Han­na Schygul­la: ​‘Fass­binder had very con­crete ideas about the chore­og­ra­phy of bodies’

Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder was a direc­tor known for employ­ing a stock com­pa­ny of actors who appeared in many of his movies. New sto­ries told with the same faces. But if you had to pick a sin­gle per­son who per­haps stood that lit­tle bit high­er, was just a lit­tle more beloved than the rest, then Han­na Schygul­la is the name that comes to mind.

In his 1969 debut fea­ture, Love Is Cold­er Than Death, she exem­pli­fies the ice blond moll and show­cas­es her sul­try, soporif­ic per­for­mance style. By their final col­lab­o­ra­tion, The Mar­riage of Maria Braun, made 10 years lat­er, she had trans­formed and matured, but her ethe­re­al pres­ence in front of the cam­era remained entire­ly unique. A full ret­ro­spec­tive of the director’s film and TV work at London’s BFI South­bank is also a chance to cel­e­brate one of the great­est screen actors of the mod­ern era. We met up with Schygul­la to find out what it was like work­ing with the mad­den­ing maestro.

LWLies: The 1968 short film, The Bride­groom, the Come­di­an and the Pimp, was your first time in front of a cam­era. How did that feel?

Schygul­la: The direc­tor was Jean-Marie Straub, who is quite a phe­nom­e­nal artist though he’s not very known. He was shoot­ing the moments of a play when the actors entered or left the stage. That idea was unusu­al, and for us it felt not that dif­fer­ent to what we had been doing stuff like that on stage. Fass­binder was into what he liked to call ​“anti-the­atre”, mean­ing that because he didn’t have the mon­ey to do films, which is what he always want­ed to do, he did the­atre a lit­tle like film. So he would change and alter the angle of look­ing at how a sto­ry is told. He always liked to turn things around.

Is there a dif­fer­ence in play­ing for a cam­era than work­ing in theatre?

In the first movies, no. Because the cam­era was not very close to us. It was a way to get into it which was not par­tic­u­lar­ly cin­e­mat­ic. But as Fassbinder’s career went on, his cam­era got clos­er to us.

Did you have time to reflect on the per­for­mances, or was it a case of just mov­ing on to the next film?

He want­ed every­one to look at the rush­es. At the time, you couldn’t just have a video and play it back instant­ly. The film was devel­oped and then we’d all sit down and look at what had been shot. It was like a rit­u­al. He’d talk about what could be done bet­ter or differently.

Did he ask for your feedback?

No.

So why did he want you to see the rushes?

He was a man who embod­ied oppos­ing forces. On one hand, he was the total film­mak­er. He knew exact­ly what he want­ed. On the oth­er, he gave quite a bit of respon­si­bil­i­ty to every­one tak­ing part in the film. Peo­ple liked work­ing with him because he only inter­fered when he had a clear way he want­ed to go and it was that way and no oth­er. If not, he liked that peo­ple had their own creativity.

You starred in the TV series Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day, where you wear a giant perm wig through­out. Is that some­thing Fass­binder asked you to wear or did you choose it yourself?

No, no. We stuck close­ly to an image we had found. Before, my hair was my hair. But then I thought, ​‘Oh my good­ness, if I do six chap­ters, I’ll always have to mess up my hair, so why not just use a wig?’ When I saw it I realised that a wig nev­er actu­al­ly moves like your own hair. He didn’t say he want­ed me to look like that. He’d only tell you when he didn’t like some­thing. Actu­al­ly he didn’t tell you, he just pulled a face. So then you’d try to offer some­thing else.

Was this the same on takes? Did you get the face?

He want­ed to get a cer­tain chore­og­ra­phy, mean­ing the inter­play of bod­ies in the frame.

Would he phys­i­cal­ly move your body?

Yes, this absolute­ly was his way to direct. He nev­er gave psy­cho­log­i­cal expla­na­tions. He didn’t talk about roles or char­ac­ters. He had very con­crete ideas about the chore­og­ra­phy of bod­ies and cer­tain ges­tures that had to be accom­plished. He would occa­sion­al­ly leave it to us to invent some­thing. But most of the time he would arrive on set with these lit­tle draw­ings. They were very schemat­ic. That was his home­work. That was why he could work so quick­ly. He knew. He learned film­mak­ing by film watching.

Did he ever get your­self or the group to watch the films he liked?

Not sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly. But we watched Anto­nio das Mortes by Glau­ba Rocha. We watched The Damned by Vis­con­ti. He want­ed us to see Vivre sa Vie by Jean-Luc Godard, which he saw more than 20 times. He would do by watch­ing. And this is why he had those images that he want­ed to quote. He watched what­ev­er was on. He watched movies just keep him­self out the house. In his ear­ly life, he didn’t get along with his step father, so he would go and watch movies all day.

Do you remem­ber the first time you and Rain­er met?

Yes, I do. I was in uni­ver­si­ty and I get­ting kind of tired of it. The process of becom­ing an intel­lec­tu­al was frus­trat­ing for me. I was mak­ing some extra mon­ey at the time work­ing as a wait­ress. One of the oth­er girls at the restau­rant told me about dra­ma school, and she invit­ed me along. I said why not. The coin­ci­dence was that he was in the same class.

Did he approach you?

It was a pri­vate school. We only met once a week. Every­one would impro­vise on a theme, and then after­wards we’d all go and drink beer. We did not talk much. He was extreme­ly shy, espe­cial­ly with me. Once he saw a scene that I had been impro­vis­ing, and he made his boyfriend come up to me and tell me that he liked it very much.

Did you then approach him?

No. I just found that very strange. He was clear­ly the rebel­lious type, so I couldn’t quite under­stand what he liked about this scene. It was Goethe, and a love scene between two peo­ple who were sup­posed to be broth­er and sis­ter. It wasn’t real­ly a love scene, in the sense of any sex­u­al inter­course, but it was all based on not show­ing feel­ings. Lat­er I under­stood why he liked it, because that was the kind of rela­tion­ship that we had.

Did he ever tell you why he kept cast­ing you in his films?

No. He would make remarks to the oth­ers, tell them that ​‘she’s a star’ or what­ev­er. But to me, no, nev­er. When I said I need a break and I want to get some dis­tance, he was so hurt. I took four years before he got over that. He con­tact­ed me to be in The Mar­riage of Maria Braun.

Is there a Fass­binder film that you want­ed to be in but you weren’t cast?

Yes. That was Lola. He said that the next film we’d do is Lola. Then, while we were film­ing Berlin Alexan­der­platz, we were cross­ing in a door­way. And in this very casu­al way, he told me that he’d cast Bar­bara Sukowa in Lola. I said, ​‘Okay, why?’ and he said that I’d been talk­ing too much about it. And I said that I was doing pro­mo­tion for Maria Braun and every­one would ask what the next film would be. For some rea­son, that annoyed him. Or maybe he got fed up with me?

How often were you in con­tact with Hollywood?

Not much. I had been there once for sure, but I can’t remem­ber which stu­dio I went to. I did Dead Again with Ken­neth Branagh which was shot in Los Ange­les. David Lynch did get in touch with me once. He sent me the script for a film called Blue Vel­vet. I found it hor­ri­fy­ing. It was for the part of Dorothy Val­lens [played by Isabel­la Rosselli­ni]. The script didn’t feel at all like the fin­ished movie. It was about a man who vio­lates a woman, he keeps her in cap­tiv­i­ty and bad­ly mis­treats her. He even has his hand on her child. Then she almost starts lik­ing it. When I read it I thought it was real­ly sick stuff. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t aware that he was a good film­mak­er. At the same time I was deal­ing with the fact that my moth­er was becom­ing old and I was liv­ing a very dif­fer­ent life. The emo­tions I was expe­ri­enc­ing at that time just made me think that I couldn’t do it. It seemed to me… kinky.

Did you see the film in the end?

Yes, I saw it and thought it was quite a good film. Espe­cial­ly the begin­ning and the end. I wrote David a let­ter telling him that I nev­er would have guessed that that film would have come from the script he sent me. I’m not used to regret­ting deci­sions I make, as regret is a feel­ing that doesn’t cre­ate any­thing. But I said that if he asked me anoth­er time, I would say yes. But he nev­er asked.

RW Fass­binder runs at BFI South­bank until May 31. For more info vis­it bfi​.org​.uk