The great cinematographer Michael Ballhaus immediately imbues the deceptively flat environment that director Rainer Werner Fassbinder constructs for his characters in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant with dimension. The film is layered with imagery, and the unusual camera angles are eye-catching throughout, beginning with the first shot, where the spectator’s attention is drawn to the cats sitting on the stairs, with a graphic red-and-white-printed couch in the distance.
For a film that is arguably about perspective, specifically female perspective, a master of space, shape, and technique such as Ballhaus is essential to its complex make-up. Ballhaus’ visual nuances are every bit as essential to the shading of human behavior as the mise-en-scène, the acting style, and the directorial vision. All of these seemingly disparate elements conspire to create the impression of a whole woman, as filtered through the lens of Fassbinder’s anarchical imagination.