By the light of a full moon Patricia (Alexandra Curtis) goes to Vienna for a D.A.F. show. When she arrives at the ticket window she finds that she has no money. Heartbroken, Patricia weeps tears of blood. She goes to the back entrance of the venue to try and sneak in where she happens upon a grisly murder. Now Patricia is being pursued by a gang of killers through Vienna’s club scene.
Das Gold Der Liebe (1983) is Eckhart Schmidt’s thematic sequel to Der Fan (1982) with which it forms a part of a loose knit trilogy. Das Gold Der Liebe represents a more abstract approach to the themes present in Der Fan; trading in narrative for dream logic and symbolism. Schmidt is more interested in mood, atmosphere and image than he is in plot, character or causality.
Das Gold Der Liebe pulsates with New Wave music as Patricia navigates the Vienna night life. Das Gold Der Liebe is Schmidt’s After Hours (1985). Every episode is a new encounter with a new space and a new cast of characters, each more bizarre and dangerous than the last. The film becomes progressively more episodic until it becomes wholly abstract. The final twenty minutes are pure, free-associated montage.
Schmidt’s film paints with all the colors of an urban environ at night. Pitch blacks give way to pink neon as Patricia runs from alleyways to discotheques in a blind panic. She dances then she’ll run again straight into a man’s suicide. Das Gold Der Liebe is a film drenched in fear of the unknown. A film completely committed to recording teenaged paranoia and angst.
When Patricia wakes from the nightmare at the end of the film Schmidt suggests she survived rather than that it was just a dream. Das Gold Der Liebe is, after all, a film whose abstractions invite the audience to engage in a kind of collective dream wherein Patricia is less a character and more a surrogate. Das Gold Der Liebe is a nightmare of adolescent sexuality and mortality.
Unlike Der Fan, Das Gold Der Liebe is not nor has it ever been readily available. Crappy VHS rips can be found on the internet but none of them do the picture justice. Nor do they feature the D.A.F. music cues or proper english subtitles. Das Gold Der Liebe has become a lost masterpiece by one of the great unsung directors of the seventies and eighties.
