"Klassenverhältnisse" or "Class Relations" is a West German 2-hour film by French filmmakers Huillet and Straub and they are known to make movies in all kinds of languages, such as English, Italian, French or German like this one. It is one of their more known works for sure and the lead actors here are Christian Heinisch and Nazzareno Bianconi, two actors that never appeared in another film again and are this pretty much entirely unknown day in the 21st century. The exact opposite is Mario Adorf, one of the most successful and most prolific Swiss actors ever, who played in Academy Award winning films. This film here is from 1984, so it is over 30 years old already, but by then black-and-white films were definitely a rarity already and here this choice for lack of color was probably a creative decision. But it adds almost nothing I must say.
In general, I felt this was a very uninspired work. There is a decent moment here and there like the boy being sad about losing the only picture of his parents, but these moments are hurt by the extremely wooden line delivery by all the actors, especially lead actor Heinisch. I cannot imagine that experienced filmmakers like Huillet and Straub would not have recognized it or cast him, so they are probably the ones to blame as they wanted it that way. The result is a film that feels like a theater play for the most part, but I must say this problem with the dialogues as well as the extremely boring and dragging story made this almost a painful watch. And even beyond the talking, with focus on the body language, the acting isn't really any better. There is no denying that Huillet and Straub are not easy to find an access to as an audience member, but if you start with this film here from their body of work, you will probably have zero interest in checking out another work from the duo. I was genuinely bored here and I could not wait for the film to end. Highly not recommended.
In general, I felt this was a very uninspired work. There is a decent moment here and there like the boy being sad about losing the only picture of his parents, but these moments are hurt by the extremely wooden line delivery by all the actors, especially lead actor Heinisch. I cannot imagine that experienced filmmakers like Huillet and Straub would not have recognized it or cast him, so they are probably the ones to blame as they wanted it that way. The result is a film that feels like a theater play for the most part, but I must say this problem with the dialogues as well as the extremely boring and dragging story made this almost a painful watch. And even beyond the talking, with focus on the body language, the acting isn't really any better. There is no denying that Huillet and Straub are not easy to find an access to as an audience member, but if you start with this film here from their body of work, you will probably have zero interest in checking out another work from the duo. I was genuinely bored here and I could not wait for the film to end. Highly not recommended.