"Whity" is the mulatto butler of the dysfunctional Nicholson family in the American Southwest in 1878. The father, Ben Nicholson, has an attractive young wife, Katherine, and two sons by a previous marriage: the homosexual Frank and the feeble-minded Davy. Whity tries to carry out all their orders, however demeaning, until various family members ask him to kill some of the others.
Direction
Fassbinder shoots a western like Douglas Sirk on a bender.
Acting
Günther Kaufmann's simmering restraint in an unhinged film.
Cinematography
Spanish desert standing in for Arizona, gloriously fake.
Director
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Fassbinder shot this back-to-back with 'Beware of a Holy Whore' using the same Spanish location and crew, essentially as a favor to keep the production going.
The film was rejected by German critics and barely released; Fassbinder considered it a failure, though it's now seen as a crucial bridge between his early gangster films and later Sirkian melodramas.
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