Imagine how much bolder and stronger — sexier, certainly — this scene from Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s Love Is Colder Than Death (’69) would be without the cigarette fetish. Lighting the fucking cigarette, extinguishing the flame, sucking in the smoke, lighting another one, blowing the smoke out…God. Props which signify nothing so much as emotional cowardice, and which actors the world over rely upon to this day. Ulli Lommel is pretty like Alain Delon but Gisela Otto is ravishing. And yet all Lommel can talk about, deadpan-style, are adolescent acts of rage and malevolence. Fascinating.