Editing Querelle (section)

== Production ==
According to Genet's biographer [[Edmund White]], ''Querelle'' was originally going to be made by [[Werner Schroeter]], with a scenario by [[Burkhard Driest]], and produced by Dieter Schidor. However, Schidor could not find the money to finance a film by Schroeter, and therefore turned to other directors, including [[John Schlesinger]] and [[Sam Peckinpah]], before finally settling on Fassbinder. Driest wrote a radically different script for Fassbinder, who then "took the linear narrative and jumbled it up". White quotes Schidor as saying "Fassbinder did something totally different, he took the words of Genet and tried to meditate on something other than the story. The story became totally unimportant for him. He also said publicly that the story was a sort of third-rate police story that wouldn't be worth making a movie about without putting a particular moral impact into it".<ref name=White615-616 />

Schroeter had wanted to make a black and white film with amateur actors and location shots, but Fassbinder instead shot it with professional actors in a lurid, expressionist color, and on sets in the studio. Edmund White comments that the result is a film in which, "Everything is bathed in an artificial light and the architectural elements are all symbolic."<ref name=White615-616>White, Edmund. ''Genet: A Biography''. Alfred A. Knopf 1993, pp. 615-616</ref>

Stylistically, the film is inspired heavily by the works of erotic artist [[Tom of Finland]]. Besides costume design and hair styles, actors were posed in silhouettes and scenarios common to Tom of Finland artwork. "The director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took obvious cues from Tom of Finland in his 1982 film adaptation of Jean Genet’s novel Querelle. As the eponymous lead, actor Brad Davis was Tom’s sailor come to life."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Tierney |first1=Paul |title=TOM OF FINLAND: Light and shade |url=https://www.tomoffinland.org/19001-2/ |website=TOM OF FINLAND FOUNDATION |access-date=6 March 2024}}</ref>