Rainer Werner Fassbinder

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brownbunny · #226 Post by **brownbunny** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 3:55 pm

i don't know if you watched the documentary accompanying the ali disc, but it indicated that that particular film was a shift in filmmaking for fassbinder, and that his films prior to that had been drastically different, in a narrative way. is any of this available?

Michael · #227 Post by **Michael** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 3:56 pm

brownbunny, didn't you read this thread from page one?

brownbunny · #228 Post by **brownbunny** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:01 pm

in regards to that question, michael, i'm an insufferably lazy, feckless individual and i neglected to. i will do that now, however, as i presume it will contain or allude to the information i seek.

Michael · #229 Post by **Michael** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:10 pm

For people who are discovering Fassbinder and wanting to learn more about this amazing director and his films, this is the best thread to explore starting with the first page. Lots of info here and also the The BRD Trilogy and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul threads.

sevenarts · #230 Post by **sevenarts** » Fri Jan 19, 2007 11:01 pm

Just watched The Third Generation tonight, what a marvelous film. The Godard influence is incredibly pronounced, most notably in the soundtrack -- it's an incredibly dense collage of voices and noise to rival even JLG's most cluttered soundtracks. And the media plays a big role in this aural insanity. There's almost always a TV or radio on in the background, sometimes two, accompanied by music, voices reading from books, conversations, animal noises, anything else that can be thrown in to add to the cluttered, tense atmosphere. Fassbinder has perfectly captured a paranoid, cynical world where business executives plot terrorist threats in order to pump up business, and inept revolutionaries are only too glad to be manipulated in order to get some excitement.

As with all Fassbinder, this film is incredibly unsettling, mixing real brutality and ugliness with silliness and high camp. The terrorists are presented as entirely middle class, basically aspiring to the same lifestyle and desires that they were supposedly fighting against. It's also seemingly a fairly radical feminist statement, a critique of the ways in which leftist paradigms too easily fall back into the exact same man/woman dynamics that exist in the larger society.

And the visuals! Those sweeping camera movements that wind around the cell's cramped apartments, the campy posturing and costumes of Volker Spengler, the carnival ending... Just an amazingly beautiful film to look at, it really swept me up for its bizarre, hilarious, uneasy ride.

sevenarts · #231 Post by **sevenarts** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 10:26 am

Can anyone recommend the best book or two about Fassbinder? I'd especially like something with extensive film-by-film sections, to read after I watch each of his films.

acquarello · #232 Post by **acquarello** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 10:47 am

I've read the Laurence Kardish book (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, The Anarchy of the Imagination, and the Thomas Elsaesser book, Fassbinder's Germany: History, Identity, Subject, and of the three, the Elsaesser book is by far my favorite. It's comprehensive, it has annotations on all his films contained within larger chapters of historical and personal context during the making of the films, so it functions as both film analysis and historical biography.

Michael · #233 Post by **Michael** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 11:05 am

I have more than ten books on Fassbinder and I agree with acquarello. Fassbinder's Germany is the one I reach out to the most every time I go through the Fassbinder phase once or twice every year.

exte · #234 Post by **exte** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 2:21 pm

So they shot, edited and completed Berlin Alexanderplatz in six months? A film over fifteen hours long? I cannot wait to see this film, really...

David Ehrenstein · #235 Post by **David Ehrenstein** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 2:26 pm

It's quite an amazing piece of work. It puts an entire novel onto the screen -- what Stroheim wanted to do with Greed and wasn't quite able to.

GringoTex · #236 Post by **GringoTex** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:58 pm

I finally caught up with Katzelmacher. I always put it off because the idea of a "stage-bound" early Fassbinder film based on a play about idle youth didn't sound like a good prospect to me. I was wrong.

I never thought I could be excited gain by static shots of lost souls sitting around staring into space. If Fassbinder hadn't taken up cinema, he could have been the greatest album cover photographer ever.

And the sound of the bisexual gigolo ripping down his zipper before fucking his girlfriend from behind in the second scene strikes me as Fassbinder's cinematic clarion call.

#237 Post by **Matt** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:14 pm

I'm not sure what's going on, but all of the Wellspring Fassbinder DVDs have just become very scarce. Many online retailers list the titles as "out of stock," while some go so far as to say certain titles have been discontinued.

This site, which is usually pretty reliable, does not indicate any of them as out of print, so the discs may just be between printings. However, since the Weinsteins now own what used to be Wellspring, any nutty theory is plausible.

Baron_Blood · #238 Post by **Baron_Blood** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:09 am

sevenarts wrote:Just watched The Third Generation tonight, what a marvelous film.

I just saw this the other day myself. I think it's already moved into my top three favorite Fassbinder's, maybe second only to In a Year with 13 Moons. However, it was the first Fassbinder I've seen in a long time. I've been thinking about revisiting some of my favorites. Especially Querelle, which was my first Fassbinder.

charulata · #239 Post by **charulata** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:06 pm

(Very) interesting article from Times Literary Supplement on Fassbinder's relatively neglected poetry, plays and theatre work:

[quote]The new edition of Fassbinder's dramatic works has been given the more provisional title TheaterstÃ¼cke (Ã¢â‚¬Å“Theatre PlaysÃ¢â‚¬

blindside8zao · #240 Post by **blindside8zao** » Thu May 03, 2007 6:01 pm

and a really awesome caricature of him on the cover that is now taped to the side of my desktop computer.

jesus the mexican boi · #241 Post by **jesus the mexican boi** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 5:30 pm

I just watched QUERELLE for the first time since, oh, 1990 or so, and it's killing me... Who is the voice-over narrator? It sounds like the guy who did the trailers for The Exorcist or The Ninth Configuration or something. The voice is in my head and it's driving me batty.

More thoughts on QUERELLE later, but will someone please answer this for me?

David Ehrenstein · #242 Post by **David Ehrenstein** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 5:40 pm

Fascinating description in TLS of that early play. It sounds like a critique of Schindler's List avant la lettre.

blindside8zao · #243 Post by **blindside8zao** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 7:42 pm

I'm about to supplement my Nietzsche study with some Schopenhauer and was wondering if anyone had any comments on Fassbinder's use of Schopenhauer in In A Year with 13 Moons and whatever other movies. I don't know anything about Doblin but I coincidentally bought Berlin with World as Will and Rep. and the back cover says Doblin was very influenced by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche so I'm assuming RWF might emphasize whatever overtones the book has. Any comments? Also, does anyone know of any studies that have been done on this side of Fassbinder's work?

Awesome Welles · #244 Post by **Awesome Welles** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 7:19 am

I am sorry if I am retreading old ground but there's a hell of a lot to read here!

I saw Ali: Fear Eats the Soul last week and really loved it, I watched another Fassbinder I had heard a lot about, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, which I didn't like very much. I found it to be interesting in places and well written as far as dialogue was concerned but in terms of structure it left me hanging a lot, with my head lolling off the edge of the sofa. What I couldn't understand about the film was how Fassbinder expected his audience to engage with the film/characters. The only sympathetic character was mute, which I thought was an excellent device and worked well, but not only was she mute but there was so little time given to her to explore her reactions to the relationship between Petra and Karin. Only at the very end do we get (which I thought was excellent) a look into her psyche and that is where she packs her bags. It was unfortunate in my opinion that it had to come after what seemed like a tacked on ending in which Petra's mother and daughter turn up.

I thought it would have been okay if Fassbinder had drawn the film so that the audience identify with Petra, which is fine to indentify with a character that is a bitch/bastard but that character isn't usually annoying (or maybe that's just me). Likewise I think it's fine to identify with a character that is very distant (or mute) as long as the audience engages with the character on an emotional level, but Fassbinder distances us from Marlene by not showing us very much at all, there are shots of her looking at Petra but these tell us so little and her reactions are also muted, perhaps this is just her masochistic attitude which I don't understand, I don't know. Did I just totally not get the film?

Maybe I just don't 'get' Fassbinder yet or am having trouble acclimatising to his world. What I need now is not to make a wrong step which will put me off him, which I don't want as I enjoyed Ali so much. I am more than likely to sit through a handlfull of Fassbinder films even if I don't like them just to get to another Ali. Can someone offer a good next film to watch, I am only renting Fassbinder films at the moment so anything on R2 UK will only be available to me.

Thanks in advance. Also I'd be happy if anyone could offer their thoughts on my ramblings (I am a little ill which might explain my meandering ideas).

GringoTex · #245 Post by **GringoTex** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:36 am

FSimeoni wrote:Maybe I just don't 'get' Fassbinder yet or am having trouble acclimatising to his world ... Can someone offer a good next film to watch, I am only renting Fassbinder films at the moment so anything on R2 UK will only be available to me.

Merchant of Four Seasons is very accessible (for Fassbinder).

Awesome Welles · #246 Post by **Awesome Welles** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 9:35 am

Thank you I shall report back. Should I give Petra another go in the future or is that too hard to answer?

Antoine Doinel · #247 Post by **Antoine Doinel** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:06 am

The Goethe-Institut here in Montreal is running some Fassbinder for the next couple of months, and while most will have French subtitles, there are a couple that will be screening with English subtitles.

One of them is Love Is Colder Than Death -- what can people tell me about it?

GringoTex · #248 Post by **GringoTex** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:15 am

FSimeoni wrote:Thank you I shall report back. Should I give Petra another go in the future or is that too hard to answer?

The writer of the first essay in the Criterion BRD boxset (I forget his name) put it very well. He said there have been three directors who have built houses with their films: Ford, Ozu, and Fassbinder. Meaning their films have to be viewed as pieces of a larger structure. One film may be the grand staircase, one the master bedroom, and another the plumbing. But you're not going to be interested in the plumbing until you've been sold on the spacious kitchen. This doesn't mean that plumbing is bad (nothing in a house is more important than the plumbing). It just means it can't be what you approach first.

Anyway, having seen more than 20 of his features, for me there are no longer any bad Fassbinder films.

Awesome Welles · #249 Post by **Awesome Welles** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:37 am

I thought it was Fassbinder himself who said that he was building a house with his own films. I find Fassbinder to be a very interesting director I love Ali as I mentioned and I enjoyed his short film The City Trampso while I may not have engaged much with Petra that much I have the distinct feeling that Fassbinder will be (for me) every much the director that he is in reputation. The notion of viewing his films as a structure seems to be a good idea, I suppose Godard is similar, I feel sorry for anyone who has viewed Tout va bien(or any of his agitprop phase) for their first Godard film.

Lemmy Caution · #250 Post by **Lemmy Caution** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:56 am

I haven't seen Petra as it has never turned up here with English subtitles. But if you liked Ali, I rec going with The Marriage of Maria Braun, which is more polished than Ali and seems to usher in Fassbinder's last phase.

My favorite Fassbinder's are In a Year with 13 Moons, which is a full-on immersion into a psycho-sexual drama, und Veronica Voss which is just a gorgeous piece of filmmaking. But I think Maria Braun is more representative of his work. I always think it helps to match a film to your mood, though that can be tricky business.

But thanks, you've reminded me that I still have a number of Fassbinder films to watch.