Werner Schroeter's Operatic Cinema

Writing about Werner Schroeter and his recent film The Kingdom of Naples (1978), Rainer Werner Fassbinder announced that "Germany thus has not only three or five or ten film directors to offer, Germany has one who has certainly been absent." Indeed, as Fassbinder knows so well, there is a certain amount of irony in this belated recognition since Schroeter has been not only the contemporary of the more celebrated German filmmakers but, in many respects, their mentor. Born in 1945, Schroeter was a seminal presence in the new wave of German cinema since its inception. He has appeared as an actor in several films, including Fassbinder's Beware of the Holy Whore; and, in Syberberg's Ludwig, he is cited, along with Rosa von Praunheim, as one of the most revolutionary artists of the age. The scope of his presence, however, extends well beyond the commercially obvious: his university training in psychology, his continuing work in theater and opera, and the politics of his homosexual perspective, all have contributed to the radical insight and influential resonances of his films from Eika Katappa (1969) to Palermo or Wolfsburg (winner of the 1980 Berlin Golden Bear award).