Sour Milk Sea. The Rainer Werner Fassbinder version of “A Doll’s House”

I was trying to find additional versions of Ibsen online to show my students and I found this 1970s TV Doll’s House, directed by the legendary postwar German film director Fassbinder. Although in German, it does not feature the notorious “German Ending” – the one insisted upon in 1880 by Hedwig Niemann-Raabe – an ending which is in some ways bleaker than the uncensored familiar ending.

The set resembles a confusing conservatory more than a Norwegian house. You are constantly looking through slightly dirty glass at what is going on. It’s a world of cruel exposure yet bewildering refraction. The set and furnishings are in a mixture of off-whites, cream and beige tones and the cast are similarly costumed. The effect of this disconcerting and unwholesome colour palate is to evoke a sense of sour milk. If you can paint a smell – then this design concept has painted the smell of dairy products that are some way past their expiration dates.

Anthony Hopkins remains my favourite Thorvald preserved on film, because he’s so sympathetic – and a sympathetic Thorvald makes for a more disturbing drama. When Claire Bloom leaves him at the end there is such puppy dog hurt and bewilderment on his face that can’t help but feel something for a man whose had to digest a brand new feminist-existentialist manifesto from scratch in less than ten minutes. A sympathetic Thorvald ensures that husbands in the audience feel implicated and therefore troubled. If Nora can leave this guy – then perhaps no marriage (no conventional patriarchal marriage) is safe.

Joachim Hansen on the other hand is very strict and stern as this Thorvald. There’s nothing very playful about him as he infantilises his wife as a squirrel and a skylark. This is a rigid insensitive soul incapable of comprehending the necessary reciprocities of anything resembling love.

Margit Carstensen on the other hand lives continuously in a trance but a trance that takes constant effort. Even when on the brink of despair you sense proximate hysterical laughter. Her (supposed) frivolity has a very deliberate feel to it as though she has a principled objection to acknowledging the realities of nineteenth-century socio-sexual politics. Carstensen was a recurrent muse for Fassbinder, starring in many of his most famous works, including The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant and Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Given Fassbinder’s own flexible and eclectic sexuality and his fascination with versatile intimacies it is no surprise to see many characters standing awkwardly too close to one another. Fassbinder interprets A Doll’s House as a world without personal space or privacy.

Some oddities. Changing the title to Nora Helmer is odd – especially when the very nature of this strange house is so foregrounded. In this production we see no tarantella dance. The effect of cutting the dance – a highlight of almost all productions, is to ensure that the repressive atmosphere is denied even momentary relief. The tarantella scene shows a Nora who is able to express herself through dance when verbal expression is denied her. Fassbinder refuses her this expressive release.

The scene with Krogstad and Kristine is also lost – a scene which allows a redemptive ending for two of the secondary characters. The merest hint of redemption for anyone is seemingly vetoed by Fassbinder.

No door is slammed. It’s true that this sickly filigree of a conservatory does not appear to be equipped with any slammable doors, but the absence of the single most expressive sound in Ibsen’s play is puzzling nonetheless.

Perhaps he removed the slam because of its fame. Because we’re anticipating it. Because we’re looking forward to it.