The Enchantment of the Blue Sailors
Oceania
Occult
Objective
O Sailor
O wretched Women
O Poet
O Beauty
Film-Abc
Old Bird |
Valeska Gert |
Young Bird |
Tabea Blumenschein |
Sailor |
Rosa von Praunheim, Barry Tannenbaum |
Sailor |
Jean Matelot |
Aging American Star |
Wally Busch |
Greek God-Fairy |
Peggy von Schnottgenberg (aka Frank Ripploh) |
Nymph of German Romanticism |
Ulrike Ottinger |
Oceanic Transvestite |
Rolf Gärtner, Andreas Kelling |
Hawaii Girl |
Itti Janz |
Screenplay |
Ulrike Ottinger |
Producer |
Helmut Wietz |
Cinematographer |
Ulrike Ottinger |
Editor |
Helmut Wietz |
Costume /Make-Up |
Tabea Blumenschein |
Supported by Irene Weitz and Adelheid Westphal |
Premiere
25th Oktober 1975, Bali-Kino Berlin
in France: 28th February 1976, Cinémathèque Française, Paris
Festivals
9. Hofer Filmtage 1975
Filmfestspiele Berlin, Deutsche Reihe 1976
Bruxelles Filmfestival des Femmes 1977
Rotterdam 1978
Aperto 80 Biennale di Venezia and many more
In collage sequences, the surrogate of synthetic sensuality takes form and seduces the sailors in the guise of a Hawaiian girl. In ritual punctuation, she distributes deaths which seemingly only the hardy siren Fatality can survive. But beyond the apparent and real rigidity of expressive forms, the film imparts a new life, which although not reversing its loss, breaks it in irony and repeats it in ritual, making visible other means of survival:
Mais ce sont de petits secrets
Il en est d'autres plus profonds
Qui se dévoileront bientôt
Et feront de vous cent morceaux
A la pensée toujours unique
Apollinaire
The film is constructed in such a way that the alternation between collage sequences and the continually repeated rhythmic sequences of images correspond to the confrontation between the organic and synthetic worlds allegorized in the film. Transformations or metamorphoses are here depicted as the means to escape fatality.