stills astonishingly do not only serve as a curtain or backdrop for the final cred-
its–this is Daney’s critique of several films that have allowed the freeze-frame
to petrify into a clichéd figure.Quite on the contrary, Fassbinder’s final stand-
stills are structurally tied to the psychologist’s last question, which goes unan-
swered. In this series ofblockagesof the image (a kind of figurative displacement
of the protagonist’s own symptoms), anover the shoulder-shotfrom behind the
psychologist is at first briefly arrested, framing a slight bottom view of Peter,
who, in that moment, stands up as the question is posed. The movement is then
resumed, and, in a counter shot, we see Peter’s hands banging on the cassette
recorder on the table. This gesture becomes the object of the second interrup-
tion, accompanied by the continuous sound that repeats the sentence that was
just recorded.Leben Sie eigentlich gerne?(Do you like living?). After this,
the“frozen”image“melts”, the movement resumes once again and Peter leaves
the frame. The third and last standstill occurs in this final shot and corresponds
to the beginning of the film: the camera pans towards the window, while behind
the bars a landscape opens in the twilight. This final shot marks the end of the
story, but also indicates that the story doesn’t end for the protagonist, who still
has many years of imprisonment ahead of him.
It is telling that the same type of serial interruption can be found at the end of
another melodrama, where the story also ends in a disciplinary institution. In
Wildwechsel (Jail Bait)() Hanni (Eva Mattes) is, by the end of the film,
all alone in the column-lined hall of a courthouse, while she waits to be called to
the witness stand to testify against Franz (Harry Baier), her former lover, whom
she had murder her father. The final credits pass over the frozen moments of the
final shot, showing Hanni, outdoors, hopping across the stones, oblivious to
everything as she plays with a cootie catcher. The riddle of her attitude toward
the accused is underscored by a gaze toward her warden (Irm Hermann), as
well as by the brief appearance of another witness. The issue in this interrup-
tion, as inIch will doch nur, daß ihr mich liebt, is the Truffautian idea of
an expansion or transgression of the narrative frame. On the other hand, in the
serial decomposition of a movement, the imaginary capture of a character is
established, just as in Godard’sSauve qui peut la vie(Slow Motion)(),
in that filmic time divides between an actual and a virtual mode (between pre-
sent and past).
The series of visual standstills inIch will doch nur, daß ihr mich liebt
exhibits two significant aspects. First of all, we should emphasize the relation-
ship of the suspension to the physical movement of the hero, who with a rough
gesture escapes the confessional setting (ordispositif, in a Foucauldian sense).
This outbreak counters the long series of motionless and blocked moments of
hesitation, with which the hero’s Oedipal speeches are embodied throughout
the film. When movement is inscribed into the body as an outbreak of pathos,
The Figure of Visual Standstill in R.W. Fassbinder’s Films 79