This woman just wants to get drunk

Every once in awhile you come across a film so different you think why can’t more filmmakers make movies like this, or take risks, or come up with totally innovative concepts that show how an art form can be stretched and re-interpreted. It’s like painting. At one time there were just pastoral landscapes and representative portraits. Then Picasso came along and overturned our pre-conceived notions of art. Well, German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger does the same with her films. Criterion Channel has released a slate of her films this month and the first I watched, Ticket of No Return (1979), is a stunner. The movie stars Tabea Blumenschein as a woman who travels to Berlin (I love the old Pan Am airline insignia). She’s all high fashion, with couture brightly colored coats, hats, dresses and heels (even in bed). But we don’t know who this woman is, and she doesn’t say a word throughout. Instead, she proceeds to where she can get her hands on the first alcoholic beverage in sight. From there it’s a non-stop, well, pub crawl, throughout the then divided city, though she remains on the western side of The Wall, which in a couple of scenes we catch glimpses of. Our woman wants to drink and drink. No alcohol is too much whether it’s beer, wine or hard liquor – alcohol is alcohol, right? It’s an insane premise and may seem absurd – well, it is absurd. But this entire plot, if you can call it that, works. Blumenschein’s stark mannerisms and at times unpredictable behavior, like where she throws a tantrum in a café, have you glued. Meanwhile, she’s repeatedly followed by three uniformly equally high fashion but strait-laced “schoolmarm” women who comment on her every move both analytically and censorially. “Women are more prone to become alcoholics than men” and after the tantrum, “Disgusting, women getting drunk in public.” A film with also some social comment (women's behavior objectified and same sex fulfillment), it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, er alcohol, but I found it absolutely exhilarating.

More recently-watched films:

Foreign Intrigue (Sheldon Reynolds 1956) starring Robert Mitchum, a film noir spy thriller set in post-war Vienna. A little stilted.

Party Girl (Nicholas Ray 1958) Great close-up of Cyd Charisse’s acting prowess as a principled woman holding her own among Chicago mobsters.

Pal Joey (George Sidney 1957) The quintessential Frank Sinatra vehicle as an unscrupulous nightclub performer squeezed between two women - Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak.

Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang 1957). A surprisingly despondent Edgar G. Robinson plays a subservient amateur artist put upon by all those in his life, and he pays the price.

The River’s Edge (Allan Dwan 1957). Tough guys Ray Milland and Anthony Quinn duke it out over, who else, a beauty played by Debra Paget in this modern-day desert western.