A Un Dios Desconocido (1978)

Most of this film is the contemporary memoir of a middle-aged homosexual magician named José (Héctor Alterio). It opens in Granada in 1936 when José as a small boy is seduced by an older boy who is living in the elegant old house where poet Garcia Lorca is murdered. Fast forward. José is an actor and magician, a discreet homosexual who lives alone and has an occasional affair with Miguel (Xabier Elorriaga), a young politician who finds it more convenient in Madrid's high society to marry than assert his homosexuality. José is a man romantically possessed and obsessed by his childhood in Granada during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in the spring of 1936.

Now in his 50s, José returns to Granada and relives his childhood there. He recalls the time when he fell in love with Garcia Lorca and had an affair with one of Lorca's own lovers. Memories come flooding back to him, of youthful sexual conquest, of Lorca's murder at the hands of Francos' agents, and his own early homosexual affairs. José's entire life is colored by his obsessions with Garcia Lorca, his unknown God, to whom the film is dedicated.

José travels twice to Granada. First, he revisits a woman who is also obsessed with Garcia Lorca's memory, and steals a photograph of the boy with whom he had his first sexual encounter. Later, José returns to Madrid to a party in search of his youth, and meets a pianist with whom he had sexual relations many years before but now does not remember. In Madrid, he is a man tormented by his past and in search of peace. Listening to a taped recording of Garcia Lorca's famous "Ode to Walt Whitman", he desires nothing more than to face the rest of his life in loneliness, although his recent lover, Miguel has returned to his bed and wants to continue their affair. José realizes that he is really all alone in their world, alone with his God.

This film is a complex memoir about an aging man coming to terms with his homosexuality and mortality. It was a pioneer in its frank and mature examination of homosexuality. In fact, it astonished some European critics for its candid, unhysterical treatment of homosexuality, but the movie seems self-interested, even arrogant. It's lovely to look at, highly cultivated and poised, but very difficult to get to know. A handsome, densely packed, evocative movie, it makes a lot of demands on anyone who views it and it has to be prepared for.

The film is full of secret signs and mysterious associations. Over it all hangs the ghost of Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936), the Spanish poet, playwright, and political activist who was murdered in 1936 by the Falangists who hated his homosexuality as much as his left-wing politics. Luis de Pablo composed the music. The screenplay was written by Elias Querejeta and Jaime Chavarri based on a script by Francisco J. Lucio. Jaime Chavarri directed. In Spanish with English subtitiles. For some reason subtitles are missing in two key sequences in which José plays a tape of himself speaking Garcia Lorca's poetry. Possibly the director thought it would be a sacrilege to translate the poet's lines as mere subtitles. The English title is "To an Unknown God".

Schatten der Engel (1976)

Lily Brest (Ingrid Craven) is a beautiful, consumptive streetwalker with few clients, who are intimidated by her beauty. She loves her sadistic gay pimp Raoul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) who gambles away what little she earns. Lily is so depressed that she strangles a kitten, and the pimp is so glum that when Lily returns home, she finds him lying on the floor playing with the kitten's corpse. Tired of her lonely life, she looks for a way out. Even that act serves the local corrupt powers. Then, after one special encounter, she begins talking to them, rather than sleeping with them--and becomes very successful.

The town's power broker, the "Rich Jew" real-estate speculator (Klaus Löwitsch), discovers she is a good listener, so she's soon busy. Raoul imagines grotesque sex scenes between Lily and the Jew, then he leaves her for a male lover. Her parents, bitter ex-Nazi father Herr Müller (Adrian Hoven) a cabaret singer in drag and her wheelchair-bound mother Luise (Annemarie Düringer), offer no refuge. Even though all have a philosophical bent, the other whores reject Lily because she tolerates everyone, including men. However, Lily ultimately realizes that there's a high price to pay for being privy to the dark secrets of others. She learns that Raoul has been gravely wounded in a barroom brawl. "He'll live," Lily's father assures her. "Does he want to?" Lily inquires. She and Raoul are caught up in an emotional hurricane which results in their deaths.

This is the film version of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's suicidally grim stage play, "Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod" ("The Garbage, the City and Death"). The anguish and suffering of a trio of outcasts is shown in the movie, based on Fassbinder's controversial and possibly anti-Semitic play. Unfortunately, the sardonically stereotypical characters are basically flat, and the film is quite stagebound with actors staring into the distance as they recite the aphorisms that constitute Fassbinder's dialogue. Some examples: "Where there is no contempt, there is no love." "Ugly persons despise the sweat on beauty's forehead." "When no one sings, silence reigns." "The thought of death makes me smile. What else can one do?"

Controversy surrounded the Jewish businessman, who is always referred to as "the Rich Jew". Ultimately, the story is more concerned with the outsider status of this businessman and the prostitute he hires to listen to him and occasionally perform in a mock wedding ceremony. Both find themselves out of place in an environment dominated by prostitutes, pimps, corrupt policemen, and perverse businessmen. Gottfried Hüngsberg and Peer Raben composed the music score. Daniel Schmid and Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote the screenplay. Daniel Schmid directed. This Swiss/German production is in German with English subtitles. The English title is "Shadow of Angels".