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

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.