Adam Baran

A few weeks ago, BF and I went to see Jerry Schatzberg’s rare film Puzzle of a Downfall Child, which stars Faye Dunaway in one of her most intruiging and brilliant performances, along with the late Roy Scheider. It’s a strange, very seventies Waldo Salt-esque film about a model, Lou Andreas Sand, played by Dunaway who enters the world of modeling and quickly becomes on of the most famous and popular faces on the scene, only to quickly collapse into substance abuse, depression, and a nervous breakdown. There’s lots of cutting back and forth between the past, which shows her rise and fall, and the present, as Dunaway, secluded in isolation after a breakdown, is interviewed by her old friend (much in the same way Jerry Schatzberg interviewed his old friend Anne Saint-Marie - a long-ago famous model who the the film is based on). In fact, there’s so much cutting and Euro doom and gloom moodiness in the early part of the film that it could have been called Ingmar Bergman’s Next Top Model.

The film is said to have been Dunaway’s favorite film, and it’s easy to see why. Her performance is so sharp and mannered it’s impossible to forget. She embodies the character, more than that she is the character. Odd, confused, officious, haughty, needy, desperate, achingly beautiful, but also weary underneath. Her accent is insane, completely mannered, but totally unplaceable. And she’s a bit cuckoo, which is always fun to watch.

Of course the film is out of print, never on DVD or VHS, but of course, it’s on YouTube from a French DVD source, (sorry for the subtitles and quality). So here’s the first part of the film, and after the jump, if you’re so inclined and you’ve got time on your hands at work, like me, you can watch it at your leisure.

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It is always so wonderful when I get to display my wit, but always dissapointing when you’re with people who don’t get the joke you’re making. 

Case in point: I ran into my friend, we’ll call him P, at a party this past weekend.  P works at an abortion clinic in the IS department, setting up computers and managing that sort of techy stuff.  Anyway he always tells me great stories about the weirdness of the place. 

This time he told me about this lady who came into the clinic for an abortion.  Pretty normal right?  Well this lady was different because she was only 30 years old, and this was her 28th abortion.  P told me how the doctors were trying to tell her not to have any more abortions and go on the birth control pill because having so many surgeries isn’t exactly healthy for the body.  

Anyway, so he tells me that this lady was 30 and she’d had 28 abortions, so I go, “Wow, she’s like the Fassbinder of abortions.” 

Now that shit is funny!  But I guess not everyone knows about New German Cinema’s patron saint Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who was 36 when he died in 1982 after having made 41 films. 

Anyway the point of all that is that A.  I’m a witty motherfucker, and B. it’s a segueway to mention that I’m gearing up this week to watch Fassbinder’s classic Berlin Alexanderplatz, newly restored and premiering at the Museum of Modern Art next week.  I’ve always had a hard time watching his films on home video and so I’m very excited to see the 16 hour tv miniseries on the big screen, along with some of his other classic films like Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, and one of my favorites - Fear of Fear, starring skeletal Margit Carstensen as a bored housewife who starts to go bonkers and alcoholic after the birth of her child. 

My favorite quote about Fassbinder comes from Andy Warhol who said, after hearing of his death, “… he was reeeaally strange.  And when I say somebody’s strange, you know they’re strange.”

PS how hot does Rainer look in that picture above?  The huge phallic camera?  I love it!  Oh and yeah, it’s pretty fucked up to have gotten 28 abortions when you’re only thirty, but whatever -  I got to make that awesome joke!