It’s hard to think of Rainer Werner Fassbinder without the actress Hanna Schygulla, the longtime muse he met at a Munich school in the mid-60s and went on to collaborate with on over 20 films and TV shows, right up until his death in 1982. At just 37 years old, the iconic filmmaker’s career was only getting started, but so was her’s. In the decades since, Schygulla loaned her haughty charms and incandescence to some of the greatest European filmmakers of their respective eras, working with Douglas Sirk, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnes Varda, Bela Tarr and, more recently, Yorgos Lanthimos, playing the unforgettable Martha Von Kurtzroc in the Oscar-winning Poor Things. Stoking Bella Baxter’s interests in critical theory from the deck of a steam ship, the role introduced a whole new generation to Schygulla’s screen presence: that blend of warmth and mischief, the attractive lack of fuss that comes with having seen-it-all before.
Sitting opposite her, the 81-year-old’s aura is as unmistakable as it is in her latest performance in Ameer Fakher Eldin’s Yunan, a production for which the actress traveled to a remote Hallig in the North Sea. The film premiered in competition the night before we met up, offering Schygulla a valedictory return to a festival where she won Best Actress for Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun almost 40 years prior. We met in the festival’s Palast, on a fourth-floor mezzanine overlooking the foyer and central stairway. At one point, a midday screening let out, prompting a crowd of onlookers to stop and take pictures. Pausing mid-sentence, with the poise of a visiting monarch, she turned and offered a smile. As she waited for a modest lunch order of Kartoffelsuppe and water, Schygulla took a few minutes to look back over a remarkable life in film.
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HANNA SCHYGULLA: This is the American Interview Magazine?
RORY O’CONNOR: Yeah. Have you been in Interview before? I figured there must be a connection there, with Fassbinder and Warhol.
SCHYGULLA: I think so. It must have been quite a while ago.
O’CONNOR: Maybe it’s in print somewhere. How was the party last night?
SCHYGULLA: I was too tired to go to the party, and it was too crowded. It was probably okay, for those who still want to party.
O’CONNOR: Fair enough.
SCHYGULLA: Did you go to the party?
O’CONNOR: I did not. But I know Ameer [Fakher Eldin] a bit. We live near each other here in Berlin. How did he approach you with the role?
SCHYGULLA: Well, he met me in Paris. It was no big deal to approach, we immediately had something to talk about. He’s easygoing.
O’CONNOR: And the role itself?
SCHYGULLA: Well, in the beginning, I thought I’m not quite that type of woman from up there, and maybe we should add some biographical things to explain or to motivate the character. And he said, “I don’t care.” He left some space where I could invent something, like why I came and why I’m living up there. But then I thought that was a complication that wouldn’t help the thing, so I renounced it.
O’CONNOR: She’s quite a tough woman. Seeing your performance in Poor Things, I feel like that character was closer to your personality. Would that be correct?
SCHYGULLA: In Poor Things, it’s closer to me, yeah. But I could also imagine being somebody who has a totally different biography than the one I had. But you’re right. Why complicate it now?
O’CONNOR: The idea of the film, this friendship between an Arab man and a German woman, was that in your mind going into it, that message of solidarity?
SCHYGULLA: No. I think that the world is global, even in the remotest parts.
O’CONNOR: So you won Best Actress here, right?
SCHYGULLA: Yeah, a long time ago.
O’CONNOR: The festival’s changed a lot, I guess. How was the atmosphere back then?
SCHYGULLA: It didn’t change so much. It’s become more global, but festivals always have people from everywhere. If you look for change, you find change. And if you look for the same, you might discover the same. I think it depends on what you focus on.
O’CONNOR: Maybe we could talk a bit about your experience with different filmmakers over the years. You’ve worked with so many of the best, some real legends.
SCHYGULLA: Well, ask me concretely whom you think about.
O’CONNOR: I was thinking about Jean-Luc Godard.
SCHYGULLA: Oh, Jean-Luc Godard. Goodness. He was a big inspiration to Fassbinder, by the way. It was very special, the meeting with Jean-Luc. It already started, and then he said, “Sorry, please go back again because I’m not ready.” That was at the lake where he lives, close to Lausanne in Switzerland. He doesn’t live anymore, but I quite liked him so I said, “I’ll just wait until he’s ready.” I did some bicycling around the lake and I got visitors. It was very special with Jean-Luc Godard, because sometimes when he directs you, he only says, “Look up to the right” or “Look down on the left.” Nothing that has to do with any interior movement, just mechanical. And why not? He knows the image he wants to get, and that leaves you the freedom to fill it with what’s in your mind at that moment. But he was quite a shy person.
O’CONNOR: And then you worked with Béla Tarr as well?
SCHYGULLA: I also worked with Béla Tarr.
O’CONNOR: I interviewed him once. He’s a tough character.
SCHYGULLA: Really?
O’CONNOR: Yeah, but I enjoyed it.
SCHYGULLA: He doesn’t do movies anymore. He didn’t want to go with the changes. And now he’s teaching at film school. Why not?
O’CONNOR: Also Agnès Varda, right?
SCHYGULLA: She’s one of my favorites, but not because of what we did together. She had been offered to do a movie on the centenary of movies. And so, Mr.Cinema was played by Michel Piccoli. And then I had a scene with Jeanne Moreau around Mr. Cinema. That was not too much of an exciting experience. I was quite disappointed about Jeanne Moreau, who always was a hero to me. I think I even did movies because of her.
O’CONNOR: Oh, really?
SCHYGULLA: I don’t know. I think she went through a difficult time in her life.
O’CONNOR: But Varda is a kind of magical person, right?
SCHYGULLA: Agnès Varda was a very spirited, gifted, and lively person. I wish I would have known her more.
O’CONNOR: You also worked with Douglas Sirk.
SCHYGULLA: Douglas Sirk? Yes, because of Fassbinder. He was a kind of father figure for him. Fassbinder adored him. That was the big thing for him, that somebody of the present movie movement would pick up on him.
O’CONNOR: Right. There’s a beautiful connection to Angst essen Seele auf, is that the German title?
SCHYGULLA: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. He was inspired by a film of Douglas with Rock Hudson.
O’CONNOR: All That Heaven Allows?
SCHYGULLA: Yes. He picked up on the idea, but the film was much less provocative and shocking than the Fassbinder version. Fassbinder went much further. Because in the film, you felt Douglas Sirk had been in Hollywood. And in Hollywood you would have to watch out for many taboos.
O’CONNOR: He had to sneak the story in there, kind of.
SCHYGULLA: Yeah. Fassbinder was a wild one. I met Fassbinder in acting school, which was some private school. We both left. I was the first one who left after a couple of weeks, and then he left too. In the beginning, I thought acting was really easy and exciting because all you had to do was imagine you’re in another kind of life. But when you have to repeat a lot, I felt it was always getting worse.
O’CONNOR: Would Fassbinder have a lot of takes?
SCHYGULLA: No. This is why it worked out very well. If he could, he would take the first take because he already had in mind the way he wanted the camera. He knew how he would put it together. He didn’t shoot [and say], “Maybe we see on the editing table how it works.” No, that he knew already.
O’CONNOR: And at that time, you were making two films a year together or something?
SCHYGULLA: Oh, yeah. Two, or even three. He went very fast—also, he was not a perfectionist. He thought, “I do it like that now, and maybe the next time I do the opposite.”
O’CONNOR: From your collaborations, is there a particular Fassbinder film that you like more than the others?
SCHYGULLA: Well, the Fassbinder film I like best is the one that I’m not in: Ali:Fear Eats the Soul. Of the ones that I’m in, I like the trio: Effi Briest, Maria Braun, and Lili Marleen. I cannot say I like Lili Marleen, but it’s quite an enterprise, having done that. He was using something that was a poisoned Nazi myth, but he wasn’t sort of demystifying it immediately. It was step by step. It was a dangerous path he was walking along.
O’CONNOR: Was there a lot of tension when that film came out?
SCHYGULLA: Yeah. There was tension, yeah.
O’CONNOR: Poor Things is a great film. Did you get to spend some time with Yorgos [Lanthimos] and Emma Stone?
SCHYGULLA: I didn’t see much of her. She had just given birth. She had her baby there, and her mother was there. But she was able to be completely free for filming. I told her, “Emma, you’ll get an Oscar for that.”
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