Fassbinder’s 41st film is loosely based on the life of actress Sybille Schmitz (‘Diary of a lost Girl’, ‘Vampyr’, ‘The Last Night’) whom descended into alcoholism and drug abuse after the second world war and died of an overdose of sleeping pills in 1955. I don’t know if Fassbinder wants to satirize Veronika Voss’ destiny in the film or blame her, either way he succeeds in making a portrait of a falling celebrity, whose emotional and social life is broken by her own self-obsession, dependance on drugs and other people’s compliments. “Light and shadow: The two secrets of motion pictures. Did you know that?” She tells Robert Krohn, a sportswriter, who is kind enough to offer her his umbrella in a rainy night. His meeting with a movie-star will change his life, much in the same way that Rock Hudson’s character in Douglas Sirk’s ‘The Tarnished Angels’ puts professional acquaintance aside for personal interest in his scoop. Although Fassbinder’s film is closer to ‘Sunset Boulevard’ by Billy Wilder, as it shows the vulnerability of people who is no longer loved by a public (whose fame has diminished), as well as a gaze at the basic human need of getting attention, of being liked by others. The film follows the relationship between Vernoika Voss, the self-obsessed and aging movie-star from an era lost and gone, and a simple man, the journalist whose only interest in the beginning of the film is being a good Samaritan and try to help her start anew. She can’t get roles anymore. He lives a routine life with a girlfriend. One drink turns easily to three. The sets in Fassbinder’s film is vey fairy tale like, the doctor’s clinic reminiscent of ice-palace, the streets are wet and the old house of Veronika Voss looks like a department of a museum. Very atmospheric, to say the least, helps the cinematography a lot. Fassbinder’s narrative flows like a detective story. The mysterious past of this diva gets more dramatic as Veronika and Robert’s relationship gets more problematic. I really pity aging actresses who end up the same way as Sybille Schmitz, and as this film comment on a the decadent lifestyle in show-business, Fassbinder shows an imprisoned state of hysteria. “Farewells and arrivels are among the finest things in life.” Says Veronika Foss who can only find joy in nostalgia. Not even her new love-interest makes things twist her life prisoned at a doctor’s clinic, in care of a terrible bourgeois woman who feeds her morphine to cease the pain of not living in the past anymore. How can you cure emotions such as self-confidence and doubt with pills? I love the mixing of different musical themes, such as the American radio and the orchestra music crashing together in the head of Veronika Voss as she lays dying. At one point in the film, she sings “Memories are made of this” by Dean Martin. I’m afraid life is not in memories, but as Fassbinder suggests its in the present. I don’t know if a couple of scenes like the nightclub singing sequences were flashbacks or not, but this confusion works well and it makes sense during the churchbell ending. Wonderful film.