SORRY, TOM ROBINSON. BOTH “BITTER TEARS’ AND “TAXI ZUM KLO” ARE IN COLOR!
Written, directed by, and starring Frank Ripploh, Taxi zum Klo (“Taxi to the Toilet”) is a groundbreaking semi-autobiographical German film that candidly explores the dual life of a gay man in West Berlin at the dawn of the 1980s.
In the city late tonight
Double feature, black and white(sic)
Bitter Tears and Taxi to the Klo
Find a bar, avoid a fight
Show your papers, be polite
Walking home with nowhere else to go
Tom Robinson “Atmospherics” from the 1984 album “War Baby”
Singer/songwriter Tom Robinson immortalized this movie in his song “Atmospherics: ListentotheRadio” co-written with Peter Gabriel) from his 1984 album “Hope and Glory.” He pairs it with Fassbinder’s “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.” Presumably, for rhyming, Gabriel and Robinson say that both movies are in black and white. Sorry, guys, they are both in color.
Similar in theme and storyline to Ron Peck’s “Nighthawks” (see above), the protagonist Frank (played by Ripploh) is a Berlin schoolteacher by day and an openly gay man by night, navigating the tension between his professional respectability and his uninhibited personal life. Frank is a dedicated and charismatic teacher, but after hours, he cruises public toilets, bars, and sex clubs for anonymous encounters—and Ripploh, the director, films these scenes with a raw, documentary-like realism. He begins a relationship with Bernd, a more domestically inclined man who desires monogamy and stability. Frank struggles with fidelity and the constraints of a conventional relationship. Like “Nighthawks”, the film explores identity, sexual freedom, intimacy, and the psychological toll of living between two worlds. It’s both a celebration of queer desire and a critique of the emotional isolation that can accompany sexual liberation, and its sexual candor was shocking at the time.
Unfortunately, the film marked not the beginning but the end of an era. By the time it was shown at the New York Film Festival in 1981, several cases of AIDS (or as it was known then, GRID: gay-related immune deficiency) had already been reported. Seen through this new lens, Ripploh’s leading character (himself) seemed grossly irresponsible. This incredible piece of bad timing, together with the death of Fassbinder and with him, the New German Cinema in 1982, put a massive strain on Ripploh’s career. He only made two more films – one of which was a poorly received sequel – before dying of cancer in 2002 at the age of 51.
