WORLD ON A WIRE (Welt am Draht) – made for TV A
Cologne, Munich, Paris (Pt I 99 mi, Pt II 106 mi) January – March 1973 d: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1973):
“I directed a series of two one-and-a-half-hour segments based on a novel by Daniel F. Galouyé. It’s a very beautiful story called WORLD ON A WIRE that depicts a world where one is able to make projections of people with a computer. And of course that leads to the uncertainty of whether someone is himself a projection, since in this virtual world the projections resemble reality. Perhaps another larger world made us as a virtual one? In this sense it deals with an old philosophical model, which here takes on a certain horror.”
One of the most unique works over the course of Fassbinder’s entire career, his only venture into science fiction, where this may be the very first Virtual Reality movie, though it was readily explored on sci-fi TV shows like Star Trek (1966 – 1969) or Doctor Who (1963 – 1989). This was also made for German TV, which is mindblowing in itself, as there is simply nothing else out there like this on TV, either before or since. Some may find this excessively slow, as there’s no action to speak of for the first two hours, really only showing up in the finale sequence, yet this continually holds the viewer’s attention by the sheer boldness of the subject matter and the mind-altering production values used by Fassbinder, filtering nearly every shot through doorways, long hallways, frosted windows, glass fishbowls, peeking through a hole in the wall or around some object, where there are multiple reflections throughout caused by the incessant or one might say obsessive use of mirrors. Only CHINESE ROULETTE (1976) comes close to using this kind of dazzling, shooting-through-the-Looking Glass stylization, both movies shot by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus. In terms of look, this film most closely resembles the mannequin acting style of THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (1972), where naked or fashionably dressed characters have a tendency to stare off into empty space, which in this film works excessively well, especially because it is projecting an artificially designed virtual world that contains no signs of human life, as it’s all a computerized reproduction.
Adaptated by Fassbinder and Fritz Müller-Scherz from a 1964 Daniel F. Galouyé novel Simulacron 3, where computers can create projections of people, leading one to wonder if they, themselves, are just a projection? This is a paranoid, ALPHAVILLE (1965)-style, corporate-controlled world of super computers where the company director mysteriously commits suicide, but not before muttering one of the prevalent themes of the film, “You are nothing more than the image others have made of you,” referring to the co-opting of his brilliant creation by an all-controlling inside elite, where programmed individuals are indistinguishable from actual humans. The powerful interests of the U.S. Steel corporation intervenes and wants to use the successor, Klaus Löwitsch as Fred Stiller, to manipulate the international markets, as the artificial computer design so exactly replicates our own world that the computer has the ability to accurately predict future trends before they happen. He meets Eva Vollmer, Mascha Rabben, the daughter of the deceased former director, and the two begin to realize that they may be artificial, controlled by a higher intelligence, their knowledge of which could cause a threat to those actually in control, so it is a world where love is threatened by the repressed police state. Can humans prevail? Initially shot on 16 mm, now blown up to 35 mm, this is riveting from start to finish, adding improbable flourishes of dark humor, simply a stunning, highly original and unusual film, with Fassbinder regulars Adrian Hoven, Ivan Desny, Günter Lamprecht, Margit Carstensen, Ingrid Caven, Ulli Lommel, Kurt Raab, and even a brief appearance by Gottfried John.
Certainly one prevalent theme is the Third Reich dream of world domination, only using a behind the scenes business model to accomplish what the German Army couldn’t achieve militarily. Whoever controls the computers controls the world, including a Virtual World of people who are all prisoners in this alternate world, like the most brilliantly designed gulag imaginable, as all of the artificial creations are programmed to work solely to benefit and improve the lives of those living at the highest level, the real humans, creating a Virtual Reality society that remains a METROPOLIS (1927) designed underground world, where captive artificial slaves can never escape to the higher ground. Fassbinder beautifully enhances this Nazi design as only he can, through a staged musical production in a beer hall, actually the Alcazar in Paris, where Solange Pradel performs her smoky Marlene Dietrich renditions of “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have” and “Lili Marleen,” sung to the shadowed images of marching boots. Actually much of the futuristic design of the film was shot inside shopping malls, upscale hotels, and in the streets of Paris and Munich, adding that 70’s impersonalized, avant garde, corporate glass-windowed skyscraper look that defined Alan J. Pakula’s modernist THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974) a year later, also using an oblique and radically abstract electronic score by Gottfried Hüngsberg that reflects psychic distress, but also a clever use of Wagner’s Liebestod, synthesized Bach, Strauss, and Peter Green’s strangely hypnotic “Albatross.” Much of the first half introduces the viewer to the concept of a simulated world, while the second half shows Stiller growing ever more suspicious and paranoid, feeling continuously threatened, like a rat in a maze, as if he’s being hunted down by the controllers at the highest levels.
Much of the narrative centers around people who simply disappear from reality, people that Stiller remembers, but everyone else has been programmed to forget, wiping that memory off the face of the earth, even in police and newspaper reports, except it still exists in Stiller’s memory, making him think after awhile that he’s the one going crazy since no one else recollects his version of events. This is also a brilliant depiction of the vulnerability (and need) of outsiderism, showing how the State can easily program reality to reflect the propagandized views of the masses, where anyone who doesn’t conform to those views feels particularly powerless and isolated, subject to police arrest for becoming a threat to the stability of society, which almost perfectly resembles the real life fate of currently imprisoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former head of the Russian oligarchy and the wealthiest man in the country before Russian President Vladimir Putin returned the nation to its police state origins, not to mention former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko who was assassinated by radioactive poisoning in 2006 allegedly by a Russian secret agent while Litvinenko was living in political asylum. As outlandish as that sounds, that’s effectively the story here, as Stiller literally falls from grace in the corporate hierarchy and begins to see how he’s being used and manipulated by higher powers, how he’s taking the fall for their crimes, where his name is being posted on television news reports as a murderer to explain the strange disappearance of people. Barbara Valentin is exquisite as the voluptuous corporate secretary who appears to be a virtual projection of the manager’s dreams and desires, also there are extraordinary set designs for party sequences, indoor swimming pools, and beer halls, where ironically the music of Elvis Presley blares out to a programmed virtual world of utter conformity, where society is in such lockstep they actually resemble the horrified depiction of zombies in horror movies. From this State controlled world domination, can humans survive? This is a beautifully staged theatrical rendition on the question of free will, where the entire planet appears to be an artificially designed mirror reflection of the real world.
