Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

The prolific New German Cinema director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's early (1970) noir "Der Amerikanische Soldat" (An American Soldier) seems less an homage to Bogart (as Godard's "À bout de souffle" is) or to "This Gun for Hire" (which Melville's "Le samourai" arguably is) than to Eddie Constatine's Lemme Caution in Godard's (1965) "Alphaville," perhaps because so much of the film takes place in a convertible driving around. At least the far more romantic "Alphaville" is the (better) film that kept popping into my mind while watching Fassbinder's.

There is absolutely no character development in "The American Soldier," and practically no concern about the motivation of the characters. The title character Ricky (who is unlike Bogart's Rick in "Casablanca," except in headgear) left Germany for America with a father with whom he is no longer in touch when he was fifteen. He is supposedly a veteran of the Vietnam war, but I cannot discern the import of that for the movie or for the character. (Can it be that Fassbinder was supplying a motivation for the vocation of cold-blooded killing machine? It is unlike Fassbinder to bother with motivation, and the Vietnam War background does not lead anywhere in particular.)

Ricky has returned to Munich with a contract for three killings with payment withheld until all are complete. He checks into a hotel room that has been booked for him, orders a bottle of Ballantine's, and, after his first killing, orders a prostitute. The policeman on the case sends his girlfriend (and does not like the result...)

There is a lot of talk (including a barmaid sitting on the edge of the bed in which the contract killer is having unpassionate sex, telling a variation of the story of Fassbinder's (1974) "Ali: Fear eats the soul"). There is an extended scene in a seedy bar, as in most Fassbinder films. There are short bursts of violence, long stretches of ennui, and a ludicrously drawn-out ending. It is a long 75 (not 80 as listed) minutes.

A hallmark of the New German Cinema was very oblique-angled shooting, however, he camera placements throughout "The American Soldier" are static and it quite conventional, except for staying back in the final long take. The film is badly underlit, or at least the video transfer is. The images are not noirish with menacing heavy shadows. Rather, there are long static shots in which the characters are all but invisible).

The film is in black-and-white, as cinema noir works should be. Except for a peculiar song, the film is in German (Ricky's fluency being attributable to his having grown up in Bavaria).

Micellaneous Notes

Fassbinder continued to churn out very alienated and highly stylized films throughout the 1970s, many of them (especially Ali, Fear Eats the Soul and "Fox and his Friends") much better than "The American Soldier"; I sort of like one of the two films Fassbinder made in English ("Despair"; (based on a Vladimir Nabokov novel); the other is "Querelle"(based on a Jean Genet novel) has its moments of hilarity which may or may not have been intended; the bar singer who can't sing in "Querelle"; is Jeanne Moreau chanting "Every man kills the thing he loves";).

The maid is played by fellow writer/director (and then-wife of director Volker Schlöndorff) Margarethe von Trotta, the character played by Elga Sorbas is given the name of another German director, Rosa von Praunheim, Karl Scheydt plays Ricky.

This is one of the Fassbinder movies I'm writing about on the way to a list of best post-WWII German movies. "The American Soldier" clearly will not be on the list. It is difficult to judge any of the actors' performances, since Fassbinder was stylizing and manipulating other Brechtian "alienation devices," not making a movie with any attempt to seem realistic. (That the movie is not about a soldier and not about someone who is American is only the start of alienation of expectations.) The ending is particularly arbitrary, and the histrionics in it go on and on and then on some more (10 minutes is a very slow death for a screen shoot-out).

If I have to spend time with a hit man, I'd rather it be the cat-loving Alain Delon in Melville's "Le samourai" or the bushido-ethiced Forrest Whittaker in "Ghost Dog" than Scheydt's Ricky.


Recommended: No

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age