In May of 1978 the German actor Armin Meier took his own life in the flat he had shared with his fellow countryman and film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The two men had been lovers for the previous three years. The film In a Year of 13 Moons was completed three months after Meier’s death. It follows the tormented transsexual Elvira (Volker Spengler) during the four days leading up to her suicide.
Filmed in Frankfurt, Germany and made in only a couple of weeks, In a Year of 13 Moons was undoubtedly prompted by this specific set of circumstances and is Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s response to Armin Meier’s death. He wrote, directed, produced, and edited the film. A most intimate of melodramas/tragedies, In a Year of 13 Moons is Fassbinder’s most honest, most personal, and most emotional work in a prolific career that spanned nearly four decades and included more than 40 feature films, 24 plays, two television serials, three short films, and four video productions.
As Rainer Werner Fassbinder was to subsequently say to his assistant editor Juliane Lorenz, “If I hadn’t made this film, I would have had to kill myself, too.” She feels that In a Year of 13 Moons added four years to Fassbinder’s life. He was to die in 1982 at the age of 37.
In a Year of 13 Moons is a haunting, often deeply disturbing tale of futile love whilst meditating upon the subject of sexual identity. The film’s protagonist, Erwin / Elvira Weishaupt has impulsively undergone a sex change operation in pursuit of her love for property developer Anton Saitz (Gottfried John) whom she had met while working in the butchery business and who had told Erwin that “he’d love him if he were a woman.”You are left with the firm belief that this sex change is something that is destined to fail from the outset.
In the last few days of Elvira’s life, we bear witness to a reconstruction of both his and her past, as well as her conflicted present. There is, for example, an incredibly graphic slaughterhouse sequence which is accompanied by some powerful text from the hugely influential German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. There is also the touching relationship in the here and now that Elvira has with Zora, played with incredible sensitivity by Ingrid Cavan.
For all of the extreme despair, even cynicism that is prevalent within In a Year of 13 Moons, there is also dark humour to be found in the film. This is probably most true in the scene where Anton Saitz and his cronies are watching a VHS copy of the 1955 Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin musical comedy on a small television screen and together with Elvira recreate one of the film’s dance scenes.
In a Year of 13 Moons also has an incredible soundtrack – chosen by Fassbinder himself – which includes music from Roxy Music, Gustav Mahler, Nino Rota, Suicide, and the American singer Connie Francis closing out the film with her reading of ‘Schöner fremder Mann.’
Complete with extensive Extras material, In a Year of 13 Moons is now available to own on DVD and Blu-Ray for the very first time in the UK.
