Salome

West Germany

1971

81 Min

Color

1.37:1

German

Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
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SCR Werner Schroeter, Oscar Wilde

CAST Mascha Rabben, Magdalena Montezuma, Ellen Umlauf, Thomas von Keyserling, René Schönenberger, Joachim Paede

One medium has fed the other: Schroeter’s film Salome, 1971, predates his stage production of the play by two years. This Salome is one of the most beautiful adaptations of the text to film ever made. Filmed at the ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon, the decadent carnality of Gustave Moreau’s painting Salome is recalled in the jeweled costumes of Herod and Herodias, in the somnolent pallor of Salome’s face, in Magdalena Montezuma’s androgynous performance as Herod. Pans and zooms within long sequences, invisible cutting, Oscar Wilde’s hypnotic text, and a densely packed sound track form a seething tapestry of contradictory cues and visual blandishments. —gary-indiana-author.com

Director

Werner Schroeter

Werner Schroeter (born 7 April 1945, Georgenthal, Thuringia) is a German film director and screenwriter, considered one of the most important of his country in the post-war period. He has also worked in film as a producer, cinematographer, editor and actor. In the later function he appeared in several films directed by his friend Rainer Werner Fassbinder, including Beware of a Holy Whore (1971), and a number of theatre productions.

His 1980 film Palermo oder Wolfsburg, telling the story of a Sicilian guest worker in Germany, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, while his 1991 production Malina was entered into that year’s Cannes Film Festival.

In the 1960s, Schroeter worked with Rosa von Praunheim, who is also gay. Schroeter has also worked as a theater and opera director, in Germany and elsewhere. In the late 1970s Schroeter met the Irish Artist Reginald Gray at a collection of Yves St.Laurent in Paris. Gray painted a portrait of Schroeter. —Wikipedia read more