Synopsis
Living together in an isolated house, three women go to murderous lengths to keep strangers out of their private retreat.
Willow Springs
Director
Producer
Writer
Editors
Cinematography
Sound
Genre
Releases by Date
Theatrical limited
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Canada
Theatrical
03 Apr 1973
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Germany
Releases by Country
Canada
28 Oct 1973
- Theatrical limited Festival international du cinéma en 16mm de Montréal
Germany
03 Apr 1973
- Theatrical
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fascinating, poetic… and will certainly not be to all tastes. a bit unsure how I feel about the way the film makes meaning, especially some of the associative editing, but the compositions are fabulous, the tangled mise en scene of longshots of arid California scrub brush vs. theatrical posing of actors amid barren or otherwise deconstructed interiors. Schroeter's staging heightens actors' gestures to produce some really strong images that seem to luxuriate on the screen and in time. the way that music is used somehow finds this weird sweet spot for me despite the fact that if you were to describe it to me on paper, I'd probably be primed to hate it. and the basic setup of three women inviting men to their death in the middle of nowhere, USA just really appealing.
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Like some bewildering, beguiling mix of early Fassbinder, Paul Morrissey, the Zanzibar Group stuff, and maybe even some, like, Michael Snow thrown in (I was also reminded of Michael Rappaport's somewhat amateurish but similarly endearing first feature Casual Relations, released the same year), while remaining 100% Schroeter.
It almost feels like it should be a shambolic mess, but somehow I found its hypnotic stiltedness rather mesmerizing. It probably helps that it's only, like, 75 minutes long. This being Schroeter, there's lots of opera of course, but also a very catchy calypso tune.
It isn't nearly as accomplished as Deux, but it has a certain odd charm all its own (I get the sense that Schroeter might have gotten better as…
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Fashion magazine poses and feminist provocations at a far-flung roadside outpost in the unforgiving desert; the Andrew Sisters’ jaunty “Rum and Coca-Cola” calypso transformed into an enchantingly malevolent siren’s song. “Would you care to come in? Would you like a kiss?” Like a languorous daze, or maybe as if Duras were suffering a mild case of heat stroke; a film like a fata morgana glistening over the barren sands, each of the three temptresses as if trapped in some private, distant world. Whatever spell Magdalena’s cast to both woo her victims and keep her underlings in thrall almost infecting the viewer as well; a horrifyingly lonely film, “the realization that people only love their own reflection.” If Magdalena’s cloistered little women’s realm ultimately falls apart, she still struts proudly off into desert’s vast expanse, an operatic swell on the soundtrack suggest triumph enough in the way she’s kept that “moral law” within her intact through it all.
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Werner Schroeter was to make a film about Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol, co-produced by German television station ZDF, yet he soon lost interest after his arrival in California. The Manson murders were in the air, and provided their own, alternative inspiration. Taking a literal detour from Hollywood, Schroeter drove out to a ghost town near Rosamond known as Willow Springs, where in just two weeks he shot the only film he would make in the United States. It concerns a trio of women—Magdalena, the high priestess, Christine, ethereal and remote, and Ila, servile and practically mute—who rob and kill men who pass through their remote corner of the Mojave; their interactions turn fraught with the arrival of Michael, a…
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Incredibly bewildering film. Uhhhh a bunch of queens pose & dress up & obviously transcend space & time. Arty farty & impenetrable. Poetically glacial art queerness. Probably 90% not people’s “thing” but I dunno, I like gay/weird shit like this.
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“Nunca amei ninguém, a não ser a criança que morreu dentro de mim antes de nascer. Desde então sei que a vida é uma onda com a qual você é levado, sempre tentando não se afogar só para acabar morrendo depois de tudo, e que minha única segurança está dentro de mim. Toda tentativa em encontrar algo fora ou ter expectativas com alguém terminou na dor de compreender. Compreender que as pessoas amam apenas as reflexões de si mesmas.”
[English version]
“I never loved anyone, except the child who died inside me before It was born. Since then I know that life is a wave that you are taken with, always trying not to drown just to end up dying after all, and that my only security is within me. Every attempt to find something out or to have expectations with someone ended in the pain of understanding. Understanding that people love only reflections of themselves.” -
Wow, taste really does change rapidly in some cases... I tried to watch this like a year ago and couldn't finish it and never really felt like doing so after not being blown away by the other two Schroeter films I watched, but this time I could not comprehend myself from back then anymore! While it does have its share of theatricality (and frankly the dialogue and delivery are fully wacky at some points) it's entirely different from Malina which was on the edge and shrill at all times. Here we have a cinema of exhalation and glances. I just mentioned the dialogue but there's actually not even that much of it. What we do know of the minimal narrative…
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J'imagine Denis Côté le sourire aux lèvres, en train de programmer ça pour sa carte blanche en s'imaginant le monde souffrir pendant la projection.
C'est un peu comme Antonioni rencontre Andy Warhol mais tourné par des étudiants. Dans le fond, ça ressemble à un John Waters repris par une troupe de théâtre expérimental.
Ceci dit, y a un des étudiants qui savait réellement cadrer. Y avait du Jack Cardiff dans le nez, par moment. On va y donner ça. Pour ce qui est du perchiste, par contre, c'était un brin plus difficile. Mais... à bien y penser, c'est Werner Schroeter qui a tout fait faque ça se peut qu'il ait tourné les coins ronds dans quelques départements.
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O amadorismo do filme é bem evidente, suas qualidades plásticas também. O amadorismo também pode ser entendido, de certa forma, como improviso, e isso se converte nas mãos do Schroeter em liberdade, uma excitação que está no descobrimento daquele espaço, de como filmá-lo, que está entre o calculado da composição e o inesperado, como se aproveitar das ruínas dessa cidade fantasma, ou o surgimento do sol no canto de um quadro, evento determinado pelo movimento da câmera, portanto, calculado, mas que continua tendo um efeito de surpresa resplandecente.
Não só de belas roupas e maquiagens; Schroeter usa a luz de forma muito hábil, aqui temos luz solar, lâmpadas e velas. O céu é mostrado em um azul cristalino, mas em…
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Schroeter is someone who makes films like one would attach notes and scraps of text next to each other and call them a novel and Willow Springs is the 'Big American' one in his oevre. Faulkneresque modernism and sub par crime tropes pour into each other and give multiple perspectives onto decaying archetypes of the West, contrasted with his trademark Italo-germanic operatic camp. 80 minutes of rapture that make you forget all those shitty Wenders flicks that tried to do something similar but never succeeded. A grainy 35 mm shot of a road in the desert sprinkled with lens flares and a context free voice over from the depths of some unknown intrigue is somehow all it takes.
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i’m always saying this but schroeter is definitely one of the greatest formalists to ever do it. what a gorgeous film.