THE AMERICAN SOLDIER Movie Review

Der Amerikanische Soldat

If pictures like The American Soldier hadn't been followed by the flood of far more sophisticated films that he churned out throughout the remainder of the 1970s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder might have been relegated to a minor footnote in the history of modern European cinema. This shaky tribute to American noir reveals a director whose love of directors like Samuel Fuller, Nicholas Ray, and Douglas Sirk hadn't yet found its own means of expression, and therefore comes off as limp parody. It's the story of an American hit man who completes his assignments without emotion or regret, but who radiates not the existential mystery of Alain Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, but rather the self-satisfied American imperialism so prevalent in films of the Vietnam era. As social criticism, The American Soldier is sophomoric; as Fuller-esque melodrama, it's a flabby and as-yet unformed harbinger of the inspired works that would follow.

NEXT STOP … The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, In a Year of 13 Moons, Pierrot le Fou

1970 80m/C GE Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Karl Scheydt, Elga Sorbas, Jan George, Ingrid Caven, Ulli Lommel, Kurt Raab; D: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; W: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; C: Dietrich Lohmann; M: Peer Raben. VHS NYF