the niklashausen journey

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The Niklashausen Journey

• Rainer Werner Fassbinder
• West Germany
• German with English subtitles

On Laetare Sunday, March 24, 1476—the day winter is driven out and summer invited in—Hans Böhm (Michael König), a shepherd known for his musical performances, burns his drum in front of the assembled peasants and speaks to them of his revelation: the Mother of God has appeared and instructed him to preach to the people. Soon his preaching moves from the religious to the political, and thousands of peasants from Bavaria, Swabia, Hesse, Thuringia, and Saxony journey to see him. But while his support increases, Böhm is filled with an inarticulate dissatisfaction that can be absolved only by embracing his own self-destruction. Fassbinder links revolutionary tumult with performance art experiments and the simple grace of sheepherding in a film set on the trash-strewn streets and junkyards of Berlin in 1970. In a gesture of rebelliousness and oddball conflation of modern decadence (and youth culture) with medieval religious art, Fassbinder himself plays a character called the Black Monk, dressed in dark sunglasses and a slick black leather jacket.

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The niklashausen journey, die niklashauser fart.

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Michael Fengler

Can a small group of people start a proletarian revolution, asks the "Black Monk" in a leather jacket. The medieval shepherd, Hans Boehm, claims to have been called by the Virgin Mary to create a revolt against the church and the landowners. The "Black Monk" suggests that he would have more success if he dressed up Johanna and had her appear as the Virgin Mary.

Michael König Hanna Schygulla Rainer Werner Fassbinder Margit Carstensen Walter Sedlmayr Günther Kaufmann Kurt Raab Ingrid Caven Peer Raben Franz Maron Karl Scheydt Hanna Köhler Peter Berling Carla Egerer Michael Fengler Sigi Graue Magdalena Montezuma Elga Sorbas Ursula Strätz

Directors Directors

Rainer Werner Fassbinder Michael Fengler

Writers Writers

Editors editors.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder Thea Eymèsz

Cinematography Cinematography

Dietrich Lohmann

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Production design production design, composer composer.

Janus Film und Fernsehen WDR

Alternative Titles

Le Voyage à Niklashausen, A Viagem a Niklashauer

TV Movie Drama

Releases by Date

26 oct 1970, releases by country.

90 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by teamgal ★★★ 3

The most revolutionary aspect of THE NIKLASHAUSEN JOURNEY is that Rainer Werner Fassbinder spent government money to make a Godardian period piece that's crammed full of Marxist dogma. Many an old German woman surely died from stroke when they caught this on state-sponsored television. Seems to me that of everything Fassbinder ever made this is the work in which he went the hardest. He doesn't give a fuck what you think, he's just doing his thing. And somehow, Andy Warhol, JLG and Straub–Huillet make perfect bedfellows.

The closest Fassbinder ever got to making a Ken Russell movie.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, ranked

Review by DavidNeedToKnow ★★½

This film was often like a stage play and was still in the director's testing and discovery phase. Somehow medieval but also modern and in its way like Godard's works and clearly inspired by it. Just like Buñuel here and there. The philosophical and marxist content was interesting and the dialogues and monologues had substance. Many of the usual faces from the Fassbinder crew can be seen, but of course Hanna Schygulla stands out as always. The pacing could have been better and more dynamic wouldn't have hurt anything here. For arthouse fans.

Fassbinder films I’ve seen ranked: boxd.it/sCe9q

Review by Liz ★★★½

Elements of this are undoubtedly Godardian (especially those long takes), but this reminds me a lot more of Yoshida's Eros + Massacre in its time-flattening narrative. Like that film, Fassbinder puts the activists of the present on an equal plane with those of the past, each interacting with and feeding off of the other and learning from their mistakes. It's incredible to think that something this radical -- politically and artistically -- was produced for television.

Review by Levi ★

please Rainer get away from the french already

Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★ 2

An angry, militant film that feels like a step away from Fassbinder's previous gangster flicks although it retains the French New Wave influences. It's a film about religion and revolution told with both medieval and contemporary aspects on screen at the same time. Decidedly artsy, very heavy on political discourse and fundamentally interesting, The Niklashausen Journey is a fine film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder Ranked

Review by Sally Jane Black

Fassbinder at his angriest, most profane, most Godardian.

Review by Thomas ★★

Like many of Fassbinder´s early films, “The Niklashausen Journey” seems to be inspired by Godard, yet not his cool and playful gangster movies but his artsy, avant-garde political essay films that are far removed from a conventional, narrative-driven movie. Thematically, the film focuses on the relationship between Christianity and socialist revolution. There are some interesting ideas and images and I appreciate Fassbinder´s irreverent “I don´t give a fuck” attitude but overall, the film is too inaccessible and all over the place for me.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder movies ranked

Review by BrandonHabes ★★

THE NIKLASHAUSEN JOURNEY isn't a film. It's an acerbic political thesis that happened to be filmed that's wildly ambitious but only occasionally effective here and there. It made me reflect on comparable films that are far richer in terms of their cinematic deconstruction of religious and political systems, including Buñuel's THE MILKY WAY (1969), Jodorowsky's THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973), and Bresson's THE DEVIL, PROBABLY (1977). Lots of anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist, anti-clerical sentiment runs amok throughout, and you can tell Fassbinder wants to condemn both radical groups and the cultures that produce them. 

But I think his stridently avant-garde approach hurts him a bit, mostly because there's not a lot of cinematic offering to this experience. His soaring but uneven ideas about…

Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★½ 2

Post 1968 self doubting cinema. Among Fassbinder's most frontal and often inventive movie. It does balance his mixx of anger and defeatism of someone who seems to understand that he arrived after disaster whoe artistic gestures are limited. That suit the movie. Rich acting by his usual stock company. Co-directed by Michael Fengler.

Review by Dante ★★★★½

enough hot people spouting leftist ideology to give Jean-Luc Godard circa 1967 a serious run for his money. don't sleep on this, it's major!

Review by Adriana Scarpin ★★★★

A Viagem de Niklashauser estreava há 50 anos na Alemanha. Surpreendentemente este Fassbinder é baseado num fato histórico ocorrido na Alemanha da Idade Média com Hans Böhm, este teve uma visão da Virgem Maria em que ela o incitava a criar um levante contra a Igreja e as classes abastadas. Essa história casa muito bem com o estilo de narrativa experimental anacrônica pós-68 que os diretores fazem aqui, é basicamente uma rechamada à revolução e é tudo que eu precisava assistir hoje. DVDRip no MakingOff.

Review by LUBBY ★★★★ 1

I’ll admit that I was slow to warm up to this, but as it kept rolling I got way more into it. Some favoeite moments include one woman’s Silent Hill -ass mental breakdown about halfway through this, the scene of the three women (witches?) in Gehenna, the massacre, and especially the scene in the junkyard. Truly one of those movies that only gets wilder as it goes.

I haven’t yet seen any of Straub & Huillet’s films, but I feel like they’re probably pretty close to being like this. This is an incredibly dense movie that douses you in Marxist-Leninist theory while immersing you in its religious themes, it’s really a lot to take in, and not the kind of movie that…

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The Niklashausen Journey

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Beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema.

On Laetare Sunday, March 24, 1476 – the day winter is driven out and summer invited in – the drummer Hans Böhm (Michael König) appears in the Franconian town of Niklashausen. He is a shepherd who in the past – on similar occasions – has performed music and songs.

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The Niklashausen Journey (1970)

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Can a small group of people start a proletarian revolution, asks the "Black Monk" in a leather jacket. The medieval shepherd, Hans Boehm, claims to have been called by the Virgin Mary to create a revolt against the church and the landowners. The "Black Monk" suggests that he would have more success if he dressed up Johanna and had her appear as the Virgin Mary.

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The Niklashausen Journey

Cast & crew.

Michael König

Hanna Schygulla

Margit Carstensen

Michael Gordon

Günther Kaufmann

Leader of the farmers

• Average 5.9

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The Niklashausen Journey

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This 1970 allegory about allegory veers from intellectual exercise into emotional exhortation and blurs the line between theater and film. Nesting complex visual strategies within simpler ones, writer-directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder (who plays a monk in a motorcycle jacket) and Michael Fengler present a series of scenes that demonstrate the martyrdom of a shepherd, who’s also a performance artist and revolutionary, after his followers persuade him to abandon his sheep and take up residence in the home of a bourgeois chick who’s got a big crush on him. The story alternates between this troupe—allegorical characters within the fiction of the movie as well as the street-theater pieces they perform—and a clan of ecclesiastical and royal types who seem to spend most of their time choreographing decadent scenarios in elaborate interiors. Amazingly simple editing and sound design—most scenes are complete in one shot and use only one or two sound effects or just music in addition to the dialogue—create a minimally realist and hypertheatrical vision of class conflict and potential doom.

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The Niklashausen Journey Reviews

The story is slight, but every scene sticks with the viewer and drips with meaning.

Full Review | Aug 28, 2018

Fassbinder suggests a temporal continuum of thwarted upheaval that can only be addressed (and, thus, confronted) by way of frontal artistic attack.

Full Review | Nov 13, 2007

Amazingly simple editing and sound design -- most scenes are complete in one shot and use only one or two sound effects or just music in addition to the dialogue-- create a minimally realist and hypertheatrical vision of class conflict and potential doom.

Twisting a German tradition to his own ends, Fassbinder restyles Bohm's martyrdom as a provocateur's call to arms.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 18, 2006

Strictly for medieval shepherds on the look out for stray sheep.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | May 23, 2006

a film about absolutely nothing

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 22, 2002

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Can a small group of people start a proletarian revolution, asks the "Black Monk" in a leather jacket. The medieval shepherd, Hans Boehm, claims to have been called by the Virgin Mary to create a revolt against the church and the landowners. The "Black Monk" suggests that he would have more success if he dressed up Johanna and had her appear as the Virgin Mary.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Director, Writer

Michael Fengler

Top Billed Cast

Michael König

Hanna Schygulla

Schwarzer Mönch

Margit Carstensen

Walter Sedlmayr

Günther Kaufmann

Bauernführer

Ingrid Caven

Schreiendes Mädchen

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Original Title Die Niklashauser Fart

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Venice title ‘don’t cry, butterly’ sells to cj cgv vietnam, ‘nickel boys’ review: film version of colson whitehead’s acclaimed novel is flawed but artistic journey to hell and back — telluride film festival.

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Whitehead’s story is inspired by the Dozier School, a Florida reform school that was in business for 111 years and had a horrifying history in the Jim Crow south. Authorities eventually discovered 100 unmarked graves, the resting place of many unreported deaths that occurred there due to unimaginable treatment, violent, sexually and otherwise, to the boys, particularly Black youths, sent there. In Nickel Boys we meet enthusiastic and studious young man Elwood ( Ethan Herisse ), a hopeful soul, who despite more dire circumstances is trying to lift himself up, even with uninspiring white teachers. One particularly haunting scene early on sees him quietly flipping the pages of a recycled book from a past white student who had drawn a flipbook-style depiction of a lynching on the bottom of every page.

Elwood is proud to have been accepted at a college but in a life-altering twist of fate accepts a ride from a man who gets stopped by cops because it was a stolen car. They immediately charge Elwood and send him to Nickel Academy, a fictional version of Dozier. There he meets the far more cynical, less wide-eyed Turner ( Brandon Wilson ) and they form a friendship, but it is a rocky road indeed as the film spans the early ’60s to 2010, with three different actors playing Elwood during the course of the film ( Daveed Diggs is the older version but the actual identity is a story point that won’t be revealed here). Rather than being driven by more linear plot development, Ross lets it play out in more melancholy fashion, often in banal ways, but also intercutting a lot of archival footage from Martin Luther King Jr. to Apollo 8 (you can’t take the documentarian out of Ross in this film), mixed with a busy sound design ala Malick but minimal score. It’s a mixed bag.

Curiously, at two points in his film, Ross runs scenes (including its opening credits) from Stanley Kramer’s brilliant Oscar-winning 1958 black-and-white classic, The Defiant Ones , in which Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier are chained together before making a joint escape. This is meant somehow as a putdown on the way Hollywood has told Black stories in the past, or if it is some sort of connection Ross sees to the one he is telling here, it wasn’t clear to me, at least. But maybe that’s the point.

Acting-wise, both lead actors Herisse and Wilson playing their characters Elwood and Turner for the bulk of the film, are excellent in every respect. So too is the great Aunjunue Ellis-Taylor as Elwood’s grandma, even if she doesn’t get as much screen time as you would like, and with most of that forcing her to deliver her lines straight to camera and those unseen people on the other side.

Props to Ross for taking artistic leaps and big risks, even if, for me at least, they don’t completely pay off. It will provoke conversation at a time when racism has reared its ugly head again, this time with some at the highest levels of government. At the very least it has inspired me to go out and get Whitehead’s book, and maybe even take another look at The Defiant Ones .

Producers are Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Joslyn Barnes and David Levine.

Title: Nickel Boys Festival: Telluride Distributor: Orion/Amazon MGM Release date: October 25, 2024 Director: RaMell Ross Screenwriters: RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes Cast: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjunue Ellis-Taylor, Daveed Diggs, Hamish Linklater , Fred Hechinger Rating: PG-13 Running time: 2 hr 20 mins

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