Ottinger’s Berlin Trilogy offers a near-perfect perspective into the Cold War critique and feminist liberation.
Following several art house retrospectives over the past few years, The Criterion Channel’s curated June lineup is highlighting the eccentric films of German auteur Ulrike Ottinger, an unsung hero of the German New Wave and forerunner of contemporary queer cinema. Ottinger’s diverse body of work consists primarily of vibrant community-focused documentaries as well as camp adaptations of various literary texts and artistic figures, including Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, and John Singer Sargent’s Madame X. It would be easy to misplace Ottinger’s intertextual filmography within the category of inaccessible intellectual fare.
But, the meandering storylines, gorgeous production design, and humorously empathetic performances at the core of each film sets Ottinger’s work apart as a cathartic and vital expression of the Cold War-era feminine experience in Germany. In particular, Ottinger’s Berlin Trilogy — comprised of the boozy and stylish character study Ticket of No Return, the carnivalesque ensemble comedy Freak Orlando, and the psychedelic satire Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press — offers a near-perfect perspective into the Cold War critique and feminist liberation at the center of her magical multi-textual films.
From the opening purchase of the titular ticket to the glass-shattering ending, Ticket of No Return kicks off the Berlin trilogy on a path of aimless self-indulgence centered on Tabea Blumenschein’s dissatisfied drunk punk protagonist known only as “She.” As Ottinger’s creative and romantic partner throughout the majority of her early career, Blumenschein perfectly channels the surrealistic and stylized tendencies of Ottinger’s aesthetic into her inebriated jaunt across Berlin. Rendering Berlin as the anxious and ambiguous epicenter of Cold War tensions through the cold grayness of desolate alleyways and early 21st-century architecture, Ottinger brilliantly foregrounds the lavish and outlandish outfits that Blumenschein wears on her bender, emphasizing the absurdity of personal expression in the midst of sociopolitical strife. Rather than sidelining the importance of individuality in the midst of a divided city, Ottinger mobilizes Ticket of No Return as a statement of personal independence and unabashed self-proclamation, as Blumenschein’s protagonist remains unapologetic for her intoxicated meandering and decadent wardrobe.
Although international films of the following decade like Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens and Bette Gordon’s Variety would engage in similar post-punk statements on personal liberation from late Cold War patriarchy, Ticket of No Return remains ahead of its time in terms of Ottinger’s witty and emotionally complex approach to personal disillusionment in the face of a scoffing heteronormative society. Rather than embodying the masses through an ensemble-centric Neorealism, Ottinger interrupts the film with a tweed suit-wearing Greek chorus made up of three women named “Accurate Statistics,” “Social Question,” and “Common Sense.”
Ticket of No Return intersperses Blumenschein’s silent drunken storyline with recitations of idioms and facts concerning self-care and alcoholism. The film​​​​​​ fuses the personal focus of a character study with the performative sociopolitical bite of satire, setting the film apart as a key statement of the New German Cinema. Even as the film concludes with a seemingly passed out protagonist being literally overrun by an unnamed mass of “normal people,” Ottinger’s final shot reveals the full scope of her humorous perspective on feminine self-confidence and political upheaval in the midst of Cold War Germany.
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