Jail Bait – 1973, Rainer Werner Fassbinder

by Allan Fish

(West Germany 1973 102m) not on DVD

Aka. Wildwechsel; Wild Game

Why not?

p  Gerhard Freund  d/w  Rainer Werner Fassbinder  play  Franz Kroetz  ph  Dietrich Lohmann  ed  Thea Eymesz  m  Peer Raben  art  Kurt Raab

Eva Mattes (Hanni Schneider), Harry Baer (Franz Bermeier), Jörg von Liebenfels (Erwin Schneider), Ruth Drexel (Hilda Schneider), Kurt Raab (factory boss), Hanna Schygulla (doctor), Klaus Löwitsch (policeman), El Hedi Ben Salem (Franz’s friend), Irm Herrmann (police official),

It’s the film that has become a holy grail for Fassbinderites, and even now seems as unlikely to receive a DVD release as any film currently languishing in limbo.  It was very controversial, of course, that goes without saying.  The English title played that up, but when one reads comments on certain film websites, one would be forgiven for thinking we were watching a piece of child pornography.  Let me get one thing clear, Jail Bait was never remotely that and those who call it such are living on planet Zog.  Calls for it to be banned are ludicrous.  Needless to say, as an advocate of free speech, I am against the banning of any film, but Jail Bait shouldn’t even come close.  It’s ironic then that now, if that were the only objection, Jail Bait would be restored along with other masterworks by the Fassbinder Foundation.  Sadly, this film is legally unavailable for other reasons.  It hadn’t even been transmitted when Kroetz put out a court injunction against the film, then Fassbinder effectively disowned it himself and the film went into imposed exile. 

            Franz Kroetz’s play was a cause célèbre in its day, depicting as it did the love story between a 13 year old girl and her a few years older boyfriend.  Fassbinder changes it slightly, making the girl a year older.  Hanni is the daughter of a working class Bavarian couple who decides, seemingly because she has nothing better to do, to go off with motorcycle hunk Franz to a hayloft to lose her virginity.  They make love, they doss about and jump on top of each other into the hay.  All very innocent rites of passage, yet when her parents find out, all hell breaks loose (as if you didn’t know it would).

            Fassbinder was quick to point out the hypocrisy in suburbia, and he makes no attempt to hide the Catholic symbols of devotion in the Schneider home, not least a portrait of the Virgin Mary looking down sympathetically on Hanni in a way her parents do anything but.  Easy to see the parents as the killjoys, as the ones getting in the way of true love, and yet this is, despite the haunting use of Bernstein’s ‘A Placefor Us’ over the opening titles, anything but.  Truth is, none of the characters here are likeable with not a single scene shot in anything other with the cold light of day.  Some critics have pointed out how Fassbinder making Hanni so unsympathetic is a by-product of his own homosexuality.  If that seems just a trifle neat to these eyes, Hanni is a literal blank who seems to lack emotion or even purpose, doing things on impulse with no care about the consequences, namely the expected pregnancy.  After getting her kicks she can only ask “what else can we do?”, like a diner wanting to see what else was on the menu. 

            As always with Fassbinder, casting is crucial, with Baer fresh from Syberberg’s Ludwig, and Drexel and Liebenfels the epitome of conventional conservative morality.  It’s Mattes who dominates, though, and remains an enigma, right up to her hopping and skipping down a courthouse corridor at the end, oblivious to the harm she has caused.  She’s a mile away from the traditional Hollywood view of teenage girlhood, a tad chubby and with puppy fat around the face that makes her all the more real and believable.  Yes, she takes her clothes off and spends a fair amount of time naked.  She was 17 at the time of filming, and it’s a guileless performance that looks ahead to the similar work of a certain Sandrine Bonnaire a decade later.  Yet here we are, the film, only seen in bleached out third generation prints via bootleg, still legally silenced by the injunction brought against the broadcaster by Kroetz.  Don’t expect that status quo to change in Kroetz’s lifetime.