GODARD vs. FASSBINDER

(xp) Well that's nonsense, he was already a major figure in German cinema by his 12th film.

Godard would be a minor figure if you just took the 12 films from 1980-1995. They both have fallow periods, weak films.

By all accounts, Godard was Fassbinder's barometer for productivity at the start of his career ("if Godard made 2 films a year, Rainer had to make 4" -Harry Baer). he saw himself as taking up Godard's mantle in European cinema. Both the most influential and well known directors of their respective countries, I think it makes sense as a comparison. There isn't total overlap but there's a lot.

You are the one saying his first dozen films are good or great. I'm saying that's nonsense.

I agree Beware of a Holy Whore and the even better The Merchant of Four Seasons mark when he starts getting innaresting.

yeah sorry flappy i didn't mean it wasn't a comparison worth making, all comparisons tell you stuff. i'm just more interested in where comparisons don't work

(xp) Well that's nonsense, he was already a major figure in German cinema by his 12th film.

― Terry Micawber (Tom D.), Tuesday, 16 June 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Now only one or two of those films would be shown in a retro alongside other German films from that period. All I'm saying is they are curiosities. Beware of a Holy Whore is where he is clearly making a transition.

Fair enough, depends on how you define minor.

Also I don't think they're curiosities either. Some of them are pretty bad though.

Tom is right, a lot of Fassbinder's Antiteater films--particularly Love is Colder Than Death and Katzelmacher--were pretty successful and known. I mean, Karl-Heinz Bohm approached Fassbinder about working together after he saw Katzelmacher and The Coffeehouse. But that popular enthusiasm for the early work never really left Germany. you're right that if he kicked it before Merchant, he'd be a curio today globally, not totally obscure but a footnote.

I think I've said this before bu Katzelmacher is the only RWF I find unwatchable, and I've seen Querelle!

The American Soldier is nice Noir riff.

sometimes it just blows me away that a human being can do shit like make 40 films over a lifetime. i can't even find my keys!!!!

I like The American Soldier a lot. From the 68-70 run, I'd say...

GREAT
Beware of a Holy Whore
Katzelmacher
The Niklahausen Journey
The American Soldier

GOOD
Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?
Pioneers in Ingolstadt
Gods of the Plague
Love is Colder Than Death

EHHH...
Whity
Rio das Mortes

Whity is kind of interesting just because it was only one of two films Fassbinder shot in Cinemascope (the other being Querelle, 12 years later).

But back to both of them. Let's not forget:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQCic5WTx-o

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

sometimes it just blows me away that a human being can do shit like make 40 films over a lifetime. i can't even find my keys!!!!

LOL. I love "Gods of the Plague".

this is where I confess Godard has really never done much for me

when I click 'Fassbinder' on this poll though the next thing that loads is the Michael Sembello poll. For real. Like I click "vote" and instead of anything else, Michael Sembello poll.

If we’re counting Fassbinder’s shorts and TV movies among the first 10-12 then yes, less impressive than Godard, but I loved his first film Love Is Colder Than Death and also Gods of the Plague, and his films from Beware of a Holy Whore on are mostly great

Love Is Colder Than Death was influenced by French New Wave but really laid out some of the themes running through his work - a tendency toward grandiosity, unusual camera work, embrace of strangeness, rejection of audience, emphasis on the artificial nature of performance

Keep trying, Joan!

"and his films from Beware of a Holy Whore on are mostly great"

I don't disagree with this!

Totally understandable not to like any Godard. The early stuff is like someone that loves film with a ton of caveats...who then goes on to make the films about those. Texts are just inserted in, lots that just doesn't add up. I found it quite an easy universe to get into but his voice can be alienating.

godard invented weird-left twitter shitposting in 1968, this is canon (it's why he's GREAT but also EXHAUSTING AND ANNOYING)

i love him but as a gemini i am also unreasonably pro twitter

as dave q proved on these very boards 20-odd years ago there are no inapt comparisons, only comparisons that have been failed imaginatively

ts: godard vs fassbinder vs dave q the winner is dave q

Godard Vs Buffy

from beneath you it devours 24 times a second

🦇

The early stuff is like someone that loves film with a ton of caveats...who then goes on to make the films about those. Texts are just inserted in, lots that just doesn't add up. I found it quite an easy universe to get into but his voice can be alienating.

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, June 17, 2020 6:25 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

rewatched Alphaville last night, was going to do Vivre sa Vie right after but ran out of time. So amazing how improvisational AND airtight these films feel. as you say, they appear made of caveats, stamps even, and even when it feels and looks tossed off it's somehow perfect. I mean, that "Closer, closer, says love" speech is beautiful.

I rewatched La Chinoise a few weeks ago and it's better than I remember, more relevant than ever (especially that train scene).

I'm pleased to announce that this week my students have written well about Vivre Sa Vie.

Breathless, Vivre Sa Vie and Le Petit Soldat were great. thought Contempt was an early apex

I like the attention drawn to filmmaking with Contempt, the broken fourth wall. I also like the clear straightforward story, the references to The Odyssey, the meta-presence of Fritz Lang, and the sense of European cinema is being subsumed by Hollywood

and especially the fascinating view of inner emotional struggles and the depiction of a relationship slowly disintegrating and ultimately destroyed by a seemingly inconsequential decision in a single moment

Godard would be a minor figure if you just took the 12 films from 1980-1995. They both have fallow periods, weak films.

I know this was a side-point in a two-day-old argument, but 80-90 is Godard's best overall run to me. I'm surprised to see it called fallow! I know it will never have the popularity of his 60s work (which I also love), but in particular the first 4 80s films he made are among his greatest achievements.

I love these takes.

I should've added a couple caveats: Every Man for Himself is one of his best films by a long shot. I don't know what it is but there's a magic in it, that the statement "my second first film" makes a lot of sense to me having seen it a couple times. that first shot of blue sky, the movie really does feel like the beginning of a new brilliant period, musical and moving but still experimental and unburdened by commercial compromise.

And then he loses me until Histoire(s). But, second caveat- I haven't seen Passion or King Lear. and Histoire(s) is obviously his masterpiece.

Carmen, Detective, Hail Mary, Keep Your Right Up.... gun

I really like the short Changer d'Image included on the Carmen disc tho.

I think that Passion is his best from this period, fwiw. Really unique and beautiful, kind of a counterpart to Contempt.

as someone personally fond of king lear -- watched on arrival in the 80s, rewatched a couple of years back at the NFT -- i doubt it will particularly change yr mind FB: it is extremely cryptic and tbh somewhat more pomo in an 80s manner than he generally is (the main threading story is him trying to get production funding for a version of lear, with JLG in the role of the "fool"); when i saw in first i marvelled most of all at the clarity and detail of its sound (i'd never heard anything like it at the time) but the ordinary world has very much caught up with this and it's hard to discern now or be so impressed i think by this aspect; the second time i saw it it was full of elements i absolutely didn't remember from the first time (and the elements i did remember were much less to the fore than i remembered)

i still prefer it to passion and carmen and such but i think it's a bagatelle really

obviously i need to see it a third time in a cinema

i faintly remembered i'd posted all this before some time in the v distant past: it was just over two months ago ffs

i saw king lear when it came out (1987, packed showing at the london film festival) and didn't really get it but remember being struck by the sound detail, which just seemed amazing compared to any other film

saw it again at an nft godard season maybe three years back (chair alph will recall): found it easier to follow but less remarkable, and i guess the world of cinema sound has by now long caught up with late-80s godard, bcz i could no longer hear that element, or anyway why i thought it. it was full of lots of small things i enjoyed which i thought would have stuck with me from my earlier watch (but i'd totally forgotten) as well as some things i now felt confidently enough a lol cineaste to be mildly irritated by

probably i need to see it again to calibrate properly: i don't think actually his gift is in bringing his mind to the canonic classics of literature tho

― mark s, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 20:45 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Both the most influential and well known directors of their respective countries

Surely not! German New Wave fellow travellers Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog are WAY more well known than Fassbinder. Influence is murkier territory but if you count the Weimar republic he's got some serious competition.

Die Dritte Generation is kinda bootleg Godard.

Godard would be a minor figure if you just took the 12 films from 1980-1995. They both have fallow periods, weak films.

I know this was a side-point in a two-day-old argument, but 80-90 is Godard's best overall run to me. I'm surprised to see it called fallow! I know it will never have the popularity of his 60s work (which I also love), but in particular the first 4 80s films he made are among his greatest achievements.

― intheblanks, Thursday, 18 June 2020 bookmarkflaglink

I didn't say anything to specifically address this but yes it's quite a rich period. I don't particularly Carmen or Detective but that's only because it's a worse copy of the 60s work.

As it is I love (as I said about two months back or so): Helas Pour moi, Histoire(s), JLG/JLG, which are up there with his best work. Also I've yet to see a lot of it (which is also true of early Fassbinder).

(xp) True, Herzog's still making films and is kind of celebrity too these days.

high time he ate some more shoes imo

Die Dritte Generation is kinda bootleg Godard.

― Daniel_Rf, Saturday, June 20, 2020 6:59 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

he even uses the gunshot sound effect from Masculin/Feminin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixR342I9xkk

mark that sounds a lot like his segment from Aria, I think that was even the same year as King Lear, 1987? it's just a bunch of JCVD lookin' dudes pumping iron

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

fassbinder was sexxxier

I find Goddard films quite annoying, and every Fassbinder I've seen is great.

https://d2v9ipibika81v.cloudfront.net/uploads/sites/21/15small-Fassbinder-and-Brad-Davis.jpg

https://thefilmstage.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Godard-1536x864.jpg

fassbinder was sexxxier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WFX4tWm9OM

Fassbinder. World On A Wire is the best film ever made

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Booo

Man, I couldn’t hang with World On A Wire. Made it an hour in before I was done with the office chats. Will try again soon.

Also, lol at the results.

RWF better at show business, tho Godard can do that when he tries.

Both indispensable. It depends what you value as an individual viewer on a particular day.

(Both have made films I would technically consider torture. Querelle and a lot of JLG's '80s.)

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Monday, June 15, 2020 4:10 PM (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

As with many threads, I made this one mostly to see what Morbs would say. He's right--not about Querelle, though.

I'm surprised at querelle singled out in that post. I would have thought it at the very least one of his most fun.

Fuck, I saw this thread before the other one....

Man, I couldn’t hang with World On A Wire. Made it an hour in before I was done with the office chats. Will try again soon.

― SQUIRREL MEAT!! (Capitaine Jay Vee)

Def try again