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30 years ago: RWF‘s QUERELLE

Bild 2 - rechte Seitenbande QUERELLE300A story of love, betrayal and murder

QUERELLE had its world premiere at the World Film Festival in Montréal in late August 1982. The European premiere followed only a few days later on August 31 at the International Film Festival in Venice. It was Fassbinder’s last film.

The novel on which the film is based, Querelle de Brest, was written by Jean Genet in 1947. The title character, the young sailor Querelle, uses his time ashore to make a deal to sell opium to Nono, the runs the Feria, a harbor brothel. Querelle murders Nono’s accomplice Vic, and, to atone for his crime, has sex with Nono and subsequently with the corrupt policeman Mario. When he meets the construction worker Gil, who has murdered one of his coworkers, the two men fall in love. However, Querelle ultimately also betrays Gil, who is accused by the police of committing both murders. In the end Querelle leaves the city as the lover of the ship’s lieutenant Seblon.

Commenting on his adaption of the book for the screen, Fassbinder wrote, “Querelle de Brest by Jean Genet is perhaps the most radical novel in world literature in the way it portrays the discrepancy between objective action and subjective fantasy. Stripped of Genet’s imagery, the plot amounts to a rather uninteresting, third-rate police story that offers little to engage with.
What is interesting about the book is the author’s narrative approach, Genet’s extraordinary imagination, which gives rise to a world that at first glance seems to be an alien one, a world that seems to operate according to its own laws, which derive from an astounding mythology.” (“Literatur und Leben,” DIE ZEIT, no. 26, June 25, 1982)

The film was shot in March 1982 over 22 days in the studios of the Central Cinema Company (CCC) in Berlin and cost around 4.4 million deutschmarks. Following Fassbinder’s death, the film’s distributors added the phrase “A Pact with the Devil” to the title for commercial reasons.

The film bears the following dedication: “This film is dedicated to my friendship with El Hedi ben Salem`Barek Mohammed Mustafa. Rainer Werner Fassbinder.”

After premiering in France on September 8, the film opened in Germany on September 16, 1982.

More information:
RWFF Filmographie zu QUERELLE

Photo right: Brad Davis as Querelle and Günther Kaufmann in the background als Nono, 1982 © Roger Fritz

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