind and I wanted to do Querelle.

I must say I also thought of Fassbinder then. He did a gay film, Fox and His

Friends, which I hated, which I do not like at all, and that got me a little bit scared, but I still saw the possibility that he might do it. And he was an economic factor. With him as director I could get the money. So the next step was to try to get the rights which was very, very difficult because Genet hates movies and he didn't want his book made into a movie. There were two years of letters and going to Paris. I never met Genet then but I found out two young French directors had started filming Querelle for about a week and shown Genet the rushes and then he refused to give them rights. He asked me for a photograph, which I sent him, and there were all these weird things over two years, and then finally I got an option. There were further complications. Fassbinder had a lot of commitments. He was enthusiastic at first about the project then I noticed he was getting scared. He didn't know how to approach the thing. At first it was going to be very religious, making Querelle like Jesus Christ. Then the option was running out and I had to decide whether to let the rights go, or just find a new director. So I went to Bertolucci. I had this idea that someone who's not gay should do the film and show it from a totally different point of view. I now think this is wrong. Bertolucci read the novel again, and read the script that was written, and we talked and he finally said: "I don't think I can do it before 10 years. The public will not be ready for this for 10 years from now." And Bertolucci had had flops where he touched on taboo subjects such as in La Luna where he touched on incest. So I thought "I'm going to do it anyway and I'm going to do a small movie."

I approached a young German director and that didn't work either. And just as everything seemed to be falling apart I went back to Fassbinder and I said "Do you want to do Querelle within the next six months or not?" I knew he would have to give up another project to do it but he said "OK, I'll give it a try. I don't know what's going to come out of it but let's do it."

And then he wrote the script and he began filming and we encountered. many more difficulties than I ever would have believed. Financing the film became such a horror trip. Because of the subject matter, all the government funds that are normally available, especially to someone as famous as Fassbinder, suddenly shied away from it. Suddenly the Berlin government had changed from a labor government to a conservative government. They said "OK, we are going to show our voters we're not going along with this pornography." And Fassbinder had to sign a paper saying the film would be all right for children over the age of six. So we signed just to get the film started. We lied to get the money

Dieter Schidor and Brad Davis

together. We didn't have it all but we started the film anyway. Then it went over budget.

It's interesting that up until about 10-15 years ago Querelle de Brest and Our Lady of The Flowers were banned in Australia. Now the movie has come through censors uncut.

The novel was banned in Italy and Germany too but in the early '60s there was a Superior Court decision, especially about Querelle, and whether it was art or pornography. And Querelle, the film, was banned in Italy for a couple of months.

But the film is not pornographic in the slightest.

I was pleased with all that publicity but I was scared it wouldn't get through at all. Like with Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. It's banned in Italy and you still have to go to Yugoslavia to see it. But apparently the pornography happens in the heads of the Italian censors because there is no pornography. That I can definitely prove. That was where Fassbinder was great. When he did the sex scenes he didn't show any penis or

arse.

It's a very erotic film, but it's not pornographic.

That was Fassbinder's genius. The film provokes. It makes such an irritation that some people think it's hard-core pornography.

Why did Fassbinder chose to shoot the movie on a set instead of going on location?

Fassbinder and I discussed the casting and we were talking about Brad Davis and another possibility and suddenly he said "Let's do it all in a studio. I don't want to do it in an original location. He explains it a bit in The Wizard of Babylon when he says "I don't believe the Brest of Jean Genet was the real Brest. It was in his mind." And a few weeks ago at the Berlin Film Festival Genet was there very secretively. He got in contact with me and I went to meet him for the first time. We'd exchanged letters and in one he wrote "The book Querelle is 40 years ago and I've forgotten it like I've forgotten it on a set?" and I told him Fassbinder did not believe his novel

happened in Brest but in his mind. He looked at me and said "He was right, he was totally right. But I would never have believed that anyone would do it that way."

And even during the shooting of the movie Fassbinder said "I want it to look totally artificial but realistic in details." On the set I noticed he didn't take any care whether the sun could be seen to be artificial, or if you could see the plaster. And during the rushes I said "Rainer you can see from some angles that the sun is just a round paper thing." But he didn't care about it at all. The more artificial, the more unreal it looked, the better for him.

It gave me the appearance of being someone's wet dream, someone's erotic fantasy. And it was as if Tom of Finland had designed the sets.

Fassbinder never thought out anything -analytically. He would never be able to explain certain things when he decided on them. Often he would talk about his films only after he'd read the critics and they'd analysed his films and he'd repeat them and say "That's why I did this, that's why I did that."

He didn't care about distances on the set. In a film you make distance with a cut, but he didn't do it. And also with the set you don't have a feeling of time. You don't know whether it happens in one day or in one month.

Was Fassbinder ill while he was directing Querelle?

No. In fact after he died after the interview for Wizard to see him there is to see him in a different world. It's like seeing a monument already on a different planet. He really doesn't care about anything any more. Not meaning that he thinks of death because he did not because he talks about the future and the next film he was going to start. But there's one thing when I see it which frightens me when he says "I had to live the life I have lived to make Querelle." And then he corrects himself and puts it in the present tense. But in the interview you can see how desperate and alone he was. That he was in the last months. I've never seen anyone so totally alone.

Why did his mother attempt to stop the interview from appearing in Wizard?

His mother has decided that her son was not homosexual. You know what mothers are, mine would have done the same probably. She wants to put him on a pedestal as the angel who was good to everybody. And I said to her "You're making him smaller. He was an angel but he was also a monster. And that's what makes up this credible personality."

Why was Querelle shot in English? Very simple reason. Because it was the only common language of the three lead actors.

Then why go for Brad Davis as Querelle?

I had seen him in Midnight Express and Fassbinder had also. Rainer had planned to do a film called Cocaine from a cheap Italian novel of the '20s.

Brad Davis and Franco Nero

1983 MAY CAMPAIGN 39

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