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

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