Synopsis
A husband and wife lie to each other about their weekend travel plans, only to both show up at the family's country house with their lovers.
Chinese Roulette
Cast
Director
Producers
Writer
Editor
Cinematography
Art Direction
Composer
Sound
Makeup
Studios
Countries
Primary Language
Spoken Languages
Alternative Titles
Kinesisk roulett, Roulette cinese, La ruleta china, Китайская рулетка, Roulette chinoise, 中国轮盘, Roleta Chinesa, 중국식 룰렛, Китайска рулетка, Chińska ruletka, Kínai rulett
Genre
Releases by Date
Premiere
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France
Paris
Theatrical
23 Feb 1977
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FranceTP
21 Apr 1977
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USA
22 Apr 1977
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Germany
Physical
05 Nov 2007
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UK18
18 Jul 2016
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UK15
Releases by Country
France
16 Nov 1976
- Premiere Paris
23 Feb 1977
- TheatricalTP
Germany
22 Apr 1977
- Theatrical
UK
05 Nov 2007
- Physical18 DVD
18 Jul 2016
- Physical15 Blu-ray
USA
21 Apr 1977
- Theatrical
Popular reviews
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Chinese Roulette is a cruel movie. It is firmly stuck in Fassbinder's harsh, icy world and is a film of cold intellectualism. Set in a house of dishonesty, Chinese Roulette functions as a beautiful chamber piece. Yet it slowly reveals social anarchy and the everyday fascism of family life. It's just one long buildup of simmering tension (sexual, dramatic, or otherwise), and we watch, waiting for and needing the evil to finally reveal the truth.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder started off his career with experimental, Nouvelle Vague inspired films. Later he moved onto society-piercing melodramas, and Chinese Roulette comes from his transition from those melodramas into his phase of idiosyncratic international co-productions. As a result, Chinese Roulette is less naturalistic than Fassbinder's earlier movies and…
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a shot rings out in the house of lovelessness
hollow
like the souls wandering its corridors
its corridors that are
loveless and cold
they see
the corridors see the hollow rot
caressing the bodies saying there is only one
god
it rots in me (dead) and says im alive im alive i am (dead)
a shot rings out in the house of love
lessness
a shot rings out
like a game
like a game that sees
like a game seeing thinking
who is alive who is alive who is still alive
the house is alive
its doors are like a cruel
game
they open and close and reveal the
nothingness
residing inside like a corpse rotting
with one name… -
Fassbinder at his cynical best. I’m stunned that this isn’t talked about more, it’s anything but a lesser-work, the carnival of psychologically skewed characters effecting a whodunnit suspense of sexual tension and passive hatred. The camera is truly unhinged here, with sweeping 360-degree shots and gliding motions eavesdropping on every deceitful interaction. If it wasn’t for the few accidental reflections of the crew, the ambitious camera movements would be as visually proficient as it gets. Still, even with its handful of fleeting goofs, this is one of the most morbidly compelling German films I’ve ever seen, as bleak as it is beautiful. Extra points because Anna Karina’s in it.
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I think the primary reason that Rainer Werner Fassbinder's disgust with humanity, or at least, with the damage the systems under which we live have done to humanity, is tolerable is that he includes himself in the miserable mass, never imagining that he's any better than the people he depicts. Whether explicitly, making Beware of a Holy Whore about his own monstrous behavior on a movie shoot, or more obliquely, telling the gender-swapped story of his need for control of a lover in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Fassbinder is acutely away of his own toxicity, and never for a moment imagines or suggests he's not just as unpleasant to be around as his subjects.
I thought about…
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Cold Cruel Cathartic
So, just took a dive into my first Rainer Werner Fassbinder flick, and wow, this dude knows how to spin a film. Fassbinder's visual style is like stepping into a surreal dreamscape, and the whole mood? Cold and cruel, in a strangely captivating way.
Let's talk direction – major props. The camera work is like a visual ballet; every move is intentional. And, hold up, did not see that game of Chinese Roulette coming. Twisted and suspenseful – it had me on the edge.
Fassbinder just gets it, you know? The film's got this enigmatic charm that's hard to shake off. Can't wait to explore more of his cinematic world.
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Chinese Roulette opens in a peaceful, idyllic domestic space, shot like a still life, its movement slow, its colors vibrant, its music classical, verdant trees outside the open window offering a naturalistic backdrop to this familial realm. But this calm tranquility is not our destination; this is where we depart from, it is the premise that the discourse of the film ultimately undermines. Like Lynch's camera diving down beneath the white picket fence and the red roses and the green lawn to see the ants and the dirt and the filth beneath the great American Dream, the cinematic project of Chinese Roulette is to dismantle precisely this (supposedly) peaceful domestic ideal.
The engine of the film's plot ignites…
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Ten films in, and so far Fassbinder can do no wrong. I think by now he's knocked Michael Mann off my number one spot for favourite director of all time.
"Chinese Roulette" is another effortlessly entertaining flick from Fassbinder who's able to achieve so much with a simple concept. In this instance a crippled daughter is able manipulate both her parents into arriving at their family holiday house with both their lovers in tow. The following night she decides to initiate a guessing game called Chinese roulette which creates bitterness and resentment amongst the family, leading to increasing cruelty from the daughters responses.
The film is immaculately directed by Fassbinder which comes at no great surprise. He directs the film…
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where was the news and the media when anna karina and margit carstensen were in a movie together??
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Hosted on the periphery of malice, glacial language ricochets through vacant halls. Each exchange is clandestine, a lexicon of cruelty that dances from glance to glare. The textures of a maelstrom paints over desire, a crimson macabre that details in the egregious cavity of empathy. An artifact to the condition of fruitless compassion, to gesture in fatality - the liberty of utmost apathy.
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As this film unfurls, it just gets more and more tense and dark. The camera seems to float through social interactions, catching people at their most vulnerable moments, letting their reactions and movements spell out just how toxic the environment is becoming, all culminating in the titular game played in the most cruel fashion possible.
