RW Fassbinder: C/D, S/D, Y/DA-Y/DA

'cause it's never about, you know, the movies.

"Not this crude matter...but think I that appeal it still has."

CLASSIC

"Feel the WRATH-uh of AlexANDUH-PLATZ-UH!"

search:
Merchant of the Four Seasons
Ali: Fear Eats The Soul
Fox And His Friends
Effi Briest
The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant
The Marriage of Maria Braun
The Third Generation
In A Year of 13 Moons
Lili Marleen

Despair is his only English language film.

Lola, Veronika Voss and The Stationmaster's Wife got some attention in the United States during the early 80s, but they're a bit slicker and less emotionally rich than his mid-to-late 70s prime (above).

Berlin Alexanderplatz is the masterpiece, an eight (?) part TV miniseries based on Alfred Doblin's novel from the 1930s

search: lola, fear eats the soul, merchant of four seasons; destroy: lili marlene, the american soldier, chinese roulette

Fassbinder would have been 60 y.o. today. Hooray, I guess.

oh and 'satan's brew' is awesome.

mother kusters goes to heaven
Has anyone since the other German movie with a similar title?

Me too, Ken. Did you see Alexanderplatz there? The two lead actors showed up at the end of the screening.

The only two RWFs I really can't stand (I've seen over 30)are "Querelle" (drugs do take their toll) and "Satan's Brew" (wacky farce was not his forte, and this is the painful evidence).

Talk about "unhappiness porn." Actually I thought this one was pretty hot. (Chastity does take its toll.)

ihttp://www.einhorn-film.at/filme_qrst/satansbraten_1.jpg

You know, we attempted to do this once but they had a cap on how many movies you could rent out at one time at V1deo 2 G0 and slowly but surely the place's actually very impressive collection of RWF films started disappearing...so we kind of meh'ed it off and bogarted another director's collection instead. Lili Marleen is probably the one I like best when I think about it and force myself to decide.

big dvd release for half of his films pretty soon.

This is good news, cf. the first half of my post! When I go back to Amherst maybe we can work on completing our goal now.

as yet no-one's done 'the third generation' fer example.

http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/index.php?c=y&s=c3081b19d9971d2ee5fc791fddcadc2c

Querelle
Veronika Voss
Lola
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Despair
In a Year with 13 Moons
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Bolwieser
Chinese Roulette
Satan’s Brew
I Only Want You to Love Me
Fear of Fear
Faustrecht der Freiheit
Mother Küsters’ Trip to Heaven
Effi Briest
Fear Eats the Soul
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
The Merchant of Four Seasons
Pioneers in Ingolstadt
The American Soldier
Beware of a Holy Whore
Rios Das Mortes
Gods of the Plague
Katzelmacher

kudos man.

it's fucking 28 hours long.

Veronika Voss
Lola
Despair
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Bolwieser
Chinese Roulette
I Only Want You to Love Me
Faustrecht der Freiheit
Effi Briest
Fear Eats the Soul
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
The Merchant of Four Seasons
Pioneers in Ingolstadt
The American Soldier
Beware of a Holy Whore
Rios Das Mortes
Gods of the Plague
Katzelmacher

natch it was made for tv.

Whatever, ppl be having their rather ridiculous strawmen shocker.

-- Dr Morbius (wjwe...), May 5th, 2006.

dada otm, this is one of those occasions when you can safely ignore a famously egocentric cokehound.

I can see why he'd say he preferred it to be watched in larger chunks, though but there can be logistical difficulties with that (ie I'm hoping the movie theatre gave intermissions so viewers didn't have to miss 5 minute bits and pieces of the movie if they had to pee sometime during the 8 hours--and also for those of us who can hold it, so we don't have to miss parts of the movie for ppl getting up and down constantly!).

This should put paid to that little statistic.

Related question: I swore I saw a 'Berlin Alexanderplatz' DVD box set somewhere in a shop, but all searches on Amazon come up blank. Did I dream this up? Any idea when that might happen?

IT IS A TV SERIES

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/003110.html

esp. Chinese Roulette

this compilation is outstanding

on the Alexanderplatz Criterion box

How did we talk about movies before we had polls.

We groped and stumbled.

I watched the Marriage of Maria Braun this week and really, really enjoyed it. There are an awful lot of European films like that that don't do anything for me, so I was really surprised. I also managed to correctly guess he was a Gemini just by watching this film. I love all the short twists and turns to it and you never know exactly what to expect. At first the baffling ending troubled me and I thought it ruined the whole rest of the movie until I rewound and watched it one more time and then I understood. A very complex film, I thought, and a masterpiece.

I watched Querelle a long, long time ago with a friend. I don't remember what I thought of it, really. But I remember it had that famous French woman in it...Moreau, that's it. I remember there being something kindof humorous about her in that.

berlin alexanderplatz coming out in nov.

(er, on dvd)

Read a collection of essays, interviews, etc recently, greatly titled "Anarchy of the Imagination". There is a short story, of sorts - more like a film of his on 20 pages that kinda did my head in for the rest of the day hurrah.

Okay, I thought Lola was embarrassingly and irritatingly boringly bad. I even watched the Blue Angel just before it (the film with Marlene Dietrich that Fassbinder was supposed to be doing a tribute to with 'Lola') and man, I just don't get it. If the name of the film is Lola, why not make Lola the main character? And while we're at it, let's get a better plot and choose a different actress altogether!

yr mad.

http://sctv.org/characters/lola/lola.gif

yes, Bobby Bittman wd've directed the SCTV remake of Fassbinder

With Ed Grimley as Franz Biberkopf.

WAY too much of his stuff out there right now.

tailor-made kitsch for anomic urban intellectuals. fuck it.

penetrating criticism there

really worth waking up the thread for

capsule review, john. i could get into it, but i don't know if it's worth it. the weird thing about rwf fanboys, like warhol fanboys i guess, of both sexes, is that them being utter shits on a personal level becomes in some way 'part of' the total work. with fassbinder, the work is almost justification for the life. people are mannequins so it's okay to push them around. i suppose there is the alibi that it's capitalism making us mean, somewhere, but is that really even present in, say, 'petra von kant'.

otherwise, stilted versions of sirk films... if that's your thing, go nuts, have a ball, whatever.

I've seen "...Maria Braun" and "Querelle" and loathed them both. i don't intend to see any of his other film's although, strangely, i did quite like Ozon's "water Drops on Burning Rocks".

if memory serves, 'lola' has some pep to it -- 'water drops', which probably is ozon's best film (not very high praise!) comes from the late 60s, and maybe that's when he was best. the films were short and kind of fresh. you get to the mid-70s and things like 'chinese roulette' and it's basically bad chabrol and you wonder what the fuck you're doing watching.

"film's"! ugh.

xpost - re Ozon, i haven't seen much, "5x2" was on ch4 last night but i couldn't summon up the energy to watch it.

me neither, but the ones i've seen:

Swimming Pool (2003) -- dire
8 femmes (2002) -- dire
Sous le sable (2000) -- okay central perf from rampling
Water Drops on Burning Rocks -- not bad
Sitcom (1998) -- awful awful awful "OMG BENEATH THE VENEER OF BOURGEOIS RESPECTABILITY..." yarn

Yesterday, I had the displeasure of spending two endless hours with In a Year of 13 Moons. Pretty much everything about it was substandard, but the acting in particular was shockingly bad.

"5x2" is really not worth the bother -- my local library stocks this for some reason! By coincidence I caught a screening of Cassavetes' "Faces" today, which does the whole marriage is blah with about, I dunno, 10 billion times more style, etc.

Only seen 3 or 4 of his but you should see "Fear eats the Soul", jed.

with fassbinder, the work is almost justification for the life. people are mannequins so it's okay to push them around.

none of the people in the fassbinder films i've seen (admittedly only about 5) seemed like mannequins. a lot of them are unpleasant, or do unpleasant things, but they're at least complicated unpleasant people. and of course not all of them are unpleasant, and also there's a huge amount of life and color in the movies that you seem to be denying. but anyway. to each his own and all that.

The Index of ILX Film Snobs

I shouldn't really talk That One Guy Who etc (I'm sure I knew who you were at some point but can't keep track of nu-handles), I was a Fassbinder fan when I was a teenager but haven't seen anything in years & years - I remember liking Herr R., Satan's Brew & 13 Moons precisely because they were dire empty difficult and in the case of the last one coked beyond reason = I liked them for personal reasons

I imagine what you're saying about the audience goes hand-in-hand with pretty much any arthouse director though no?

saw The Third Generation last night. I've been saving up the 10 or so I haven't seen yet for special occasions like the good wine, but then when I get to something as amazing as that one, it makes me want to make a run on the video store, take two days off from work and batten down

the scene where Eddie Constantine as the corrupt CEO chides the police chief for not having a sense of humor, and the police chief responds by saying 'I had a dream last night... that Capitalism invented Terrorism to force the State to protect it better... isn't that funny?' and they break out into hysterical laughter

and the opening credit sequence with the flashing credits & Peer Raben's kosmische score is one of the most psychedelic things I've seen in months, where the hell are the complete Peer Raben soundtracks? a CD with all the atmospheric pieces in these Fassbinder films would go head to head with all my favorite Cluster & Conrad Schnitzler albums, why can't it be real

http://images.kino.de/flbilder/max02/mbiz02/mbiz19/z0219513/m135.jpg

http://images.kino.de/newspics/655/6655_1/m80.jpg

yeah wish i could find a single jpg of udo's shock wig in this film

leaving work early to stop by home & record the music of the opening sequence into pro tools before returning the dvd

Berlin Alexanderplatz is in my house right now, it is due back in 4 or 5 days. Probably not gonna happen. There's always summer I guess.

http://www.artecapital.net/uploads/39_1.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9jGFSY3wnw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TBuCNvVPI4

http://www.sendspace.com/file/cckwug

Third Generation was awesome agree. Wouldn't say no to a listen to every bit of soundtrack Raben composed from around '76-'79 (Fassbinder's or otherwise, Ottinger 'Ticket of No Return' had some great stuff in it).

The sound design (?) was marvelous -- e.g. all that muffled sound coming off the TV, and so on.

Chinese Roulette was no good tho'.

Elementary school children's Q&A w/ RWF:

http://orpheusfx.blogspot.com/2009/03/fassbinders-q.html

What do you think is needed for a perfect Sunday morning?

Caviar, champagne, the Eight Symphony of Mahler, 'radio activity' by Kraftwerk, the Sunday Bild paper, a book so exciting you don't want it to end, a friend, a good friend, and the possibility of unplugging the phone.

thanks fo rthe link. classic stuff, although I find it hard to believe that elementary school kids designed this Q&A

World on a Wire restored and playing NYC MoMA week after next.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/movies/04wire.html

G. Kenny on WoaW:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2010/04/out-in-the-real-world-in-real-time-fassbinders-welt-am-draht-world-on-wire.html

The film is simultaneously constantly piss-taking and deadly earnest, a labyrinthian riot of scenes seen solely via reflective surfaces, set in an only vaguely futuristic world where characters do their expository walk-and-talks around a small indoor swimming pool whilst a Marlene Dietrich impersonator swoons about. the film, the riches of which include an extended scene that pays snarky homage to both 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, sometimes resembles a mind-meld of Kubrick and Alfred Jarry, Fassbinder and lensers Michael Ballhaus and Ulrich Prinz running the show on screen with wildly anarchic creativity while the characters in it are in near-constant torment over who's running their show. Characters in zombie makeup out of Carnival of Souls pop in and out of the film's two (at least at first) depicted "worlds," one ostensibly "upper" and the other "lower," and while one realm is not ever depicted as more materially desirable than the other, those who "know" that they are "simulations" become desperate to transfer to the upper world, because then they will have the assurance of being "real." That individuals in the upper world are discovering that they themselves might lack "realness," well, you can imagine the problems this can create.

Got the two boxsets over Xmas/New Year (Praise be to FOPP/ Twenty quid a popp). Took me until now to see "Love Is Colder Than Death", which I'd always assumed must be a load of old tosh, but is great, it looks beautiful and Ulli Lommel is very handsome, the scene on the train between him and the girl is hilarious, "Are you thinking about sex?" "No, the revolution". Only in the 60s eh? Also I now love "Gods of the Plague", I'd seen it before but hadn't appreciated it much, general consensus is that "The American Soldier" is the best of his 'gangster' films but I think this is, this time round it's Harry Baer who is handsome, I love the ludicrous last lines RWF gives characters as they lay a-dying, love the soundtrack to this film too. One word of warning don't watch "Fear of Fear" if you're feeling ill, as I was on Saturday night, the wobbly screen bit will make you vomit, as I did on Saturday night...

... and by the way, this might belong on the football thread but:

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's favourite footballers of all time:

1. Helmut Haller
2. Paul Breitner
3. Garrincha
4. Gerd Müller
5. Gento
6. Didi
7. Harald Konopka
8. Peter Grosser
9. Vava
10. Ferenc Puszkas

... I admit I had no idea who Peter Grosser was and only vaguely knew the name, Harald Konopka. Overall seems to be a marked fondness for podgy, slightly unhealthy looking, individuals with various substance abuse problems ... wonder why? (Maradona was surely made for RWF!)

Yeah he would've stalked Maradona.

never really understood the appeal of this guy. he seems like an endurance test. which I can appreciate fro ma campy John Waters-esque POV but it's not like I actually want to sit through any of it

Although both no doubt share a love for melodrama I doubt John Waters would enjoy any Fassbinder (they use that aspect very differently).

There is an appeal to Fassbinder but it isn't wide (much of it rooted in German history).

Some of his films have really knocked me out and others were just impenetrable.
Really like Love Is Colder Than Death fwiw.

um Waters LOVES Fassbinder

http://www.fassbinderfoundation.de/node.php/en/newyork

he's on the fucking Board of Directors!

haha! Ah well, doesn't scan.

Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven tomorrow. Thoughts?

She could pull through.

the other place has better seats

Saw a trailer for World on a Wire the other night--it opens here shortly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URq7m3-SOtA&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

Morbius had a couple of posts on it last year. There are some famous sci-fi films that I don't get as much out of as most people--2001, Solaris--but it looks like it could be excellent.

I think you will like this one, Phil.

It's kind of sci-fi, crime thriller, mad-as-a-TV-miniseries European art film rolled into one.

There are a handful of Fassbinders I love, and a handful I find boring, so I'm hoping for the best. The one thing that struck me immediately was that it had a great look.

World on a Wire is great, definitely one of my favourite fassbinder films actually.

He has so many films that of course he's got a few rubber donuts. I can't finish Berlin Alexanderplatz.

There's a restored R1 dvd of Despair out today!

ooh i want to see world on a wire. i took a fassbinder class in college that was pretty much total immersion -- a great/scary body of work to be immersed in!

It's like being up his ass.

Lord Sotosyn, when you finally get to the last episode / coda of Berline Alexanderplatz, you'll be happy

World On A Wire is one of the made-for-television films; it has almost zero budget, most of which they spent on tinfoil to wrap around the walls of the simulacron's control room. But very stylized and looks great. It's a little long, was originally a two episode series, and it's all talk no effects so sci-fi fans who are not Fassbinder fans might be advised to gauge expectations, but the basic concept is razor sharp and yes it definitely does anticipate all of the better ideas in the The Matrix by about three decades. I loved it. Wouldn't make my top 5 Fassbinder, maybe my top 15.

Saw Satan's Brew for the first time last week! Good lord. I thought Third Generation was slapstick, but that was highbrow compared to the pacing / density of this one where every line of dialogue seems to be trying to be playing it up for yuks. It was a little exhausting how hard it tries, actually, but it was still funny and Margit Christensen doing straight up comedy -- amazing!

xp yucko!

hmm haven't seen satan's brew, though i like funny fassbinder. one of my faves is beware of a holy whore. the ray charles sequence is amazing.

Board should add a Suggest Banish to TMI button over on the side.

So WOAW is getting a theatrical release in the US? Or is a region 1 dvd coming out? I can't wait, looks like total bait for me.

There's an Elvis hit that pops up on the soundtrack of WoaW, and I remember thinking that today it would cost more than the entire 1973 budget.

It's good, but very much him, more than much other s.f. with similar themes. His mother has a particularly thankless role, even for her.

Kamikaze 89 is one of my favorites. Fassbinder stars but didn't direct

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_6m7808n5Y

His mother has a particularly thankless role, even for her.
that one short film with fassbinder and his mom playing themselves (autumn in germany) is wild. weird relationship to say the least.

or rather germany in autumn

xp

Beware is one the very best ones. But it's funny for different reasons. Satan's Brew is like a sitcom, it almost feels like it should have a laugh track, very uncharacteristic.

I remember watching Beware at the Castro towards the end of a RWF festival. About 50 people, all spread out through the theatre, many people alone, including me (as my friend Anne who was working the booth told me as she sold me the ticket: 'Ha ha, one for Fassbinder, how many times have I heard that this week'). Everyone was mostly silent for about the first 40 minutes, and then some lines in the film started causing individual audience members to crack up and lose it, one at a time -- until, gradually, every line was causing different people to laugh, so the laughter was travelling in pockets across the theatre. It was bizarre. It was less like the lines were funny, and more like people were reaching their individual limits of how much they could take and being forced to vent.

yeah, that's sort of how i remember seeing it too. it didn't seem very funny at first but the cumulative effect just kicked the whole film into hilariousness. i can't really think of any other movie quite like it.

Milton Parker's description of WooW is otm.

Saw it during the 1997 marathon as mentioned above and then saw the great-looking rerelease last April. The main thing I remember right now is some nutty guy kept going on about how his mother was in the original version and he had been watching it his whole life on a VHS tape. During the final Q&A he kept arguing with Juliane Lorenz and Laurence Kardish, which went on way too long before security finally escorted him out. He said something about "You changed it! You changed the meaning, in the original it said something else!" To which Juliane Lorenz replied "The original was in German, you are speaking English, you speak German, why don't you speak German?" All of which was annoying at the time but I guess added yet another layer of reality thereby heightening the filmgoing experience.

I think over on the no-man's land of ILF I once tried to describe that point where you shift over from being horrified to laughing in a Fassbinder film and somebody, not a regular, gave me grief for it.

Here: Best FIlms About Filmmaking

maybe he wasn't giving me grief, I dunno

Statan's Brew is one of the few I hate! Wacky farce was not his forte.

Berlin Alexanderplatz is one that I love--I've made it all the way through three times the past 30 years.

Saw a DVD of World On A Wire (less than a tenner?) a few weeks ago and was gonna revive to ask - excellent, I shall get this ASAP.

I've only seen the "Maria Braun", "Lola", "Veronika Voss" trilogy. My favorite of the three was "Lola" since it was the funniest. "Maria Braun" was also pretty good. "Veronika Voss" was a little too weird. I've got "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" at home now.

Its the 11th best film ever made!

Title of Ali works better in German, where it is more like "Fear Eats Up The Soul" (as in "Fear Consumes the Soul") but in grammatically incorrect German, because he is an immigrant, so it would be "Fear Eat Up Soul"

I just realized he doesn't actually have a film called "White Lily" as Laurie Anderson led me to believe for the past 30 years.

didn't even realize Despair was coming out until I walked into work today and saw it on the shelf. Been dying to see it since I actually ran into my doppleganger while reading the book a couple of years ago.

Margit Christensen doing straight up comedy

"Satan's Brew"? Straight up comedy?

unearthed 1973 sci-fi TV mini-series from RWF sounds awes

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2011-08/63915802.jpg

It's getting a Criterion release later this year, too.

A few of my friends saw it and loved it. I need to check it out.

I've seen it and it's awesome, it's kind of like the matrix, lol.

It's well worth seeing. Not awesome, except for his casting his mom as another clueless ninny.

World On A Wire playing at LACMA this weekend.

World on a Wire - Not awesome but really good.

Also caught a screening of 'Bitter Tears...' a few weeks ago, that was awesome for the soundtrack choices alone.

I am going to see WOAW. Really good is good enough, plus I am LACMA member now.

Also not sure if this is still happening, but at one point Albert Serra was talking about making a Fassbinder Biopic in which he played RW. Sounded like it could be...interesting!:
http://www.viennale.at/cgi-bin/page.pl?id=3922;lang=en

great essay over at lareviewofbooks.org about world on a wire by someone who worked on it. would love to see this movie!

So World On A Wire was good. Far too long, probably, but compelling. There was tension in the audience between folks who were laughing at the camp and people who wanted to take it more seriously - one older cinephile shouted down a bunch of yukking hipsters with "this isn't a fucking comedy!!!"

Beautiful use of Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" which has me now listening to that track all morning.

"All the exteriors were shot in Paris because they were the most modern buildings in those days,"

Ah this explains a lot. I was trying to figure out which german city it could be!

The restoration was very nice, some fuzziness which I guess is as a result of 16mm being blown up to 35?

Fear of Fear tonight.

Getting to see W.o.a.W. this weekend.

Restored print of Despair making the rounds. Never really comes up as essential Fassbinder but why the hell not.

Anyone like Alexander Kluge? Saw a film by him at the Tate yesterday (the screening was plaged by issues with subtitles and gaps due changes of reels, i think?)

Anyhow,The Female Patriot will be hard to beat as a new discovery this year. All about the repression/cultural amnesia that sets in post-war Germany (shown to coincide with the Richter exhibition that ended yesterday). This is an issue that Fassbinder tackled in Third Generation.

Complex in the way it was put together. It is centred around a German history teacher's attempts to compile material so that she can teach more accurate, or 'better'/less repressed history classes as oposed to what is prescribed in the curriculum. But 'centred' in the loosest way possible. It often spends periods qhere it goes into pure Montage (her compilation of materials and what she finds) as per Chris Marker, then it will have short dramatic scenes (a parent complains to the teacher about how she is warping his son's mind; teachers debating her 'wrong' methods). The commentary to this montage has this fairly tight script, but it is narrated by a (I kid you not) knee (that's the body part) that ws hacked off a soldier in 1944. The knee goes into all sorts of essay like matter, a very striking bit on the brothers Grimm and their compilation of fairy tales (on a section about 'wishing' = as in a people's wish for impossible victories in bloody wars), so the narrative can then switch from an interview to an enthusiast of those fairy tales. He comes across rather creepily about them.

Anyway this film also has a documentary like session where the history teacher (who is actually an actress, btw) goes to a German Party conference and haggles delegates to change educational policy, to much bemusement. Kluge can go from shooting grainy B&W as in the party conference section to actual gorgeous elegiac shots of, say, trees hit by breeze and the winter snow, so there is a style here, too.

I didn't mind the somewhat trying screening because its quite dense and would need a couple of viewings to get a handle on it. I think the NFT need to pull their finger out and screen a season of his films.

saw it years ago in a film class where we also watched 'yesterday girl' and 'brutality in stone' (the latter is kind of a german complement to 'night and fog' iirc)

World on a Wire at Doc Films this Saturday.

tried 2 watch Despair last night, oof it's a mess

saw world on a wire a couple months ago and liked it, very paranoid

Despair is one of his best films!

i think thats quite a challop, but id love to read why u think so!

Despair is good, not one of his best. If he'd lived wonder if he'd have done a lot more lit adaps like this, Alezanderplatz, WoaW.

What's your favorite? Mine (of the ones I've seen) is probably In a Year With 13 Moons

mine is 'ali: fear eats the soul', tho ive only seen 5 or 6

will buckle down & watch alexanderplaz sometime in near future prob

13 Moons up there along w/ Fox and His Friends, Lola, Fear Eats the Soul and Alexanderplatz. Closely followed by Merchant of the Four Seasons, Petra von Kant and a few i'm forgetting.

btw his secretary-heir-wife says he preferred that ppl watch Alexanderplatz in 2 big chunks.

that's how i did it!

yah i read that, im going to try!

ooh, forgot about Martha. That might be tied with 13 Moons.

In fact, back in the day I would tape Twin Peaks every week, then watch 5 or 6 hours at a time. xp

Still never seen "Martha" :(

Never really been able to get into "Merchant otFS" tbh

My favourite is Lola followed by Fox & His Friends. Despair is very much in the vein of his later films, just really well crafted with amazing cinematography and use of sound. I haven't seen it for a few years so can't really back up my comment properly, but I generally prefer the later Fassbinder films (around 1977/78 onwards) rather than the stuff before - Merchant of the Four Seasons bored me to tears, so that might explain why I enjoy it more than others.

Been watching In a Year With 13 Moons: devastating - cert top 5.

I think the use of sound in Despair was the best thing about it, and the English-Germanic accent he gets his actors is kinda fun and novel. But for me he is so much better at dealing with that irreparable loss of identity through love - and he sets it up as something that people can't give, or a thing which doesn't simply exist in two people at the same time and for one another: which is why Ali, Petra Von Kant, In a Year.. really do it for me. The amazing thing is he can also introduce something from outside of that world in a v convincing manner (immigration, Germany's past) to all these chamber melodramas, and even better that they are not there to provide any kind of relief either, but it does tilt the balance between suffocation and exhiliration, maybe?

Haven't seen Lola or Fox... yet, so Third Generation and Veronika Voss are my other faves.

so this recently DVD-ized sci-fi film of his, how is it

cuz the youtube trailer looks pretty awesome, just on a visual level.

link?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URq7m3-SOtA

it is very good tho i'm not sure i'd rank it among his best

LORD I kneel and offer you
myyyy WORD on a WIRE

I'm coming at it more from the "fan of this particular era of sci-fi" and less a "fan of Fassbinder" angle. Cuz I couldn't bear the majority of Berlin Alexanderplantz.

World on a Wire was REALLY good, absolutely gorgeous visually and quite fun in its campy paranoia. kinda unnecessarily drawn out with an irrelevant subplot and maybe a few too many pointless conversations but in general very enjoyable.

WOAW is very, very talky.

Have you seen The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant?

WOAW has good Corvette porn amongst the chat.

I have and enjoyed it

xpost

i always get that mixed up with capra's 'bitter tea of general yen.'

still unavailable on DVD alas!

Going to see WOAW at the New Beverly tonight.

RIP Günther Kaufmann, muse-lover who acted in 14 RWF films

http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,15945872,00.html

That whole thing about him falsely confessing to killing the accountant is pretty crazy.

aw, r.i.p.

wow @ the false confession!!

yeah, didn't know anything about that, whoa.

I forgot to wish RWF a happy birthday ;_;

Hoberman on the limbo of RWF's American fate:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/the-single-antidote-to-thoughts-of-20120628

watching Berlin Alexanderplatz.

fuck, it's good.
the alination vs. the pathetic search for (distorded) warmth and tenderness is shown brilliantly by Fassbinder.
oh, and the use of lightning and space.
oh, and the acting.

great Hoberman piece, thanks for the link

The anti-auteurist Pauline Kael, whose reign as America’s most influential film commentator roughly coincided with Fassbinder’s career

oh irony, further compounded by one of his 70s champions being Vincent Canby who was widely derided as a fuddy-duddy a few years later

From the piece above:

Kluge appeared to be a more pedantic Godard, Straub seemed a lighter Bresson.

I hope Hoberman has changed his mind on this: Kluge is quite an original, and there is nothing remotely light (Bressonian or not) about Straub-Huillet.

so RWF starred in a Volker Schlondorff TV film of Brecht's Baal, and we're going to see it.

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-baal-is-back

reactions on Baal

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-berlinale-2104-diary-2

the Houellebecq film looks interesting.

Like to think Baal will get a week's release at the cinemas over here.

http://lightbox.time.com/2014/01/21/filmmaker-as-photographer-still-life-with-rainer-werner-fassbinder/

Has anyone ordered the catalogue?

http://www.shop-filmmuseum.de/epages/61390111.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/61390111/Products/b_308_engl

I am very tempted to do so..

Fassbinder's Top 10 Pop Musicians

1. Elvis Presley
2. Bob Dylan
3. Rolling Stones
4. Leonard Cohen
5. The Platters
6. Kraftwerk
7. Roxy Music
8. The Beatles
9. Velvet Underground
10. Comedian Harmonists

You think we don't know who The Comedian Harmonists are?

Well I don't!

Must a German/US thing

No, they are not that well known here either. For some reason I was under the impression that you spoke German and might be more familiar with them. There was a movie about them in the late 90s I think.

and at least one CD compilation too

in case you need to pick up some vegetables at the Merchant of the Four Seasons'

http://filmsociety.myshopify.com/collections/shop/products/fassbinder-limited-edition-tote-bag

I was going to revive today: I'm on Episode Seven of Berlin Alexanderplatz

skip to the coda

^smart aleck

http://www.criterion.com/films/27953-the-bitter-tears-of-petra-von-kant

so it's Baal

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/baal

The restauration of World on a Wire will be shown in Copenhagen on sunday. It will be my first Fassbender.

i am surprised! well worth seeing, not "major."

it is an anomaly in his cv but man does it look great

Bitter Tears... getting the Criterion treatment too early next year

Sooo many Fassbender films, overwhelming to start with. But if I like it, I'll probably check out the major ones as well.

Frederick, the best way is to dip in. Watch whatever's available. I went on a huge spree ten summers ago as the movies became available on DVD.

actually i found WoaW to be not much of an anomaly! He is his own genre: SF dreamworld, Genetian dreamworld, miserabilist postwar opiumworld, etc.

And see on a big screen whenever possible, esp w/ Ballhaus as DP.

one approach (tho we have more stuff available now than when Canby wrote, such as TV work like WoaW):

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/03/movies/film-view-a-beginner-s-baedeker-to-the-genius-of-fassbinder.html

I'd rate Fear of Fear and Ali higher but, yeah, judicious.

Well, there doesn't seem to be a single region 2 english-language blu-ray of a Fassbinder-film, but there is the 'commemorative collection' dvd-box, which is amazingly cheap (vol 1 is nine films for 12 £ on amazon). Reviews say video quality is variable, but apparantly the most well-known look good. Anyone who has them and can vouch for them?

actually i found WoaW to be not much of an anomaly! He is his own genre:

can't really argue w that, and I'm sure you're more of an expert than I. I've only seen Berlin Alexanderplantz, WoaW and Fear Eats the Soul. In general I prefer Herzog.

Werner Schroeter is the only director I'd compare Fassbinder to, working in Germany at that time.

1st stop Fassbinder is Ali, as wonderful as that is it feels like a stop for Year in 13 Moons.. and Bitter Tears... WoaW could work if you don't like him. If you do its not essential but its something you'll want to get around someday.

Not much to be gained from comparing them, they don't really have anything in common that I can see. (xp)

WoaW is an anomaly in that it's the only Fassbinder to bore me.

Aha. Haven't seen it.

I've seen ones that aren't very good but I wouldn't say they bored me... "Rio Das Mortes" is pretty dull, mind you.

I don't think Herzog and Fassbinder are similar, they were just contemporaries, New German Cinema etc.

xp

haha, I just noticed that the Lincoln Center series has that next month and i'd never heard of it. xp

Welllllll, it's no classic... though the opening scene might lead you to think otherwise

... and the closing scene, now I come to think of it... it's all the scenes in between that are the problem.

well, that sounds like enough. plus Schygulla and G Kauffman.

World on a Wire was quite good. Definitely had a very peculiar feel to it. If it hadn't been so obviously competently made, it could have been on one of those shows where shadow cutouts joke at all the jumping and explosions and weird sets with people diving into indoor pools or beautiful people dancing around topless. But there were many many great shots, and the use of mirrors was especially well done.

a highlight, sort of, from Rio das Mortes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcsvqGAGj-c

Yes, I forgot that scene!

Effi Briest is the first outright bore I've seen: a garrulous movie, talk talk talk talk.

Kamikaze '89 -- worth paying $8 to see?

The American Soldier, part of the Eclipse series and not memorable: an abstracted gangster film punctuated by histrionic death scenes.

I don't know, I think it's memorable, I prefer "Gods of the Plague" though. Am obsessed with "Why Does Herr R Run Amok?" at present.

oh, there are some pretty memorable parts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hEHJVpcI_M

and the whole thing is memorably ugly -- in an admirable way.

sometimes i think herr r. is his finest achievement! but it's not for the weak-willed, i suppose.

anyone seen newish doc?

Director Christian Braad Thomsen had many opportunities to interview Fassbinder over the years, and using these never-before-seen discussions, plus interviews with members of Fassbinder’s company, Thomsen crafts a complex and brilliant analysis of the queer auteur’s controversial, all-too-brief life. “An epic yet intimate look at the German provocateur.” Indiewire

http://newfest.org/film/fassbinder-love-without-demands/

Do I actually want to go to a screening of KAMIKAZE '89 tonight?
Did you end up seeing it, Morbs?

nope

Despair is one of his failures.

I think the use of sound in Despair was the best thing about it

OTM. I lost patience with Dirk Bogarde's smooth rotter routine, which he's done to better effect in other films (casting Bogarde in a Fassbinder film is too on the nose); blame the accent.

There's a lot of competition for most annoying performance in that film. Fassbinder himself liked it even if not many other people did. Oh and I was only just reading about how it cost as much to make "Despair" as his first 15 films put together.

Never bothered to try to see it, but enjoying reading y'all's posts about it.

He was a fan, no surprise there!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13SfznMBgE8

Of Leonard? Haven't clicked yet

"Bird on a Wire" used twice in Fox and His Friends, Six RWF films use LC songs.

https://whitecitycinema.com/2014/09/22/the-best-of-leonard-cohen-in-the-movies/

Again before clicking: are any Wim Wenders songs on that list?

no...

but here

http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/filmo.html

A found Fassbinder!

http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/berlinale-rep-2016/

cool!

i saw the still from Gog and thought for a second he'd remade Forbidden Planet.

Hanna Schygulla (and others) as the BFI season starts:

On one occasion, the director threatened to slit his wrists if (Gunther) Kaufmann wouldn’t sleep with him. “He even went as far as borrowing a razor,” recalled the film’s producer Peter Berling. “But in the end he simply shaved.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/mar/27/rainer-werner-fassbinder-bfi-season-hanna-schygulla-interview

Fassbinder is rarely seen on screen without a leather jacket, a cigarette, a beer or all three, so I ask what he smelled like. She wrinkles her nose. “He had a strong smell about him. He smelled how he looked. Like a spotty rebel filled with angst.”

what did the spots smell like?

fried chicken and jism

Tempted by the Schygulla Q&A.

re: BFI season. I've seen almost all of his melodramas and the more direct politically related stuff. Don't know much about his early ones, so will catch a couple but they will be sorta random: how is Pioneers in Ingolstadt? That looks like the best of these..

But what I'm really saving myself for are the late ones from the last couple of years of his life: Voss, Marleen and Lola. Catching up with those for sure.

I love his early films. "Pioneers In Ingolstadt" however is kinda crappy tbh. I'm going to see "Gods of the Plague" and "Why Does Herr R Run Amok?" because I like them so much, "Whity" because I haven't seen it and "Eight Hours Don't Make a Day" because I haven't seen it AND it's eight hours long. Seen the rest of them - of this first batch, that is. I would really like to see "Wildwechsel", but they won't show it, I imagine. Then, of the later films, I've never seen "The Third Generation". Lots of great films to come.

Lola is top 5 for me.

I don't remember Ingolstadt real well, but I think the only feature of his I have real distaste for is the wacky farce -- Satan's Brew.

Whity is minor but pleasing as a poker-faced Euro preview of Blazing Saddles.

Thanks both - I suppose 'play on gangster american movies' sounds like he was trying to find his feet to me but this is the time to re-think that.

His Tv series Berlin Alexanderplatz sounds great:"Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed this 16-hour film that follows Franz Biberkopf (Gunter Lamprecht) after his release from prison in 1920s Germany. Although Biberkopf wants to remain straight, the poor economy ultimately drives him back to a life of petty crime and violence. Based on Alfred Doblin's acclaimed novel, this movie documents a man's descent into depravity and insanity, and sets the stage for the emergence of the Nazi party."

Channel 4 showed it.

Voss is top five for me too.

Alexanderplatz was remade for a British audience as Peaky Blinders

Which no doubt broke the mould of the re-make being better than the original, like you'd expect from the Beeb!

lol

i recommend watching 'platz in 2 days if at all possible

I watched 'platz over several nights during xmas a couple of years ago. A joyful time.

got the 1st boxed set recently and am slowly working thru, I love his po-faced sense of fun so much

shifts in TV viewing habits since this thread was started mean that watching berlin alexanderplatz over two or three nights would actually totally fit in with the way I now mostly watch TV anyway (so sontag is still wrong) (or maybe not, but i like to imagine her nose wrinking a bit at the word "bingewatch", like hannah's at the memory of RWF's stench)

anyway, so far via MUBI I've seen merchant of the four seasons and bitter tears of pvk: coming up ali: fear eat up soul, effi brest and the fantastic mr fox and his fantastic friends. plus some of the BFI season (probably with xyzzzz__)

oddly enough -- despite being of an age to watch them on C4, like tom d., i'd only seen querelle before this, plus maybe an ep or two of berlin alexanderplatz (several of my nme mentors and colleagues loved it): back then appointment TV was hard to organise on a nightly basis and i didn't have a video recorder (also the TV signal came via an indoor aerial, which isn't a good way to decipher subtitles)

world on a wire has a chapter in mark fisher's the weird and the eerie, though he focuses on such a specific aspect that i don't feel he gives a very good account of it (not that i've seen it)

World on a Wire is great

Michael Ballhaus, who shot 16 Fassbinder films and then 7 w/ Scorsese, has died.

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/michael-ballhaus-1935-2017

RIP Michael B ;_;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZbGOrvi_t0

Funnily enough, I watched Katzelbacher last night: early film, starkly and stagily blocked, like a Brecht play.

RIP

Morbius, did you see the unidentified picture of Hanna S the guy posted on FB?

don't think so. what guy?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/filmlinc/assets/uploads/comment/Effi_Briest-Johanna.png

^^^love irm

Stephen Paley

shifts in TV viewing habits since this thread was started mean that watching berlin alexanderplatz over two or three nights would actually totally fit in with the way I now mostly watch TV anyway (so sontag is still wrong)

LOL was Sontag saying you should only watch BA at the cinema? God this is wrong.

you can watch it on DVD but you must never press pause

No comfort breaks either. No comfort at all, in fact.

I have nearly finished berlin alexanderplatz, am quite close to the apparently; some love it - some hate it epilogue. However it turns out, this has been great so far, really great.

you can watch it on DVD but you must never press pause

― mark s, Wednesday, April 12, 2017 2:09 PM (four minutes ago)

what about mopping

yes, Ballhaus shot that too

ok Redd, now i saw that Hanna pic.

Ballhaus gave Sayles' Baby It's You a really good, muted look compared to a lot of 'nostalgia' period pieces.

http://i.onionstatic.com/avclub/5448/27/16x9/1200.jpg

http://sensesofcinema.com/assets/uploads/2010/07/Petra-von-Kant-4.jpg

There are so many hypnotic and dazzling scenes in Alexanderplast, and it's use of theatrical lighting, the bits of piano/music-box ambient hauntology that aren't part of the Raben soundtrack and vintage sounding radio broadcasts enhances it all perfectly. I was watching one tonight where Franz is listening to someone talking about Marxism, Ricketts and the Welfare system, and he is mostly just drunk and half disinterested looking. And then he pays his tab, and walks out into the street and repeats the whole bar-room guy's ad lib verbatim whilst walking down the street. And then he bumps into a newspaper boy shouting some anti-Semitic headline about a Czech-Jew nonce. Fucking awesome series.

I love the themes in Fassbinder, but struggle with the non-naturalistic acting. I was just writing last night on Faceache -- for me some of his films "come across a tale told fourth-hand with a bit of pantomime, rather than anything happening to actual characters." But there are scenes I can't forget, which means I need to dig deeper.

effi briest put me in mind of murnau's nosferatu, fear eats the soul of herzog's nosferatu

(the second is just the house emmi lives in, something about the stairs and the way it's painted and lit is like the interiors of the czech castle herzog used the the interiors of drac's place -- the first a a kind of stillness, the black-and-white obviously, effi's ethos of self-sacrifice to make things right, and something abt the beach scenes and the emptiness)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-efUfGC1ld2I/UD_dWIO984I/AAAAAAAABh4/_ViDLbqfMHU/s320/John_Alexanderplatz.jpg
The character known as Reinhold in Berlin Alexanderplast, although quite benign looking at first with his nervous stutter is a good reminder that hell is often people.

Seen a couple of things:

I Don't Just Want You To Love Me (Hans Günther Pflaum, 1993)
Beware of the Holy Whore (1970)
Effi Briest (1974)

The first is a doc (and on youtube) - its a bit of a whitewash because it doesn't deal with the abuse and use and re-use of people that went on in Fassbinder's commune. The thing is defined by the talking heads that wanted to talk as much by the people who didn't (in a couple of cases that's because they were dead). Its just hinted at now and then as him being difficult. For someone beginning to get a grip with his work its a good assembly of clips from his filmography and pretty much that - except you know, the clips are majestic. Certainly wanted to re-watch Merchant.. and Effi Briest straight after (and I did watch the latter on MUBI the next day). The attempts at analysis were weak.

I was really struck as to why the abuses weren't discussed because well, Fassbinder is clear and open about what is going on. Beware of a Holy Whore (watched it at the BFI last night) was majestic while being all about that! Really one of his best. 'Jeff', played by Lou Castel, is RWF; Fassbinder himself plays Sascha (the producer - Fassbinder playing the director was perhaps a step too far idk). Anyway, I loved Balhaus' roving camera on this sea side hotel lounge, it was just such a great set-piece, and possibly painful and the source of many years of therapy for half of the crew. As the film ends you get to see snapshots of the film that was being made as a set of fragments - and fragments of what it might be to make one although its a Fassbinder film, which is unlike any other film made ofc.

This piece iirc is good, has more flesh than 'genius trumps abuse' or whatever.

Getting blond bombshell, Lou Castel, to play the director (ie, RWF himself) was amusing. In general, the casting in that film was one big in-joke played on his actors by Fassbinder.

"The only thing I accept is despair"

Indeed. That whole bit about Marlene Dietrich is great too.

Beware of a Holy Whore (watched it at the BFI last night) was majestic while being all about that! Really one of his best

otm. Get to The Merchant of Four Seasons

I saw it like 10 years ago, must've been like my first one by him (that or Ali) and in that doc you see a clip of the main character drinking himself to death.

the casting in that film was one big in-joke played on his actors by Fassbinder.

Sure - what I loved (well loved is fucking relative here) is how RWF has no bones about presenting himself as a giant turd. Because I picked up some of the detail around his crew over the years I knew quite a lot of this but to watch is another thing. That scene where the actress is now left high and dry by Jeff culminating in Jeff slapping her three times in front of everyone...its been a while I've been in a cinema and had to repress this uncomfortable laugh.

Cinema is great and also a form of hell.

I just watched a torrent of (had it for like two years and forgot till this weekend) Katzelmacher. I'm not convinced by his use of B&W, its flat. The framing feels good (he must've been a fan of Straub & Huillet) but some of the close-ups in the melodramas aren't there and you feel that (and why should it be I guess, its not from that phase). He is usually really smart with fashion and interiors, uses it to complement the colour tones well and that option isn't there, but compared with Effi Briest he is more imaginative: Irm Hermann's blacker than black dress, or the glowing white around Schygulla.

Obviously its not convincing at a narrative level either and the themes really mature by the time Ali gets made.

It is an early one - what's striking is within two years he made Beware of a Holy Whore. Practice makes perfect (I know I haven't seen enough from that '69-'71 period).

It's striking but not particularly involving except as an example of F's finding his voice. From the evidence he was trying to fuse theater blocking and film; he'd succeed with The Bitter Tears... a couple years later.

Coming soon to home video:

http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/shop/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=970

I like the brutal, spare quality of those early features. His 'voice' is there.

Michael Sicinski‏
@msicism
If Fassbinder had lived, I wonder if he'd be making good documentaries and terrible features now, like Herzog and Wenders.

Spent my Sunday @ BFI Southbank watching "Acht Stunden sind kein Tag", 5 films, shown from 12.30-10.00pm. Maybe one of his most unusual works in that it's so upbeat and optimistic. There is a lot of fairly clunky German humour and a lot, and I mean a LOT, of comedy drunkenness - there's also twinkly (slightly annoying) old people, almost too many cute kiddies to bear and even some bad people, who turn out to be not that bad after all. Lots of music - highlight being the Velvets' "Candy Says" playing in the background as a group of workers try to work out whether to split a performance bonus equally or by pay grade(!) Gottfried John is awesomely lanky and laidback, he's no looker but you can see why Hanna Schygulla falls for him (it's glaringly obvious why he falls for Hanna Schygulla). Irm Hermann is Irm Hermann to the max, but even Irm Hermann gets a happy ending in this film. In fact everyone gets a happy ending - EXCEPT for the workers still not having control the of means of production, which some of the characters realize in a real DOH! moment at the end of the last film.

I guess that will be rolling out all year in the wake of the restoration.

LOL, you know that bit in "Duck Soup" where Rufus T. Firefly says "Why a four-year-old child could understand this - run out and find me a four year old child"? Well Fassbinder actually has a character discussing industrial relation problems with a six-year old child.

Has anyone here ever seen "I Only Want You to Love Me"? I saw it, like, 20 years ago and then saw it again last night and I'm convinced there must be two different cuts - there's one specific scene, which helps explain a large part of the plot, which seems to be missing from this latest (restored, I think?) cut. It's a scene where the main character goes to the theatre and sees his father with another woman.

Fear of Fear was fantastic. Gotta hurry but I'll try and say some more when I have time.

Onto Stationmaster's Wife on Saturday!

Stationmaster's Wife never felt that together for me. I think he is beginning to deal even more directly with Nazi Germany - which he only uncannily refers to in much of his work.

Fear of Fear was so good on the issues around mental health -- its mis-understandings, diagnosis and judgments (not just on main character but also by her on others with a similar state of mind). When the main female character finally seems to be getting the right treatment Fassbinder makes the psychologist also a woman -- as my friend who I watched this brilliantly observed -- and its demonstratative of the sensitivity he brings to his scripts.

I re-watched (first time on the big screen) In a Year of 13 Moons and its as good if not better. His greatest film. I don't think he has made a more painful film (or transmitted the pain of his own life) for his audience more fully than this (an achievement I am ambivalent about - seeing something so beautiful that comes from such a place). I don't think I knew of the events around this so much when I first watched it but there is an act of reincarnation of feeling in this narrative of a transsexual lead not being able to love and live and work and simply function. I hadn't really noticed so much (and this is the value of seeing things on the big screen, perhaps) the opening, playing on Visconti's Death In Venice. The use of Mahler's music is in some ways what Fassbinder does a lot of: music that is thought of as elegant and sumptous is often played to soundtrack something that is opposite, in thia case squalid (in this case a beating in a public park).

I rewatched n a Year of 13 Moons because it'd been almost a decade, and I agree it's top tier Fassbinder: how it ambles from transsexual melodrama to this oddly paced corporate comedy with a slaughterhouse interlude complete with voice-over mystifies me even a second time. Yet even its longeurs work. And it's often funny, especially when Ingrid Caven is onscreen.

Richard Linklater has an intro in the American DVD!

AND there's a Martin & Lewis clip.

AND "Frankie Teardrop".

Lili Marleen and Lola being screened tonight - might see one or both (weather might be too good to merely spend it inside a cinema) *chucks cinephile credentials in the bin*

Saw both - Marleen was really flawed. I think it went on the assumption that Schygulla (Fassbinder really loved dressing her up) and RWF in a big-budget production were some kind of unbeatable winning ticket. Reality is the extra cash didn't add up to much: the scenes at the front seemed creaky to me (he is almost always a man of enclosed spaces or medium-sized spaces where grime and dirt are about - the hotel lobby, a club or a whorehouse) and the concert halls for her performances were kinda Citizen Kane parody. The story isn't that compelling - its kinda like a light romantic thriller - but also you can see why Fassbinder didn't do Nazi Germany in this direct way. The hate must be half-hidden, just at the surface, sometimes breaking out then pulled back to only break out again at some point. The story of a love not surviving the war just didn't have any kick.

Lola otoh was great. It went back to those small spaces: bedrooms, boardrooms and slightly bigger ones like the whorehouse/club and then the way this looks - here is neon-lit Fassbinder, what the 80s might have bought had he lived. The story is a Fassbinder remix - surfaces are back! As is happiness in quotation marks. And in Sukowa he found his next star.

Lola's lighting knocked me out 35 years ago, p sure the first of his i saw

Has anyone here ever seen "I Only Want You to Love Me"? I saw it, like, 20 years ago and then saw it again last night and I'm convinced there must be two different cuts - there's one specific scene, which helps explain a large part of the plot, which seems to be missing from this latest (restored, I think?) cut. It's a scene where the main character goes to the theatre and sees his father with another woman.

Had never seen 'I Only Want You to Love Me' before, just watched the 'restored' version on DVD. There is a scene set in the theatre, where the main character thinks he sees his father in the bar with another woman, but who turns out to be a stranger (in another scene he also momentarily mistakes the landlord - who he later kills - for his father.) Then there's a scene where the main character's mother talks about the father's 'whore', so it's here we learn that his Dad has a mistress.

^Spoiler alert. I don't suppose I'll ever find out whether there are different versions! The landlord is meant to look like his father, of course, this is one extremely Freudian film.

Ira Sachs on Fox and His Friends (which I finally saw yesterday, and really liked)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfMLbSHU-Wg

Watched the recent DVD of Kamikaze 89, which I generally found tedious... Included in the supps are radio ads for it done by John Cassavetes, in which he uses a shticky German accent. "Whoo eez zis FASSBINDER, with hees LEOPARD COAT?" Nutty.

https://scontent.fman1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/22885912_10155930940581518_8798680130442846199_n.jpg?oh=932328c82e8d7addb5b7bc8c351c630f&oe=5AA680B2

#trueDat

The Merchant of Four Seasons just floored me. Absolutely astonishing

8Hrs roundup (opens in NY today)

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5465-a-rare-fassbinder-melodrama-makes-its-theatrical-premiere

Sped through parts one through four of EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY, at least a solid hour of which is just people getting unbelievably tanked.

— Vadim Rizov (@vrizov) March 15, 2018

Indeed, see my impressions upthread.

He did ppl getting tanked well, unsurprisingly

the bit in petra von kant where she shouts at her assistant "TEN BOTTLES OF GIN" is great

Just read your post upthread - I watched it earlier this year and was also taken aback by how good-natured and upbeat it was for the most part xxp

apparently the 2 concluding segments he never got to shoot were going to lower the boom?

Some debate over that tbh, it certainly got canned despite apparently being enormously popular.

Oh shit that makes sense haha xp

He does rather hastily stick some Marxist theory in right at the end of the last (filmed) episode.

90 minutes to go on Eight Hours... Is this the least neurotic character ever played by Hanna Schygulla?

What comes across in the less distanced/Brechtian performance style is how good and versatile all these actors are.

Also I find Gottfried John ridiculously sexy.

And I wasn't expecting sitcom-template scenes like the famil(y/ies) fighting for time in the bathroom.

GJ is quite scary and horrible in 'platz, even his nervous stutter isn't disarming.

making my way thru the early fassbinder eclipse box and thinking of watching Gods of the Plague tonite, what do y'all think?

A bunch of those early ones blur in my mind with their pitilessness. Is that the movie-set-centric one?

Gods of the Plague is one of my favourites.

More beautiful than Love Is Colder Than Death and not as silly as The American Soldier.

I liked The Merchant of Four Seasons best from that Eclipse box.

that's not in the Eclipse box, Merchant of Four Seasons has its own release. But it's my favorite Fassbinder film by far, of the 6 or 7 I've seen.

Eclipse box is Love is Colder Than Death, Katzelmacher, Gods of the Plague, The American Soldier, and Beware a Holy Whore.

I think the early films box and World on a Wire are the only Criterion Fassbinder releases I don't own.

If it hasn't been mentioned, Eight Hours has the Janus logo on it, so look for a CC by year's end I guess.

Eclipse box is Love is Colder Than Death, Katzelmacher, Gods of the Plague, The American Soldier, and Beware a Holy Whore.

― flappy bird, Monday, March 26, 2018 12:09 PM

Right! I'd rank them:

BAHW
GOTP
Love
TAS
Katzelmacher

somehow Mother Fassbinder's short role in 8HDMaD sailed right by me! one of the grocery gossipers, i think.

ugh I rematched The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant, which I bought on Blu-ray a couple years ago – I found it tedious as hell.

I expect my relationships with movies to change.

I'm off tomorrow, gonna watch Eight Hours.... See you next week!

they played the whole thing at a theater here last week but i missed it. but im not spending 8 hours in a theater. they're also spreading it out over three non consecutive nights but i can't make the first night so i guess i'll just wait for the Criterion/Janus/whatever reissue.

Halfway through Eight Hours. I don't know who I like better, Grandma or Gregor--they're like the funniest movie old-people since Aunt Lotte in Stranger Than Paradise. (I know--TV, and they came first.) I wonder if Fassbinder considered shooting it in Cinemascope, just to accommodate Gottfried John's eyebrows.

I was a little apprehensive about seeing this. There was the length, obviously, but more in relation to my own sleep deprivation and whether I'd hold up. But more than that, I saw a dozen-plus Fassbinder films before I was 25--he was the guy whose every new film you rushed off to see if you were studying film in the early '80s, his and Scorsese's--but, except for Berlin Alexanderplatz a couple of more times--I never went back to anything after that. I just didn't know how his idiosyncrasies would hold up; some of those films I remember positively, some I doubt I'd have much use for today.

Really glad I followed through--liked pretty much the whole eight hours. The wedding party, in particular, was masterful, and there was so much humour. Of all that I could single out, I'd put Gottfried John's unwavering affection for his grandmother at the top of the list. Great soundtrack, too--I'm off in search of the Spooky Tooth song he used.

I've been on a Fassbinder binge recently. I liked the Berlin Alexanderplatz miniseries, but it was very very hard going, it was so depressing (not that many of his movies aren't, just that there was 14 HOURS of this). At this point I think I would say my favorite Fassbinder films, of those I've recently seen, are

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (maybe his best film?)
In a Year with 13 Moons
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Veronika Voss
Love is Colder than Death

there are some I haven't seen in many years so can't remember that well (Querelle, The Marriage of Maria Braun, Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven, Effi Briest). I still haven't seen Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

also liked Beware of a Holy Whore, The Merchant of Four Seasons, Fox and His Friends, Lola

check out The Third Generation, it is awesome and hilarious. one of his very last

thanks I will

Gods of the Plague was also pretty good

The events in Berlin Alexanderplatz are depressing but I am not sure it hammers you with it for 14 hours straight. I'd give it another watch in a few years, for sure.

Third Generation is really really great. Only other time he made a straight political statement to the events of the day was in his section of Germany in Autumn which is really good as well.

the epilogue to Berlin Alexanderplatz was so shockingly surreal, just amazing

all of Fassbinder's films warrant a rewatch, definitely

just saw that Kanopy is streaming The Marriage of Maria Braun and Effi Briest, two I haven't seen recently, planning to watch those next

8 Hours now out on Criterion

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5972-eight-hours-don-t-make-a-day-the-utopia-channel

Started it the other day... Morbius OTM re: Hanna Schygulla's least neurotic role. I love all the zooms! The fast zoom onto Joachim's face when Marion says she's single is hilarious. Great theme song, too.

Querelle is such a fascinating failure that I don't really know how to feel about it. The art direction and cinematography are magnificent; the set decoration reminded me of an X-rated version of the Sweethaven from Altman's Popeye, and the whole thing is shot in rich Technicolor-evoking tones that eroticize even the film's ugliest moments (of which there are many). But the story is such a muddle of dangling plot threads and characters introduced and then never paid off that its frustrating and ultimately tedious. It is well known that the studio cut a half hour from the film that Fassbinder's editor presented to them, so maybe this accounts for some of the film's mess. Less charitably, but just as likely, is that Fassbinder was in the throes of addition and was taking an approach to the Genet novel which made sense only in his drug-addled mind, and which he didn't really have the opportunity to fully realize anyway.

Bummer. Did you see it at FF?

Nah, it was on TCM last week.

ah gotcha. they're showing a 35mm print this week and next, jealous of NYC ilxors, despite your assessment. Sounds like a drag but makes sense obviously- how does it compare to Kamikaze '89? I know he didn't direct it but he's the lead actor & iirc it was made right before he died. Looks like a fucking wreck in the stills I've seen.

Haven't seen--or even heard of--Kamikaze '89.

Despite my objections to the film overall, I imagine Querelle looking amazing on the big screen.

just as likely, is that Fassbinder was in the throes of addition and was taking an approach to the Genet novel which made sense only in his drug-addled mind, and which he didn't really have the opportunity to fully realize anyway.

He was much much more drug addled while making "Maria Braun" and that turned out pretty good - except I don't think he was ever really 'addled' by drugs at any time.

Yesterday, I had the displeasure of spending two endless hours with In a Year of 13 Moons. Pretty much everything about it was substandard, but the acting in particular was shockingly bad.

― Jeb, Sunday, October 28, 2007 3:17 PM (eleven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

most offffffffftm post ever

I like Querelle

"I fucked him in the ass, and when I pulled out, there was shit on my cock."

people are mannequins so it's okay to push them around

I loved 13 Moons. haven't seen Querelle in a while

Satan's Brew is sort of the cinematic equivalent of scratch paper, or one of those bougie "rage rooms" where you pay money to break stuff. Fascinating as a fan and equally cathartic as an artist. I think it's more than a 'sex farce,' it's very Freudian and like... trapped in the anal stage or something. I absolutely loved it.

and it very much feels like a play

The first film I saw of his was Fox And His Friends and it didn't draw me in and so I kind of avoided him

But I watched Ali last night and was blown away. I was feeling so on edge the whole movie, and so emotional, and I couldn't figure out why, at first, and then I did. I was internalizing all the racist and ageist things that were being said by the characters and it created a tension that I was SURE one of the characters must be acting inauthentically. Like, the constant stream of criticism made me as a viewer sure that something terrible was going to happen, but the only things that happened were small revelations that Emmi would at times betray her latent racism, and Ali would at times betray his latent ageism. The final plot "twist"-- the intrusion of a physical ailment-- was such a surprise, something inevitable and yet surmountable, it put their entire romance into perspective. Such an oddly tense and yet optimistic film, I guess? I loved it.

Querelle! I finally watched it, thanks to the Criterion Channel. It's the kind of terrible film that only a good director could've made.

Satan's Brew and Querelle prob my choice for his two worst

It's the kind of terrible film that only a good director could've made.

i.e. my kind of movie

I wish! I admire many follies. This is a stilted, etiolated one.

Also, hot.

Querelle is very hot but it is also a mess. Was that the only movie Fassbinder shot in 2:35 widescreen? Despair & the BRD Trilogy are 1:66.

I agree with Alfred, it's the kind of bad movie only a good/great director could make.

Eric sometimes likes good movies by terrible directors (Femme Fatale)

I haven't seen any of these, priorities? (gonna borrow a couple DVDs from a friend)

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?
Effi Briest
Fear of Fear
Mother Kusters' Trip to Heaven
Chinese Roulette
The Stationmaster's Wife / Bolwesier
Lili Marleen

afaik the rest never got a Region 1 disc release (except Whity and Rio das Mortes)

Looking through his filmography, I've never heard of Bird on a Wire or Women in New York.

Bird on a Wire is in no man's land; i haven't seen it. (44 minutes)

I remember liking Mother Kusters, Herr R and Lili Marleen quite a lot (tho the last is perhaps his most 'conventional' film). Effi Briest is a pretty long lit adap, and i frankly am foggy on it. Fear of Fear has a good rep but it's been a long time with that too.

If you liked Satan's Brew, you might as well try everything.

Herr R/ Fear of Fear/ Mother Kusters are my favourites from that list. I've never seen Lili Marleen and only seen the TV Bolwieser not the edited film version, and that was so long ago I can't remember much about it. Chinese Roulette and Effi Briest are good too, btw.

Mother Kusters' Trip to Heaven is one of his best.

Yes, I think so too, but so are Herr R and Fear Of Fear imo.

Good movies from bad directors, bad movies from good directors, bad movies from bad directors, good movies from good directors — I’ve got room in my heart for all of them. So long as they have directors.

If you liked Satan's Brew, you might as well try everything.

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius)

oh I will but I'm not gonna ask my friend if I can borrow ~10 of his OOP Fassbinder DVDs all at once, I'm thinking like 3 or 4. and like someone said upthread I sort of want to keep a few saved for later.

I didn't realize Effi Briest was so long (multiple miniseries & WOAW aside, p much all of his theatrical films are 2 hours or less).

For whatever reason the one I'm most curious about is Chinese Roulette - maybe for Anna Karina, the game itself, or the fact that it was a major turning point for him personally (iirc he hadn't done any hard drugs prior to shooting CR).

2 episodes into Berlin Alexanderplatz... just stunning that it's all first takes.

Happy birthday to The Beetle's #JohnLennon -- seen here with his beloved Aunt Mimi pic.twitter.com/UzcXmN0HOm

— Eric Allen Hatch (@ericallenhatch) October 9, 2019

LOL, similar noses!

his Ibsen adaptation is on youtube with English subs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuI8GLm22Aw

saw Lili Marleen shortly after Todd Haynes' similar work for hire Dark Waters... glad that there's only one movie where RWF not only seems bored but the whole thing is so familiar & anonymous, not as blank as DW but by far the most inessential film of his I've seen.

RIP Volker Spengler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzIbKfkqOlg

Unlikely cultural figures wearing German football club kit - Rainer Werner Fassbinder modelling an 1.FC Köln shirt (+ cigarette!) pic.twitter.com/CRco5g4EIB

— German at Portsmouth (@GermanAtPompey) February 6, 2020

Especially unlikely as he was one of the world's biggest Bayern fans.

I'm sure I read somewhere he used to collect jerseys worn by Bayern players - something worn by Bayern players anyway!

Yes, there was a Fassbinder exhibition in Berlin that displayed his Bayern Munich shirt with the No. 8 on it. This was Paul Breitner's shirt number, whose Maoist leanings would probably have amused Fassbinder.

Fassbinder also turned up to the filming of 'Berlin Alexanderplatz' in a Bayern Munich T-Shirt, which would have gone down well with the Berliners.

https://pop9blog.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/025006.jpg

Yes, there was a Fassbinder exhibition in Berlin that displayed his Bayern Munich shirt with the No. 8 on it. This was Paul Breitner's shirt number, whose Maoist leanings would probably have amused Fassbinder.

I saw it!

Coming back to his films a second time, sometimes after months as with Mother Kusters, or a little over a year like 13 Moons, or 2+ years like Petra von Kant, Merchant of Four Seasons, and Beware of a Holy Whore. Obviously coupled with reading a few books on him and becoming familiar with every key player in the ensemble/'group,' is that these fairly dense arthouse movies suddenly open up and become much less heady, much more from the gut. 13 Moons is a special case, but the two things that stuck with me the most after revisiting it about 2 months ago were two simple shots: push-ins on Elvira as she walks in on Anton and Zora kissing on her bed and the devastation on her face, and when Irene gets the call that she needs to come over and open up the apartment.

In these shots, the monologues about Schopenhauer and the 'steaming life' of the slaughterhouse are for a moment wiped away for a pure primary color emotion, less of an imitation than the more straightforward melodramas. and even more astonishing that he did all of this from the hip, filming (as the opening credits say) from July 24 to August 28, 1978. I love how he 'signs' the movie in a way, obviously a film full of tossed of personal gestures, the most obvious being the brief TV cameo talking about having an 'unusual' childhood. less obvious now is the Amarcord theme playing whenever Red Zora/Ingrid Caven shows up. or how much the bathroom that Elvira and Zora go into when they first meet up resembles RWF and Armin Meier's apartment, as seen just months earlier in his Germany in Autumn segment.

I think it's his supreme achievement, maybe because he made it so immediately and intensely, more than anything else in his career. Armin Meier's body was discovered around June 10...... 45 days later they're shooting the first scene. I know, cocaine. that's not it. this is a film shot right from the heart, and though I knew it the first time I saw it, what struck me this time were its equal earthbound emotional effects.

Beware of a Holy Whore had the same pathos, an even headier and more inaccessible movie. but knowing that Lou Castel is wearing *that* leather jacket, the one that Fassbinder wears in everything for the first few years of his career. Knowing every key player and who plays who, I mean Irm's dubbing and send off are devastating. and he presides over it all... what distinguishes RWF among other similarly self destructive and provocative and abusive artists was his rigorous self critique, which was constant. perhaps what endears him to me the most is that he seems like a wounded, lost animal that wants so desperately for the world to be a better place, and his expression is so brilliantly crafted and beautifully immediate and direct. I'm grateful for him, particularly lately.

Found this on youtube the other day, surprisingly good discussion for a university. Also realized 2020 is indeed a moon year with 13 new moons. Criterion tweeted a photo of Ingrid Caven as Red Zora from the movie the other day, hopefully they're preparing a release this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri_1N3R7T-E

RIP Irm Hermann 💔

Oh no! RIP Irm ;_;

:-(

RIP

wasn't aware Irm was still around til 8 Hours restoration

I was gonna revive to ask about Martha.

She does as she pleases, she waits there for me. If that's the Martha you mean.

has anyone seen RWF's Women in New York? I think that's the last thing of his that features Irm in a significant role (she's only in Berlin Alexanderplatz for one episode right?)

omg had no idea what this revive was for until i spotted this elsewhere. rip

women of new york is insane, borderline unwatchable. all the sets are clearly built on the same stage and there's a floorboard that creaks in the same place no matter where the scene is set and it becomes increasingly distracting.

some guy, that RWF

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6965-irm-hermann-from-torture-to-triumph

DAMN

The cruelty Fassbinder directed at Herman began to extend beyond casting. In 1976, when they were working on the television movie Women in New York, Fassbinder slipped a tab of acid into her meal without telling her. Her circulatory system collapsed and it took her weeks to recover. “Maybe Fassbinder tortured me more than, say, Margit Carstensen or Hanna Schygulla because we were sleeping together,” she told Herlinde Koelbl in Die Zeit in 2015. “I also think that he took a lot out on me that was meant for his mother. People said that I looked like her, and she played a very large and not especially nice role in his life.”

Rfw was horrible yes

More thankful than ever for him during the pandemic. The only filmmaker I can turn to on any day if I'm despondent. He always makes me feel better, more sane.

I imagine a person who wrote, starred, and directed 7523 plays and movies in a 13-year period while in thrall to pills and alcohol was a delight to live with.

I thought he was fine with Margit Carstensen bc she was an established actress (not "his" star) and was in no mood for his carry on, while irm, schygulla and caven were treated pretty brutally

Whatever

Adjudicating a dead director's personal behavior is so BORING

Only because everyone itt knows already

I always thought he was the nicest to Schygulla because she was the most conventional star or something, but maybe I didn't read enough.

his peak for me are the Carstensen Joan Crawford vehicles he made in his Sirk phase.

yeah it's the other way around, HS balked at doing World on a Wire during Effi Briest and they'd didn't work together again for 4 years. RWF, during a game of Chinese roulette on the set of Chinese Roulette, told MS "I don't have any more ideas for your face." When they did Martha he fawned over her.

(Rewatched that the other day--someone pointed out something very funny, Helmut's silk polka dot pajamas after he brutalizes Martha toward the end)

also going through all his films again I noticed the Biberkopf thing of biting a lover on the neck after kissing them, is in almost all of his movies

it's kindof weird to try and separate films like Petra Von Kant or Martha or querelle from thinking about his lunatic troupe regime and his viciousness. don't think anyone was suggesting "cancelling" them though. plenty of nicer directors whose films could go in the bin first.

well, probably there are plenty of people suggesting cancelling them, not going to Google it though!

his peak for me are the Carstensen Joan Crawford vehicles he made in his Sirk phase.

I watched Querelle the other day, and I can honestly say no other Fassbinder I've watched could have prepared me for it. The sexual viciousness mentioned above is so completely stylised into some kind of fin de siecle decadence, rendering it unreal, yet still jaw dropping. bizarre to think the lead was in the Oscar bait Chariots of Fire just before, then he's in this.

Margit is Joan, caven is Dietrich, schygulla is a Romy Schneider heimatfilm Frau, always a little confused about who irm is in the pantheon.

my film faves were p much all terrible people, don't look at me

yah querelle is somewhat unique, but I think he has other outliers. Katzelmacher shocked me the first time I saw it, a really vicious straub huillet jibe but so elegant

I thought he was fine with Margit Carstensen bc she was an established actress (not "his" star) and was in no mood for his carry on, while irm, schygulla and caven were treated pretty brutally

He was mostly horrible to his lovers, so Hanna Schygulla was never treated badly, I think he got irritated by and jealous about the fact that she was becoming 'the star', even though that's why he wanted to work with her in the first place. Also I don't think he especially horrible to Ingrid Caven - well, unless you count him sleeping with the best man on their wedding night! But, you know, why would you marry RWF in the first place!

Margit is Joan, caven is Dietrich, schygulla is a Romy Schneider heimatfilm Frau, always a little confused about who irm is in the pantheon.

... his mother!

Yeah, ^this

to give them their dues, these ladies were all, also, nuts

also lol yeah I guess

Hanna is Dietrich
Margit is Bowie
Ingrid is Irene Dunne
Irm is Angela Merkel

I only saw it once but my impression of Querelle was that it made no sense and it ruled.

haha

Haven’t seen them all (trying—if anyone can hook me up with Lili Marleen I’d be grateful) but the only RWF I didn’t like is Katzelmacher. Couldn’t finish it. Querelle is uh...something else.

got a copy of Satan's Brew for a reasonable price on eBay. the case is um, a little sticky...

John Waters writes a letter to RWF for his 75th:

I remember when I first met you at the Berlin Film Festival. There you were with Douglas Sirk! You in your dirty Levi’s and leather, he elegantly dressed in a crisp white suit. I wanted to bow down. You were both kind and welcoming to me and my early trash epics which were just getting to be known in Germany. Douglas Sirk knew what Pink Flamingos was!? I was astounded and moved and it was all because of you.

Later, I was so proud when New Line Cinema, the distributor of all my films at the time, announced they were going to release your movie Despair in America. I played dumb when the publicist eventually complained that she had sent you two first-class airline tickets to come to New York to promote the film and even though you had accepted and flown over, you’d never shown up to do the interviews. I had seen you out at the leather S&M bars the night before but I kept my mouth shut. I don’t snitch on royalty.

https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/r-w-fassbinder-film-stills-pp/

Fassbinder and Kraftwerk: A Marriage Made in a New Germany

A member of the same bourgeois postwar generation as Hütter and Schneider, Fassbinder had similar artistic goals of forging a new German identity. As with Kraftwerk’s music, his cinema was not merely reclaiming what had been lost but moving into the future with something unique. “I would say that in 1945, at the end of the war, the chances which did exist for Germany to renew itself were not realized,” said Fassbinder. “Instead, the old structures and values on which our state rests now as a democracy have remained the same.” The admiration between Kraftwerk and Fassbinder was reciprocal. As bandmember Karl Bartos explained, “Fassbinder loved it . . . his crew were sometimes forced to listen to Kraftwerk eight hours a day on the set. He would play Autobahn and Radio-Activity to the point where no one could stand it anymore. It was a bit like brainwashing. Flattering to hear, though.” And sometimes, after a long day at Kling Klang studio, the band would put on the director’s film or TV work.

Though Fassbinder had used “Radio-Activity” in Chinese Roulette (1976), his coked-out chamber drama that starred Anna Karenina, Margit Carstensen, and Ulli Lommel, the track’s recurrence throughout the final episode of Berlin Alexanderplatz gives it a more natural, depraved home. Both the song and the epilogue attempt to articulate that new German identity, smashing together antithetical feelings, ideas, and cultural detritus. Featuring repurposed bleeps of a Geiger counter and a mellifluous pop hook, “Radio-Activity” neatly pairs with Doblin’s source novel, a work that is narrated by the chaos of a modern city and periodically needles its protagonist with the cacophonous sounds of mass media. Snippets of Kraftwerk’s song are used as markers of torture and agony, and upend the series’ carefully constructed historical verisimilitude. The disjunctions remove viewers from a simple understanding of history as a chain of cause-and-effect relationships and interconnected events, allowing them to see the imminent danger that can lie beneath seemingly banal times.

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/7143-fassbinder-and-kraftwerk-a-marriage-made-in-a-new-germany

relevant to the criticism of Ian Penman on the lrb thread recently

grateful to peer raben for largely inoculating rwf from the krautrock wars. generally imagine his taste in music was limited to whatever played in Munich bathhouses in the 70s.

Don't think so. There's a lot of music in Fassbinder movies. Leonard Cohen in at least two (but probably more), Pearls Before Swine(!) in "Rio das Mortes" (opening titles), the Velvets' "Candy Says" in "Eight Hours Are Not a Day", Suicide's "Frankie Teardrop" in "In a Year With 13 Moons", plus less surprising stuff: the Stones, Ray Charles, Walker Brothers, Elvis etc. Plus Amon Duul II even appear in "The Niklashausen Journey"!

Fassbinder's Top 10 Pop Musicians

1. Elvis Presley
2. Bob Dylan
3. Rolling Stones
4. Leonard Cohen
5. The Platters
6. Kraftwerk
7. Roxy Music
8. The Beatles
9. Velvet Underground
10. Comedian Harmonists

― Eats like Elvis, shits like De Niro (Tom D.), Wednesday, 9 April 2014 13:31 (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, Peer Raben always acknowledged that Fassbinder was very clued up on music. The Amon Düül II clip in 'Niklashauser Fart' is erm... very much of its time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEhnCyf72-k

lol I've seen most of those and don't remember those songs being used! only thing I can remember being prominently featured is smoke gets in your eyes in bitter tears

I thought it was "The Great Pretender" in Bitter Tears? And "In My Room" (Walker Bros)!

Ha, I thought it was "Only You!"

"Beware of a Holy Whore":

The film features music from Leonard Cohen's first album Songs of Leonard Cohen and from Spooky Two by Spooky Tooth, among others.

... so that's another one with Leonard Cohen in it!

(xp) Might play all three, "The Great Pretender" is definitely in there though, for obvious reasons.

I can't think of another director who over the course of his filmography has more scenes of people actually putting a record on a turntable and playing it

Ha, exactly. There is some stuff in that one Jean Eustache movie and that one scene in Velvet Goldmine but yeah.

In the Eustache movie (The Mother and the Whore), it's the same LP over and over again - Deep Purple's Concerto for Group and Orchestra!

Ha, couldn’t remember what LP it was, for some reason was thinking it was Tea for the Tillerman.

lol I have seen fox and his friends like 20 times and apparently there is a Leonard Cohen song in that one too (bird on a wire) but I can't think what scene it appears in

Haven't seen that film quite so many times as you but can certainly imagine that song being there, can't place a scene either.

I watched it the other night, he plays it in his flashy sports car when he's driving about feeling lonely and unloved.

That reminds me, I forgot he did an entire film of Brigitte Mira singing Leonard Cohen songs.

it's in the gay bar

13 Moons has some nuts sonic & cinematic allusions: the opening scene uses Mahler's adagietto in a perverse parody of Death in Venice. Check out the way that the john is shot against the morning sky, it's completely Visconti. and then of course the notion of 'sublime/divine beauty' of that film is pretty much immediately destroyed when Elvira gets beat up, and the sex change is discovered right as the adagietto peaks.

Red Zora, Ingrid Caven's character, always appears on screen with the "Amarcord" theme.'

But the song that runs through 13 Moons is Connie Francis' "Schoener Fremder Mann," or "Someone Else's Boy." Big hit in Germany, not a hit in its English version. When Anton Saitz (Gottfried John) meets Red Zora in Elvira's apartment, she calls him "Schoener Fremder Mann."

The final shot of 13 Moons is one of the most powerful sequences in all of Fassbinder... they've discovered Elvira. He starts at the stairs, following his mother as the nun up. She is frisked by Gunter Kaufmann, who looks resigned and sighs before the camera slowly turns around and watches the nun walk into Elvira's room.

Camera follows, and peeks in: the nun graces Elvira's body, and walks by Saitz and Zora, both of whom have their backs to Elvira's body. We don't see their faces. We follow the nun into the adjacent room, where Eva Mattes, playing Elvira's daughter, bursts out of the shadows looking for someone, anyone, for comfort in the midst of crisis. She looks out, camera left, then turns camera right, and freezes. Camera slowly turns again, and begins its final tracking move, sliding down the hall faster than before following the nun as he descends the stairs. And of course during this scene, and this single shot, the Connie Francis song begins alongside the therapy tape of Elvira talking about her life.

The nun descends the stairs, and as soon as she disappears, the frame FREEZES and the therapy tape is cut off and the Connie Francis song comes ROARING up. "Tall handsome stranger, there will come a time one day, when all my dreams become reality..." and then that title card comes up, the day he finished, Goethe's birthday: "FRANKFURT AM MAIN / AM 28 AUGUST 1978."

And the record gets stuck, looping on the word "REALITY...REALITY...REALITY...REALITY...REALITY" drenched in reverb until the picture ex/implodes.

I've heard that 35mm prints of 13 Moons include about a minute of unexposed film at the end of the movie, conforming to the movie's recurring motif of reality and movieland coming into contact, interfering with each other, or destroying everything. Fassbinder's initial essay, written immediately after Armin Meier was found and probably one of the most moving things he ever wrote, tells Elvira's life story leading up to the movie and includes one interesting note of a piece with the Fassbinder interview that shows up on the TV toward the middle: after Christoph leaves Elvira in the second scene, she's supposed to be reading a copy of World on a Wire.

13 Moons is his most hopeful and encouraging movie to me because he not only managed to pull himself out of an unimaginably horrible personal tragedy and transmute it into a work of art that doesn't stand but flies above the others, a film shot entirely from the hip, conceived so quickly (Meier's body was discovered mid-June 1978, start date on the film is July 24, ends on August 28) that there's a power and a beauty so immediately connected to its source that dissection/construction appears impossible--it is a film that feels like it was ripped right out of RWF's chest, and it is his densest diamond.

xp oh yeah nvm yea its when hes in his alfa romeo

Take a look at the TV scene from 13 Moons, it's just fucking nuts, RWF indicts himself by intercutting Maurice Pialat's We Won't Grow Old Together with the documentary on Pinochet. RWF only appears on the TV screen once, but he's heard throughout the scene: right as Red Zora is taking a sleeping pill and going to bed, he's talking about how "I will not do anything to change my personal life or its situation. If I don't meet someone tonight, things will go on just as before, and I won't force myself to change them, even if they don't work."

Channel flips back to Pinochet documentary: "The general never missed an opportunity to express his contempt for parliamentary democracy."

And then that dip to black and cut to the rooftop panorama, a clear allusion to TRIUMPH OF THE WILL...

I mean, it's just staggering. Dude was in Godmode most of his career but jesus, this movie on another level.

Thanks for this analysis. My problem with the final scene of In a Year with 13 Moons was that it was the ultimate fantasy of self-pity: a suicide followed by everyone who had ever done you wrong parading through the room to see your body.

My favourite Fassbinder is Beware of a Holy Whore, so perhaps I prefer him with a lighter touch than you do.

Beware is pretty nasty! But I know what you mean, the stakes are much lower: the death of a film/film collective vs. two hours of death and suicidal gutter philosophy. all of his films have their funny bits, it's something Europeans are so much better at mixing in. Like the bank scene in Fox and His Friends--it's total screwball. "Cash?" "Yes!" "Cash?" "Cash! Yes!" And that zoom in on the bank teller once they've left: "Cash, cash, cash. You say something enough, it loses all meaning." Even Hans smashing the record toward the end of Merchant of Four Seasons is funny.

Beware also has a key line for all of Fassbinder imo, and I think he says it himself: "Isn't it a shame being anti-bourgeois when you realize how bourgeois you are yourself?" That conflict is present in all his films, at least in the way Morbs put it in the Godard vs. Fassbinder thread: RWF was just better at and more interested in synthesizing the commercial and the avant garde. He was certainly more successful in that regard than Chabrol! Though I love him, too.

The Perfect Storm and Querelle are an obvious double feature. Only question is who's on top? 😳 pic.twitter.com/dyHveMK5uF

— Nicky Smith (@nickyotissmith) December 10, 2020

Whoa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOpOIHBjZAI

Uploaded 2 weeks ago

oh amazing thanks for the heads up!