Xixax Film Forum

The Director's Chair => The Director's Chair => Topic started by: pookiethecat on June 05, 2003, 10:49:24 PM

Title: Fassbinder
Post by: pookiethecat on June 05, 2003, 10:49:24 PM
At Godardian's suggestion, I watched the movie: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.  And though I'm sure my reactions aren't profound or all that interesting to read, I'm going to share them anyway.  

This movie made me vomitous.  Its depiction of relationships was so true, so sharply observant, and so honestly repugnant that I felt like someone had just kicked me in the stomach.  Its theme is dominance and submission in everything from simple exchanges to long-term relationships.  The depiction rang true, at least with my occasional experiences, and it makes you think about what a truly sad place the world can be.    

It's about a fashion designer, Petra von Kant, who divorces her husband because of his chauvinism and superiority.  She simply inflicts the same behavior to another woman, Karin, embarking on a lesbian relationship.  Their souless, loveless, and (essentially) sexless relationship is absolutely chilling.

I won't spoil what eventually becomes of Petra's and Karin's relationship...but this movie was great in getting its point across- in just about every way.  Though it takes place in only two rooms, and is extremely dialogue-heavy, there is something undeniably cinematic and riveting about the direction.  It's more than simply a filmed play.  

I found this movie to be profound and worthy of critque, analysis, and, in my view, praise.  If you have not seen this movie, I would highly suggest doing so.  It is one of the most twisted, unsettling movies I've seen (yet in a highly subtle way)...and it also doesn't condescend to its characters and treats them like human beings, yes human beings capable of awful depraved things, but not depraved beings worthy of punishment in of themselves..

Overall, an excellent rental and something I'd really be interested in discussing

-Pookie
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on June 05, 2003, 11:22:33 PM
Yay!!!!

Yes, it is a very sad, very disturbing film, but also beautiful, in a way, because it's so perceptive. The characters are so truly human. I loved the additional character of the silent maid; in a way, it's sort of a happy ending, because it's as if Petra discovers that she's been hurting her, in a way, just as she's been hurt by Karin, and maybe the best reaction we could have to the hurt we feel and the pain we go through is to deal with the pain that we might be inflicting on others without even thinking about it.

It is very "cinematic." Fassbinder's cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus (who did Petra and loads of other Fassbinder films) is now Scorsese's cinematographer of choice; he photographed Gangs of New York. The camera movements and the really unusual, vibrant use of color and perspective are just two of the things in Petra you couldn't get if you were seeing it as a stage play.

I'm so glad you saw this, Pookie. Even more glad you liked it.  :)
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: pookiethecat on June 05, 2003, 11:44:03 PM
Quote from: godardianYes, it is a very sad, very disturbing film, but also beautiful, in a way, because it's so perceptive. The characters are so truly human. I loved the additional character of the silent maid; in a way, it's sort of a happy ending, :)

It IS beautiful, I got that feeling too.  I kept on waiting for one of the characters to cop out and lose their human qualities.  But none did, that's what made the dysfunction even more tragic...because it was based in reality.  The ending inspired the hell out of me.  I perceived it as Petra finally releasing the maid from bondage by simply treating her as an equal.  By the end of the movie, everyone was free and equal.    Redemptive, touching, disturbing.  it played on all my emotions and desires as a filmgoer.  I need to watch the movie again...and hopefully see more of fassbinder's movies.  If you have any other suggestions along similar lines, let me know.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on June 05, 2003, 11:58:30 PM
Quote from: pookiethecat
Quote from: godardianYes, it is a very sad, very disturbing film, but also beautiful, in a way, because it's so perceptive. The characters are so truly human. I loved the additional character of the silent maid; in a way, it's sort of a happy ending, :)

It IS beautiful, I got that feeling too.  I kept on waiting for one of the characters to cop out and lose their human qualities.  But none did, that's what made the dysfunction even more tragic...because it was based in reality.  The ending inspired the hell out of me.  I perceived it as Petra finally releasing the maid from bondage by simply treating her as an equal.  By the end of the movie, everyone was free and equal.    Redemptive, touching, disturbing.  it played on all my emotions and desires as a filmgoer.  I need to watch the movie again...and hopefully see more of fassbinder's movies.  If you have any other suggestions along similar lines, let me know.

Yes, exactly... as if releasing her maid from bondage was one big step towards getting out of her own bondage.

Well, you could add your name to my short-but-sweet list of those interested in watching Fox and his Friends more or less as a group during one week to be determined, then discuss that weekend. See the ever-popular Queer Cinema thread for details.

Fassbinder rules. Have you seen High Art, pookie? The Patricia Clarkson character was supposedly a Fassbinder actor, and the intensity of the kind of work he did with actors was responsible for her downfall. It was sort of fiction-based-in-fact, I guess. I really need to read a biography of him, or something; with all his talent and personality, he also apparently had a pretty dark side.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: pookiethecat on June 06, 2003, 12:18:15 AM
Quote from: godardian
Quote from: pookiethecat
Quote from: godardianYes, it is a very sad, very disturbing film, but also beautiful, in a way, because it's so perceptive. The characters are so truly human. I loved the additional character of the silent maid; in a way, it's sort of a happy ending, :)

It IS beautiful, I got that feeling too.  I kept on waiting for one of the characters to cop out and lose their human qualities.  But none did, that's what made the dysfunction even more tragic...because it was based in reality.  The ending inspired the hell out of me.  I perceived it as Petra finally releasing the maid from bondage by simply treating her as an equal.  By the end of the movie, everyone was free and equal.    Redemptive, touching, disturbing.  it played on all my emotions and desires as a filmgoer.  I need to watch the movie again...and hopefully see more of fassbinder's movies.  If you have any other suggestions along similar lines, let me know.

Yes, exactly... as if releasing her maid from bondage was one big step towards getting out of her own bondage.

Well, you could add your name to my short-but-sweet list of those interested in watching Fox and his Friends more or less as a group during one week to be determined, then discuss that weekend. See the ever-popular Queer Cinema thread for details.

Fassbinder rules. Have you seen High Art, pookie? The Patricia Clarkson character was supposedly a Fassbinder actor, and the intensity of the kind of work he did with actors was responsible for her downfall. It was sort of fiction-based-in-fact, I guess. I really need to read a biography of him, or something; with all his talent and personality, he also apparently had a pretty dark side.

I HAVE seen High Art and that bit of character background is fascinating.  The Patricia Clarkson character was my favorite part- ...her German, semi-conscious, jealous/selfish act was just too intriguing...
I think this topic is too esoteric for other people to comment...kina disappointing, ooo well
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on June 06, 2003, 12:27:36 AM
Quote from: pookiethecat
Quote from: godardian
Quote from: pookiethecat
Quote from: godardianYes, it is a very sad, very disturbing film, but also beautiful, in a way, because it's so perceptive. The characters are so truly human. I loved the additional character of the silent maid; in a way, it's sort of a happy ending, :)

It IS beautiful, I got that feeling too.  I kept on waiting for one of the characters to cop out and lose their human qualities.  But none did, that's what made the dysfunction even more tragic...because it was based in reality.  The ending inspired the hell out of me.  I perceived it as Petra finally releasing the maid from bondage by simply treating her as an equal.  By the end of the movie, everyone was free and equal.    Redemptive, touching, disturbing.  it played on all my emotions and desires as a filmgoer.  I need to watch the movie again...and hopefully see more of fassbinder's movies.  If you have any other suggestions along similar lines, let me know.

Yes, exactly... as if releasing her maid from bondage was one big step towards getting out of her own bondage.

Well, you could add your name to my short-but-sweet list of those interested in watching Fox and his Friends more or less as a group during one week to be determined, then discuss that weekend. See the ever-popular Queer Cinema thread for details.

Fassbinder rules. Have you seen High Art, pookie? The Patricia Clarkson character was supposedly a Fassbinder actor, and the intensity of the kind of work he did with actors was responsible for her downfall. It was sort of fiction-based-in-fact, I guess. I really need to read a biography of him, or something; with all his talent and personality, he also apparently had a pretty dark side.

I HAVE seen High Art and that bit of character background is fascinating.  The Patricia Clarkson character was my favorite part- ...her German, semi-conscious, jealous/selfish act was just too intriguing...
I think this topic is too esoteric for other people to comment...kina disappointing, ooo well

Maybe, but I'm hoping maybe Macguffin or Gold Trumpet or someone will have seen some of Fassbinder. Anyone?
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: ©brad on June 06, 2003, 01:48:21 AM
i have i have. well the only thing ive seen is the marriage of maria whatever her name is. its a powerful film, fassbinder kinda reminds me of a german oliver stone, couldn't tell u why right now. i've read a lot about him though, he did a lot of drugs, was gay, and died very young.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on September 29, 2003, 02:45:58 PM
I revisited Petra recently. If you like Godard, Todd Haynes, or wanna know where that brilliant mannequin face in the last scene of Boogie Nights came from, you' have GOT to see this as soon as possible.

Also- POOKIE, WHERE ARE YOU??????
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on October 02, 2003, 08:28:58 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.criterionco.com%2Fcontent%2Fimages%2Ffull_boxshot%2F206_box_348x490.jpg&hash=6b8bc49a1df2ce36cdffb93f04b710af5cd039cd)(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.criterionco.com%2Fcontent%2Fimages%2Ffull_boxshot%2F204_box_348x490.jpg&hash=48b20d419c49719e5a823c80bdac49cfb6c882a9)
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.criterionco.com%2Fcontent%2Fimages%2Ffull_boxshot%2F205_box_348x490.jpg&hash=d37df6f2ece6bcf24e510395558bd4645dd225d2)

...discuss. I'm going to try to get Macguffin to slightly alter the title of this item so we can get us a full-fledged Fassbinder-talk going.
Title: re
Post by: pookiethecat on October 03, 2003, 08:52:45 PM
i wanna see those films so incredibly bad.  blockbuster sucks balls.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: SoNowThen on October 10, 2003, 09:03:20 AM
Saw Ali:Fear Eats The Soul last night. Good flick, I certainly didn't love it, but I'm interested enough to watch some more Fassbinder now.

Reminded me of Ozu kinda.

One thing I did like was the use of the color red. I dunno, besides some Godard stuff, I find that color to be under-used (or at least not really effectively used) in most movies.

Oh, and Fassbinder seems to really like the busty women. SoNowThen too, so that I liked as well...  :)
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on October 10, 2003, 11:03:46 AM
Quote from: SoNowThenSaw Ali:Fear Eats The Soul last night. Good flick, I certainly didn't love it, but I'm interested enough to watch some more Fassbinder now.

Reminded me of Ozu kinda.

One thing I did like was the use of the color red. I dunno, besides some Godard stuff, I find that color to be under-used (or at least not really effectively used) in most movies.

Oh, and Fassbinder seems to really like the busty women. SoNowThen too, so that I liked as well...  :)

Yes, Fassbinder was very influenced by Godard. The Douglas Sirk influence began to saturate into the early '70s work, though Godard can still perhaps be seen in the colors and, of course, in Ali's opening epigraph, "Happiness isn't always fun," which is probably the most famous intertible from Vivre sa Vie.

I just watched The Merchant of Four Seasons, which came a little before Ali. I think this is the one that marks the beginning of that Sirk thing; in the simply plotted but almost too-eventful tale of a fruit-cart owner and ex-Legionnaire, his wife, his child, his family, and his business worries- the combination of which is terminal- Fassbinder does find a strange balance between the austere Godardian and the melodramatically subversive Sirk...

So glad you watched it, though, SoNowThen! That makes, um. THREE of us here who have Fassbinder exposure!

The next one I would recommend is The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. It's a little better than Ali, I think, plus it has Michael Ballhaus cinematography! Also, I swear PTA got the VISUAL mirror/mannequin thing at the end of Boogie Nights from this, even if the dialogue/conception was  Raging Bull...
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: pookiethecat on October 10, 2003, 02:37:40 PM
Quote from: godardianThe next one I would recommend is The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. It's a little better than Ali, I think, plus it has Michael Ballhaus cinematography! Also, I swear PTA got the VISUAL mirror/mannequin thing at the end of Boogie Nights from this, even if the dialogue/conception was  Raging Bull...

That's an astute theory, Godardian. The mirror trick is amazing.The use of mannequins is pretty incredible.  By the 3rd act, Petra herself resembles a mannequin.

Has PTA ever expressed interest in Fassbinder?  Other than the mirror/mannequin similarity, I think they both show a sincere love of the ostracized in society.  And both avoid black and white portraits of good and evil.  

If I could ask for one fassbinder movie for my bday, which one would it  be?  (besides petra, cuz i already have that one)
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on October 10, 2003, 03:25:41 PM
Quote from: pookiethecat
Quote from: godardianThe next one I would recommend is The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. It's a little better than Ali, I think, plus it has Michael Ballhaus cinematography! Also, I swear PTA got the VISUAL mirror/mannequin thing at the end of Boogie Nights from this, even if the dialogue/conception was  Raging Bull...

That's an astute theory, Godardian. The mirror trick is amazing.The use of mannequins is pretty incredible.  By the 3rd act, Petra herself resembles a mannequin.

Has PTA ever expressed interest in Fassbinder?  Other than the mirror/mannequin similarity, I think they both show a sincere love of the ostracized in society.  And both avoid black and white portraits of good and evil.  

If I could ask for one fassbinder movie for my bday, which one would it  be?  (besides petra, cuz i already have that one)

I love Fox and his Friends, but the Ali DVD has some really super extras. :-)
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: SoNowThen on October 10, 2003, 03:29:57 PM
What about that box set CC just put out?
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: pookiethecat on October 10, 2003, 03:46:40 PM
Quote from: SoNowThenWhat about that box set CC just put out?

a bit much to ask from the 'rents don't you say, especially with netflix and a new pair of pumas already in the works.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: SoNowThen on October 10, 2003, 03:52:20 PM
parents are for spoiling their children    :)


naw, you're right. i say save up and get it later tho...
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on October 10, 2003, 06:36:08 PM
Quote from: SoNowThenWhat about that box set CC just put out?

That doesn't technically count because it's well more than one DVD... but yes, it's beautiful. Of the three, I've only seen Marriage of Maria Braun, but it's very good, and I'm really looking forward to experiencing the whole set. It's beautifully packaged, too- very reminiscent of the Antoine Doinel box. Rough-paper (as opposed to the sturdier but more conventional packaging of the Bergman and Dreyer sets) is graphically very nice, I think.

Slightly off-topic: Speaking of Bergman and the color red- you seen Cries and Whispers?
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: Gold Trumpet on October 10, 2003, 06:45:25 PM
Quote from: godardianSlightly off-topic: Speaking of Bergman and the color red- you seen Cries and Whispers?

Ugh, now I have to comment. Love the movie. Bergman's development from beginner to master is in example with this movie for sure. Its just I had a film/literature professor talk about how she loved Ingmar Bergman. I got into a conversation with her and remarked how my favorite of his was Cries and Whispers and Persona. She said she never seen them. Surprising, I know. Given I had the nice dvd, I lent it to her. When she gave it back, I tried talking about Bergman's effect of furthering earlier themes of his and she just kept saying, "I love it! The use of red was so great in that! How the scenes would end and begin with the red screen? Fantastic! I loved the red in the film!" and on an on. I tried to interrupt her but to no avail. Ugh. Bad memories when this portion of the movie is signaled out.

To try to be of help to this thread, I am going to try to watch Ali: Fear Eats the Soul tonight and reply as soon as I can. Also, the forementioned Criterion box set is number #1 on my christmas list of 3 things.

~rougerum
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on October 10, 2003, 06:48:15 PM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet
Quote from: godardianSlightly off-topic: Speaking of Bergman and the color red- you seen Cries and Whispers?

Ugh, now I have to comment. Love the movie. Bergman's development from beginner to master is in example with this movie for sure. Its just I had a film/literature professor about how she loved Ingmar Bergman. I got into a conversation with her and remarked my favorite of his was Cries and Whispers and Persona. She said she never seen them. Surprising, I know. Given I had the nice dvd, I lent it to her. When she gave it back, I tried talking about Bergman's effect of furthering earlier themes of his and she just kept saying, "I love it! The use of red was so great in that! How the scenes would end and begin with the red screen? Fantastic! I loved the red in the film!" and on an on. I tried to interrupt her but to no avail. Ugh. Bad memories when this portion of the movie is signaled out.

To try to be of help to this thread, I am going to try to watch Ali: Fear Eats the Soul tonight and reply as soon as I can. Also, the forementioned Criterion box set is number #1 on my christmas list of 3 things.

~rougerum

Certainly, there is much, much more to Bergman's film than the color... but it is very memorable and does heighten the effect. It was just SoNowThen's comment that brought it to mind... I wouldn't want to diminish it by basically saying it was pretty. It is a very lovely technique, though. It's inseparable from the actors' faces. There is also wonderful use of sound in that film.

Can't wait to hear your comments on Fassbinder, GT!
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: Gold Trumpet on October 10, 2003, 11:19:20 PM
To comment on Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, I didn't really like it. The idea of course was to show a couple of extreme distance in background. A physically attractive man and an older, unattractive woman. You saw her conviction in the relationship, but never really his. He seemed more of a passenger being offered nice things and on second date (literally) he is indirectly offered marriage and like the coffee and brandy, he accepts. Much of what bothered me in believability was the acting. The man playing Ali had little presence or anything else at all. Most other people just seemed to be standing around and merely say their lines. The dialogue in conveying the story reminded me of David O. Selznick's obcession with memos in deleting the 80% of conversation that was disposable in that it didn't get to the point: all the dialogue here was get to the point and acted with as much excitement as a memo. In the Criterion booklet, it is said Fassbinder wanted to bring the original story of influence from melodrama (Sirk) to  fable. I don't really get why he would do it. Fassbinder's is attempting to speak for societal problems in his own Germany. I don't see how addressing it in a fable is really going to be the best structure.

There are interesting ideas, *spoiler* like how the couple of course meets resentment and pressure from the community but after being away and time passing, they become more accepted but start to drift. They drift because they can't just rely on each other and start to bring the pressures and norms of their own cultures and asking the other to give up something indirectly because of it.

Even with all of this, I'm still glad I bought the disc and do still want that box set and to watch more Fassbinder.

~rougerum
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on October 10, 2003, 11:29:36 PM
Quote from: The Gold TrumpetTo comment on Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, I didn't really like it. The idea of course was to show a couple of extreme distance in background. A physically attractive man and an older, unattractive woman. You saw her conviction in the relationship, but never really his. He seemed more of a passenger being offered nice things and on second date (literally) he is indirectly offered marriage and like the coffee and brandy, he accepts. Much of what bothered me in believability was the acting. The man playing Ali had little presence or anything else at all. Most other people just seemed to be standing around and merely say their lines. The dialogue in conveying the story reminded me of David O. Selznick's obcession with memos in deleting the 80% of conversation that was disposable in that it didn't get to the point: all the dialogue here was get to the point and acted with as much excitement as a memo. In the Criterion booklet, it is said Fassbinder wanted to bring the original story of influence from melodrama (Sirk) to  fable. I don't really get why he would do it. Fassbinder's is attempting to speak for societal problems in his own Germany. I don't see how addressing it in a fable is really going to be the best structure.

There are interesting ideas, *spoiler* like how the couple of course meets resentment and pressure from the community but after being away and time passing, they become more accepted but start to drift. They drift because they can't just rely on each other and start to bring the pressures and norms of their own cultures and asking the other to give up something indirectly because of it.

Even with all of this, I'm still glad I bought the disc and do still want that box set and to watch more Fassbinder.

~rougerum

You didn't really care for Far from Heaven (another Sirk homage) for similar reasons, if I recall...
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: Gold Trumpet on October 11, 2003, 09:56:53 AM
Kinda and not really. I think the acting, as in Sirk's and Hayne's movie, was muted to a point to fit the rules for a genre. Unlike those two movies, I don't really feel much romanticisim or any attempt to find romanticism at all within it to just get the movie believable on the level of melodrama as with those two. Tougher images are here. Tougher images that may be suggesting a better context for the movie to operate with.

Also, Neon Mercury has asked me for a mini review of Far From Heaven in the Ask The Gold Trumpet thread. Look for that later on in the day to say me speak on an entire different plateau than just failure of conviction in drama or anything like that.

~rougerum
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: SoNowThen on November 17, 2003, 09:23:21 PM
Soooo...

I just watched Love Is Colder Than Death, Fassbinder's 3rd film I believe, and his first in the crime trilogy.

It's amazing. Amazing I mean in that rough around the edges, spare crime thriller sort of way. And the Wellspring DVD looks great. This is the kinda movie that young cinephiles like us should be making.

I will now be for sure buying the BRD Trilogy in the new year, along with Beware Of A Holy Whore. Let the Fassbinder marathon begin!!!!!!!!
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on November 17, 2003, 09:43:12 PM
The revival of this thread (thanks, SoNowThen!) reminds me; I keep meaning to dupe my many recent blog entries re: Fassbinder. Here goes...


From the earlier phase in his career- just as he was letting the Douglas Sirk influence seep in- The Merchant of Four Seasons. A struggling fruit vendor (he has a street cart) returns from the horrors of the Foreign Legion into the seemingly more pleasant but equally imprisoning arms of his family and their economic aspirations for him. Nobody quite captures the creeping futility of modern life (or, as Blur pointed out, that it's rubbish), quite like Fassbinder.

As we recognize from our own lives, everyone in Merchant of Four Seasons is caught between their need to be human and their need to get ahead; there's a gorgeous moment where the fruit vendor's wife (played to melting-ice perfection by Irm Hermann, who also played what may be the quintessential Fassbinder role as the mute secretary in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant) is catcalled by a passing driver, who has mistaken her for a hooker. As she turns to her verbal assailant, the camera frames her against a shop display window containing a "bride" mannequin arm-in-arm with a gaily dressed "fashionable bourgeois lady" mannequin; the way that these characters are mere products, molded to roles they might not even be able to articulate, is summed up beautifully during this one brief sequence.

Fassbinder sidestepped the pedantry of so many social-problem films by always attempting the big picture, taking the role of the observer over that of the judge, and it works. There's real narrative pleasure to be had from witnessing the insidiousness of conformist values passed, in a bitter cycle, from person to person, causing sisters, wives, brothers, fathers, and mothers to brutalize one another in subtle ways. The real onus of all the misery seems to be placed upon the fruit vendor's intellectual, independent, cosmopolitan, and generous sister, who is too absorbed in a book at her brother's hour of most dire need, a time that a sage word or even a listening ear could have altered the course of his downward spiral.

Less successful but also beautifully made is Chinese Roulette, which was released in 1976 (midcareer). The plot is simple: A disabled, spoiled, all-seeing child confronts her parents and their lovers (one of the lovers is Anna Karina, the spectacular screen apparition familiar from so many Godard films) at their country house, where she pits them against one another in a "game" of only barely concealed malignancy. The film is 3/4 great, but there are patches where Fassbinder's coolly decadent style becomes almost a parody of itself; there are arch, brittle exchanges that recall nothing so much as the "Sprockets" sketches from Saturday Night Live. Well worth a viewing, but not Fassbinder at the top of his game.


No, that designation belongs to the absolutely essential BRD Trilogy, recently released by Criterion in a deluxe four-disc package (including one disc of supplements).

The films each explore the "economic miracle" undertaken in postwar (West) Germany as the country struggled to piece back together some sort of identity and goal, to wake up from and forget a national nightmare of incomprehensible proportions. Each of them witnesses this miracle through the experiences of a female character. And each of these films vie with one another for sheer gorgeous perfection.


Maria Braun was the peak of Fassbinder's perpetual collaborations with Hanna Schygulla (and his last film shot by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who later parlayed his work with Fassbinder into worldwide renown as a perennial Scorsese collaborator). Maria is a war bride who had exactly one night and half a day with her soldier husband before he leaves to fight, and who for the first half of the film staunchly holds onto the hope that he's made it through Germany's WWII defeat alive, though all evidence and common sense point to the contrary. When her husband does miraculously return apparently unscathed, Maria immediately commits a crime of passion for which her husband takes the jail sentence, leaving Maria to wait for him again.

All of this waiting leaves Maria torn between the stasis she desires and the inexorable momentum of the world around her. Germany must get up and go, start moving things forward again, making money, and Maria- a pragmatist who prefers taking action to pining- becomes a razor-sharp, extremely successful businesswoman, an identity she tells herself she'll discard in a second once the real goal- a married, comfortable, conventional bourgeois life with her husband- can be reached. Of course, years at war and in prison leave her husband unprepared for life in a home bought and paid for through the remarkable accomplishments of a woman he no longer really knows (or knows him), and the film's climax depicts the inevitable explosions of repressed truths, Maria's and her husband's concretely, and and the nation of Germany allegorically.

The entire trilogy has a classic sheen to it, stylistic extensions of Hollywood moviemaking, though with very different ends in mind; it takes Hollywood's "dream factory" aesthetic ideals to pierce the complacency of blind patriotism and false identity; Fassbinder knows that manufacturing dreams, whether on screen or in life, has a steep cost that needs to be counted.
Maria Braun is the least artificial (and therefore, in some ways, the least interesting) of the three films, but that Fassbinderian distance is still there, in the framing, in the visual and narrative perspective which allows us to see the characters' complex imprisonment, in the tension between form- cinematic beauty, the luxurious image, the concocted space of the mis-en-scene- and painful, even brutal content.

Veronika Voss- "BRD 2"- is a black-and-white marvel, predating Woody Allen's Zelig and the Coen Brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There in painstakingly mounting a black-and-white world- the look of classic Hollywood, where light and shadow reigned- in service of a singularly modern vision.

Veronika Voss (Rosel Zech) was a Third Reich-era movie star who, in the postwar years, is a morphine addict, imprisoned by her prescribing doctor and desperate for a taste of her former fame and public approbation. She attempts to seduce and impress a sports writer as a publicity detour in her bid to get back in front of the camera; she also slyly, in true junkie-con style, saps him of cash in an elaborate scam.

There's a tangled "thriller" plot, and the film has very strong shades of those most memorable B&W bastions, Citizen Kane and Sunset Boulevard. As usual for Fassbinder, however, the real plot is something else, something to do with those who enforce repression, escapism, and forgetfulness (Veronika's doctor, the public health minister), those who can't seem to stop themselves digging up what's being repressed (the sports writer, who obsessively leads himself and his long-suffering girlfriend to a discovery of the real, degraded nature of Veronika's current life while also unearthing a number tattooed upon the inner forearm of another of Veronika's doctor's patients: A concentration camp survivor who, like Veronika, takes the morphine to forget, though for a pointedly different reason), and the one trapped- by herself, by the people around her, and by the mood of the time in which she lives- in that purgatory between trying to remember and trying to forget: Veronika herself.

Lola was released, chronologically speaking, in the middle of the trilogy, though it is labeled "BRD 3" in the titles and is the only one of the films that announces itself as part of a trilogy. It's an almost insanely giddy cinematic pleasure to follow the brilliant black and white of Veronika Voss with the "jellybean colors" (in the words of profoundly gifted cinematographer Xaver Schwarzenberger, who also shot Voss and is interviewed extensively on the supplemental disc) of Lola.

It's well known that Fassbinder worshiped at the similarly jellybean-colored altar of Douglas Sirk- were it not for Fassbinder's enthusiastic and oft-quoted adulation of Sirk, the entire late-seventies body of critical/feminist theory devoted to viewing Sirk afresh and developing a new appreciation of him might never have been- and Lola is undoubtedly his most Sirkian film in both form and content.

Our first glimpse of the titular character (played to glamorously frenetic perfection by Barbara Sukowa) is in a mirror (a recurrent visual motif in both Sirk and Fassbinder) as she prepares for the evening's show. Lola is a performer and prositute at a cabaret owned by the land developer Schuckert, to whom the postwar boom has been most kind and whose property more or less includes Lola herself. Armin Mueller-Stahl is von Bohm, the town's new zoning commissioner, a somewhat prudish man of integrity who likes to think of himself as modern and a friend to Germany's new "economic miracle." He will do business with the land developer, but won't go to his whorehouse. So, when von Bohm and Lola fall in love, he's unaware of her actual occupation. A love triangle develops, or rather, a love square, with Lola, Schuckert, and von Bohm as the three melodramatic points, and Lola's more practical concerns- financial independence, economic security- as the silent fourth corner.

I'll go out on a limb and submit that of all of Fassbinder's visually impressive, ultimately melancholy works, Lola could very well be the most beautifully sad; beautiful because the film is a hermetically concocted, plastic world in which every object, color, light source, and person seems decorative, something more than itself, and sad because this world is a prison to those who, knowingly or not, create, occupy, and perpetuate it.

After tracking down a copy of it from the library a while back, I finally obtained my own sure to be cherished copy of Christian Braad Thomsen's out of print (and priced accordingly) book, Fassbinder: The Life and Work of a Provocative Genius. Thomsen, who also provides audio commentary on the Lola disc (sounding like a Danish Sean Connery) is a filmmaker/critic and was a friend of Fassbinder's; therefore, his insights are at once juicy, informative, and reasonably objective; the book is a combination biography and detailed chronlogical filmography via essay. Add the absolutely gorgeously designed booklet accompanying Criterion's trilogy release and you have a virtually complete goldmine of information/background on what may have been the most proliferative filmmaker of all time; both (especially the Criterion booklet) are also remarkably rich in on-set photographs and stills.


...and then from a little later on...

The Fassbinder gorge continued with Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven. It's hardly a famous work, but it's a really fine effort- better than Merchant of Four Seasons or Chinese Roulette, as good as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul.

Mother Kusters (Brigitte Mira) is an old woman whose husband dies rather ignobly when, after he learns that he and his coworkers will be laid off, kills his boss, then himself. Mother Kusters and her grown children barely have time to acknowledge the news before the vultures- the media, the Communists and, eventually, anarchists who believe Father Kusters's act made him and his family one of them- begin circling, and the needs of their own harried, desperate lives kick in.

The story is, as to be expected from Fassbinder, one of overall futility and defeat, either of the external or the self-inflicted variety. Still, the character of Mother Kusters, if not the smartest, brightest, or most aware of Fassbinder's human creations, is certainly, in her way, among the wisest, simplest, and most honest, the one with the least mixed sympathetic qualities.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: classical gas on November 19, 2003, 01:13:39 AM
I've only seen parts of "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul", but I'm very interested in this director.  Could someone give me a quick short list of must see films by Fassbinder?
Btw, is "Pioneer to Ingolstadt" any good?  It sounded interesting, but everyone on Netflix said it was horrible, while still enjoying other Fassbinder films.
Anything would be greatly appreciated.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on November 19, 2003, 01:19:06 AM
Quote from: classical gasI've only seen parts of "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul", but I'm very interested in this director.  Could someone give me a quick short list of must see films by Fassbinder?
Btw, is "Pioneer to Ingolstadt" any good?  It sounded interesting, but everyone on Netflix said it was horrible, while still enjoying other Fassbinder films.
Anything would be greatly appreciated.

I think the two to start with would be The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and Fox and his Friends. Next down would be Ali (all of it).

Criterion's recent "BRD Trilogy" with The Marriage of Maria Braun, Veronika Voss, and Lola, is also must-see Fassbinder. I recently saw Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, not very widely known but very, very good.

Those are all from later in his career, when he started to become obsessed with Douglas Sirk and really incorporate his style as an influence. I bet SoNowThen has some recommendations on the earlier stuff.

He made a huge number of films. I haven't come close to seeing them all. The titles I just mentioned are all available on DVD, though.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: classical gas on November 19, 2003, 01:30:01 AM
thank you for the recomendations.

i was wandering what, for you, was his main appeal?  what did you find unique about him (i've heard he led a unique life, if i'm thinking of the same person)?  i'm looking forward to watching his films and don't doubt that he is great, i'd just like to know what kind of subject matters he dealt with (like bunuel and lynch deal with dreams, PTA with family, Scorsese with crime, bergman with god and relationships and so on).  i'm always interested in obsessions of certain directors, if you could help.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on November 19, 2003, 10:16:55 AM
Quote from: classical gasthank you for the recomendations.

i was wandering what, for you, was his main appeal?  what did you find unique about him (i've heard he led a unique life, if i'm thinking of the same person)?  i'm looking forward to watching his films and don't doubt that he is great, i'd just like to know what kind of subject matters he dealt with (like bunuel and lynch deal with dreams, PTA with family, Scorsese with crime, bergman with god and relationships and so on).  i'm always interested in obsessions of certain directors, if you could help.

I guess that right off the top of my head, I'd say he's obsessed with human nature and its manifestation in social hierarchies and mechanisms. Because he sees a tremendous amount of futility and cruelty in these and views it rather objectively, he's often considered a depressive, cold director. I find, though, that he has a lot of empathy with his characters. He's more interested in a person "outside" of a society and what that society does to them- and what they're willing to give up to join it.

Thus we have the two lovers in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, both "independent" women of different classes, brought together and torn apart by a lack of emotional independence in one of them and a lack of financial independence in the other. Or the marriage in The Merchant of Four Seasons wherein both husband and wife do care about each other in a way, yet are stifled by familial and economic expectations of the marriage, which they're unable to distinguish from their own needs and desires. Or the young, working-class gay man (played by Fassbinder himself) in Fox and his Friends, who is only really accepted (and exploited) by the chic, affluent gay community of his town after he wins a large amount of money in the lottery. Or the widowed woman in Mother Kuster Goes to Heaven, who just wants some justice done to the memory of her dead husband, who killed himself and a boss after discovering he and his co-workers were going to be laid off, and instead is used as a pawn by those (the media, the Communist party, her grown children) who claim to want to help her.

And so on.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: SoNowThen on December 01, 2003, 12:53:59 AM
So I just saw Beware Of A Holy Whore, Fassbinder's movie on movies. It's like a shrapnel grenade exploded in 8 1/2, like Day For Night on acid. It's not as good as either of those, but it's fucking crazy. CRAZY.

It's pretty cool. I gotta buy it eventually.

Godardian, have you seen Whitey? I'd like to blind buy that too. Then I'll have all the early work (crime trilogy), the main middle chunk (Whitey and Holy Whore), and the late melodrama (BRD).

sa-weet

incidentally, he says that Holy Whore is his favorite work.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: Ravi on May 14, 2004, 03:22:55 PM
I just finished watching my first Fassbinder film, Satan's Brew.  It's a pretty dark comedy with some women who seem to love being tortured by the main character.  Has anyone here seen it?
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: coffeebeetle on May 14, 2004, 05:48:52 PM
For what it's worth, after reading all of your thoughts on this guy, I'm ready to blind buy one of his films.  Where do you suggest I begin?  :)
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: SoNowThen on May 14, 2004, 05:58:50 PM
Love Is Colder Than Death
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: coffeebeetle on May 15, 2004, 01:25:35 AM
Gracias, mi amigo.....
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: Ravi on May 23, 2004, 06:40:48 PM
Quote from: The Gold TrumpetTo comment on Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, I didn't really like it. The idea of course was to show a couple of extreme distance in background. A physically attractive man and an older, unattractive woman. You saw her conviction in the relationship, but never really his. He seemed more of a passenger being offered nice things and on second date (literally) he is indirectly offered marriage and like the coffee and brandy, he accepts. Much of what bothered me in believability was the acting. The man playing Ali had little presence or anything else at all. Most other people just seemed to be standing around and merely say their lines.

Ali was very stiff and quiet in the film, but I think that is due to his being an outcast in Germany, having to work in that auto shop ("German master, Arab dog"), and living with 5 other guys in an apartment.  He's beaten down by life  He also doesn't know German very well.  He also says at one point, "Always sad, always drunk" or something like that, which could contribute to how he acts.  Emmi must have been the first German to simply talk to him (at the beginning when they're dancing).  I think that is why Ali is like that.  Did he offer to marry or did Emmi do it?  I can't remember.  But he probably figured he has nothing to lose and might as well. No, it's not a marriage of passion, but I don't believe it is supposed to be.  Do I consider it a great film?  I don't know.  But I want to watch it again to make up my mind.

QuoteThe dialogue in conveying the story reminded me of David O. Selznick's obcession with memos in deleting the 80% of conversation that was disposable in that it didn't get to the point: all the dialogue here was get to the point and acted with as much excitement as a memo. In the Criterion booklet, it is said Fassbinder wanted to bring the original story of influence from melodrama (Sirk) to  fable. I don't really get why he would do it. Fassbinder's is attempting to speak for societal problems in his own Germany. I don't see how addressing it in a fable is really going to be the best structure.

Is this film really structured as a fable?  Everything seemed real (to an extent) to me, such as Emmi's co-workers shunning her, then the other foreign cleaning lady, talking behind Emmi's back, etc.  Somewhat stylized, but not totally unrealistic in its treatment.

QuoteThere are interesting ideas, *spoiler* like how the couple of course meets resentment and pressure from the community but after being away and time passing, they become more accepted but start to drift. They drift because they can't just rely on each other and start to bring the pressures and norms of their own cultures and asking the other to give up something indirectly because of it.

I also liked how Emmi's friends and family make up with her only because they want Ali to move heavy things to the cellar or have Emmi babysit.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on May 26, 2004, 01:03:04 AM
Quote from: coffeebeetleFor what it's worth, after reading all of your thoughts on this guy, I'm ready to blind buy one of his films.  Where do you suggest I begin?  :)

Wow, I'm late on this...

...but I would suggest Fox and His Friends or Martha.

I haven't seen Satan's Brew...
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: Alethia on May 26, 2004, 07:59:39 AM
i just purchased bitter tears of petra van kant and just finished watching veronika voss....which was quite good by the way

im just now getting into fassbinder
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on May 26, 2004, 09:04:22 AM
Quote from: ewardi just purchased bitter tears of petra van kant and just finished watching veronika voss....which was quite good by the way

im just now getting into fassbinder

Both excellent. You really have to see the rest of the BRD Trilogy if you can.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: Alethia on May 26, 2004, 03:34:45 PM
lol i just bought it on my way home from getting my paycheck

ive seen lola prior and i am about to watch marriage of maria braun now
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on May 26, 2004, 03:50:50 PM
Quote from: ewardlol i just bought it on my way home from getting my paycheck

ive seen lola prior and i am about to watch marriage of maria braun now

:yabbse-thumbup:

I actually think Voss might be my favorite of the trilogy, but the whole thing is brilliant.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: Alethia on August 20, 2004, 05:47:09 PM
so i just saw in a year of 13 moons for the first time after blind buying it .... and it was fucking powerful as hell.  just amazing, absolutely amazing.  especially the scene in which elvira is taken to an apartment housed by two men...one who does nothing but arm curls the whole time, and the other who describes a dream he had in which every grave in the cemetary he was standing in was marked rather peculiarly, but when he goes into why - and, i don't know, but that has been haunting me since, i wont reveal it......but everything about that scene - the lighting, writing, music, acting, distance, just overall insanity and melancholy was...god, depressing but exhilerating too.....i'm really not articulating this well at all but i loved it, absolutely loved it.  a great great film, one of the best fassbinders  i've seen.  highly highly recommended
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: samsong on August 20, 2004, 07:13:51 PM
Quote from: ewardso i just saw in a year of 13 moons for the first time after blind buying it .... and it was fucking powerful as hell.  just amazing, absolutely amazing.  especially the scene in which elvira is taken to an apartment housed by two men...one who does nothing but arm curls the whole time, and the other who describes a dream he had in which every grave in the cemetary he was standing in was marked rather peculiarly, but when he goes into why - and, i don't know, but that has been haunting me since, i wont reveal it......but everything about that scene - the lighting, writing, music, acting, distance, just overall insanity and melancholy was...god, depressing but exhilerating too.....i'm really not articulating this well at all but i loved it, absolutely loved it.  a great great film, one of the best fassbinders  i've seen.  highly highly recommended

I love you.  Have you seen Ali: Fear Eats the Soul?
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: Alethia on August 20, 2004, 08:19:41 PM
yes i have, another blind fassbinder buy.  i definitly thought it was good but im not huge on it, well at least not 13 moons/lola/herr r. huge on it.  i'd place it with mother kusters and effi briest as films of his that i respected but don't feel any great urge to view again...

of his that ive seen ive absolutely loved

lola
veronika voss
why does herr r run amok?
chinese roulette
fox and his friends
american soldier
gods of the plague
and of course in a year of 13 moons

the others that ive seen that i liked but was just a bit bored by

effi briest
marriage of maria braun
ali: fear eats the soul
mother kusters goes to heaven

and there is only one film he made that ive seen that i just did not like at all and that was:

querelle (unfortunate given that this was his final film)


but anyway, fassbinder rules
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: Myxo on August 21, 2004, 12:51:59 AM
Ok, so here's the deal.

About a year ago they had a Fassbinder series at the film school near me. I got a chance to see "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" and I thought it was fucking great. I didn't have time to see any of his other work.

What should I see next then?
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: cine on August 21, 2004, 01:04:02 AM
A therapist.
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: Alethia on August 21, 2004, 10:39:55 AM
Quote from: MyxomatosisOk, so here's the deal.

About a year ago they had a Fassbinder series at the film school near me. I got a chance to see "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" and I thought it was fucking great. I didn't have time to see any of his other work.

What should I see next then?

the brd trilogy, why does herr r run amok?, and 13 moons
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: Myxo on August 21, 2004, 04:18:42 PM
Quote from: CinephileA therapist.

.. you have a key around your neck fool!

;)
Title: Fassbinder
Post by: samsong on August 22, 2004, 02:57:03 AM
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is a great Fassbinder follow-up for Ali: Fear Eats the Soul.  Not only a great follow-up, but introduction enough to his style and content, which should "prepare" you for stuff like In a Year of 13 Moons.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: analogzombie on March 14, 2006, 01:58:06 PM
I've just recently discovered Fassbinder and I'm quickly absorbing his films. I've also picked up the book Fassbinder's Germany and its quite illuminating. But, man if his films are complete downers. After watching The Merchant of Four Seasons I could have taken a flying leap. Oddly though, In a Year with 13 Moons didn't provoke such a response. At any rate, he's my obsession of the moment.

any suggestions for some of his early films? I've been watching his post Sirk films mainly.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: Alethia on March 14, 2006, 11:22:13 PM
love is colder than death and why does herr r run amok? are two early ones that quickly cemented my love for the vast majority of his films...i think whity and martha are kinda early, and theyre pretty good.....beware of a holy whore is rather early i believe, you should see that too its fucking insane...
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on March 14, 2006, 11:58:14 PM
Quote from: eward on March 14, 2006, 11:22:13 PM
love is colder than death and why does herr r run amok? are two early ones that quickly cemented my love for the vast majority of his films...i think whity and martha are kinda early, and theyre pretty good.....beware of a holy whore is rather early i believe, you should see that too its fucking insane...

The next one you should see is Fox and his Friends, which is my favorite Fassbinder; and if you haven't seen The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, that one is essential, too.

Martha is my favorite of the group eward mentions... I think Fassbinder really became Fassbinder AFTER he got his Godard into his Sirk. They were two great tastes that tasted great together.

Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: hedwig on March 15, 2006, 12:52:21 AM
Quote from: godardian on March 14, 2006, 11:58:14 PM
I think Fassbinder really became Fassbinder AFTER he got his Godard into his Sirk.

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fworldwide-web.com%2FJeffreyBabad%2FSimpsons%2FMilhouse%2Fmilhouse.gif&hash=467a54073d73dae05d293ccfebb70f2239d633f7)
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: analogzombie on March 15, 2006, 02:45:39 PM
I just watched Satan's Brew which I found a blistering, brazen mini-masterpiece. Petra is on the way and I've seen Fox and His Friends. So far, In a Year With 13 Moons is my favorite.

Now that Wellspring is gone I wonder if Criterion will be putting out some of the as yet unreleased in the US titles like Despair.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on March 15, 2006, 03:08:25 PM
Quote from: analogzombie on March 15, 2006, 02:45:39 PM
So far, In a Year With 13 Moons is my favorite.

:salute:

Quote from: analogzombie on March 15, 2006, 02:45:39 PMNow that Wellspring is gone I wonder if Criterion will be putting out some of the as yet unreleased in the US titles like Despair.

I've seen Despair, which is an odd Nabokov/Stoppard/Fassbinder amalgam. I'd say it sits with Despair as an odd and/or sod in his oeuvre. Bogarde is awesome, though--I'll see anything with him.

I didn't realize Wellspring was gone....  :(
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: analogzombie on March 16, 2006, 04:32:47 PM
There's info in the Wellspring thread about the death of their theatrical arm and subsuquent diminishment of their dvd arm thanks to a buy out.


As far as In a Year of 13 Moons in concenred, I was struck by how successful Fassbinder is in making Erwin/Elvira part and parcel to his/her own victimhood. I found myself sympathetic to the character without identifying with, or absolving blame from him/her. It is Elvira's reckless nature that has led her down this path. Although we learn the reasons for her self-transformation and the underlying childhood trauma which defines her, she is still complicit in her final outcome and therefore is a much more human character than most of this sort. It would be easy to paint her as a total victim of circumstance, culture, and people, but Fassbinder doesn't take the easy road. Elvira is completely beleivable person because she is inherently flawed. Even if it is an extreme character it is still a more real character than most writer/directors/actors can conjure up.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: godardian on March 16, 2006, 05:19:48 PM
Quote from: analogzombie on March 16, 2006, 04:32:47 PM
There's info in the Wellspring thread about the death of their theatrical arm and subsuquent diminishment of their dvd arm thanks to a buy out.


As far as In a Year of 13 Moons in concenred, I was struck by how successful Fassbinder is in making Erwin/Elvira part and parcel to his/her own victimhood. I found myself sympathetic to the character without identifying with, or absolving blame from him/her. It is Elvira's reckless nature that has led her down this path. Although we learn the reasons for her self-transformation and the underlying childhood trauma which defines her, she is still complicit in her final outcome and therefore is a much more human character than most of this sort. It would be easy to paint her as a total victim of circumstance, culture, and people, but Fassbinder doesn't take the easy road. Elvira is completely beleivable person because she is inherently flawed. Even if it is an extreme character it is still a more real character than most writer/directors/actors can conjure up.

I would add to that, though, that one of Fassbinder's most unique features is that he does consider in a noticeable way the elements of culture, society, and systems of class/economic, racial, and sexual power as they relate to the individuals in his films. I would actually say that many (if not most) films do encourage us to ignore those aspects--Fassbinder does not "absolve" his characters and allows them to be flawed as all human beings are (we see some as more flawed than others and all as more flawed than ourselves, a view to which Fassbinder asks, "Why?"), but he also locates them at a sociopolitical and historical intersection that has to be taken into account as we experience their situations and choices. Power is much more often absolved in mainstream cinema by way of circumventing the topic than individuals are. It is in this area, I think, that Fassbinder connected so powerfully to Sirk, and it is something that most filmmakers seem really afraid to touch (possibly for fear of being branded "political," when of course we all know that culture, which includes film, is political whether its participants are conscious of/want to explicate that fact or not--Fassbinder was one of the few brave enough to grapple with it).

I'm often curious about why it's so much more of a sin to make an explicitly political film with a definite point of view than it is to make the more typical one that wanders through a pseudo-apolitical (i.e., escapist) haze and pretends its characters (and therefore "people," in the view of the film) are self-determined islands that exist in vacuums.... I think it has something to do with the same reason we have the Bush administration in power. Denial, laziness, etc.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: analogzombie on March 18, 2006, 04:39:03 PM
Yes, perhaps Fassbinder's greatest talent was locating his characters so firmly in their respective societies and then using them to examine that society while still continuing the drama, or melodrama, of the film. Take for example, Emmi from Fear Eats the Soul, she may be strong enough in her own convictions that she doesn't fall victim to the prejudices that make her family and friends view Ali as a total outsider, but she still picks Hitler's favorite bistro for her wedding lunch, and shows off Ali as if he were some kind of pet. Their exists within her contradictions, as in all of us.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: meatwad on September 17, 2006, 02:53:34 AM
Berlin Alexanderplatz is getting a theatrical and DVD release

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117949727?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2562
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: analogzombie on October 11, 2006, 01:45:54 AM
Berlin Alexanderplatz has been the focus of a major restoration by the Fassbinder Foundation for some time now. I am excited that its release is enaring.

The Third Generation was suppose to have been released in the US on dvd recently. Anyone seen it yet?
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: ThurstonPowell on October 11, 2006, 12:12:19 PM
Third Generation is an excellent black comedy.  Of his films already available, I'd put it closest to Satan's Brew in terms of tone and pacing.

Incidentally, this is probably the lowest-profile DVD release from a name director I can think of.  It came out w/ zero fanfare in July from some company called 'Infinity Arthouse' (they sould like some CC/HVE prestige house, but I found nothing upon a google).  I preordered for something like 10 bucks, half-expecting never to receive it (no cover art posted at the time) - I did get it, and it's pretty great.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: New Feeling on September 08, 2008, 05:50:35 PM
I have been obsessed with Fassbinder's work since I saw Berlin Alexanderplatz almost 4 years ago.   Last year I went nuts and watched virtually all of them that are available on DVD, I'm up to 30.  But I think the most important one is one of the least discussed.   

GERMANY IN AUTUMN

This is a feature length omnibus made up of shorts by a dozen filmmakers, all exploring the terrorist situation in Germany that year.  Or something of the sort.  Fassbinder's segment is first, and in it he plays himself, and the co-stars are his mother and his lover, also playing themselves.  It is essentially a self-portrait on film.  There was a time when you could watch this on Youtube but it has been gone for a while.  I have luckily obtained a VHS copy and obsessed over it. 

a serious question for xixaxers:

Is there any other movie like this?  One where all the major characters are playing themselves, and it is essentially based on real life, maybe even a mixture of dramatized scenes and documentary?  I have been racking my brain and can't come up with anything.  The closest is Larry David or Woody Allen or something. But obviously not very close.  I think Karistrami's movie Close-Up fits the bill but I haven't seen it.

Anyway I have become obsessed with this mini-genre and would love it if anyone could come up with similar examples.  I am working this idea into a series of projects right now and would really like to be aware of anything that comes close.       

Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: w/o horse on September 08, 2008, 07:39:01 PM
You're not describing a genre you're describing an affordable method of filmmaking.  Except maybe that video diary kind of genre, like Tarnation.

Wenders uses it a lot, like in Lightning Over Water where he plays himself visiting Nicholas Ray, who is played by Nicholas Ray.  Or in Toky Ga where he plays himself vising Tokyo, which is played by Tokyo.  Or in A Trick of Light, where he and his filmmaking crew play himself and his filmmaking crew visiting the daughter of these early German film pioneers, who is played by the daughter of these early German film pioneers.

I think of Wenders because he so conspicuously blends reality and fiction.

You also see it a ton in student films.  The Duplass brothers kind of approach it.  And basically any documentary filmmaker making a film in which they are starring, like even Michael Moore or Werner Herzog.

Other people probably have other examples.  Unless I'm confused about what exactly was unique about what he did.  Because I don't see what was unique.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: New Feeling on September 08, 2008, 08:28:29 PM
Thanks for all those, I haven't seen any of them except for Moore/Herzog, which are very specifically documentaries in all the cases I'm aware of, and Tarnation, which I would say the same about, even though it is more experimental. 

As far as I can tell none of those Wenders films fit in.  It looks like they are mostly pure documentaries, and at the very least they seem to have a very specific subject matter.  Again, I haven't seen them so I don't really know.  It doesn't seem like Nick Ray or Tokyo are really "playing" themselves so much as being themselves.  Like I say I could be wrong. 

The thing that I find so unique about the Fassbinder example is that not only is he seemingly dramatizing scenes from his life almost exactly like he would his other movies, but that the scenes all seem to be snapshots of some of his most private moments.  It is as if he is just randomly dropping into moments of his own life and seeing the drama in them.  The film was supposed to have a theme but it seems more specifically to be about Fassbinder than anything else, though certainly it ties in to the whole Germany in Autumn project. 

So what I'm really looking for is something more like a Woody Allen movie if Woody Allen was playing Woody Allen for once, Mia ws playing Mia, etc.  Which is what I think Germany In Autumn is like, only with fewer jokes.

and the real crux of the matter, now that I think of it, is that it is "adapted" from real life using the real locations, people, and based on real events, only re-enacted instead of lived.  Now Fassbinder's doesn't ever state the claim that it is indeed based on real events, but the feeling I get from it is that this is the place it's coming from.  And this is the kind of thing I want to see more of.

Like I say, Close-up still seems like it fits the bill, but I don't think any of these picks really get there.  I'll let you know when I see them.   

Quote from: w/o horse on September 08, 2008, 07:39:01 PM
You're not describing a genre you're describing an affordable method of filmmaking.  Except maybe that video diary kind of genre, like Tarnation.

Wenders uses it a lot, like in Lightning Over Water where he plays himself visiting Nicholas Ray, who is played by Nicholas Ray.  Or in Toky Ga where he plays himself vising Tokyo, which is played by Tokyo.  Or in A Trick of Light, where he and his filmmaking crew play himself and his filmmaking crew visiting the daughter of these early German film pioneers, who is played by the daughter of these early German film pioneers.

I think of Wenders because he so conspicuously blends reality and fiction.

You also see it a ton in student films.  The Duplass brothers kind of approach it.  And basically any documentary filmmaker making a film in which they are starring, like even Michael Moore or Werner Herzog.

Other people probably have other examples.  Unless I'm confused about what exactly was unique about what he did.  Because I don't see what was unique.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: JG on September 08, 2008, 08:42:16 PM
the most recent example that almost fits your criteria is momma's man, which stars the director's parents as the parents of the protagonist, but i don't know enough about azazel jacobs or his family to draw the conclusions that you are able to draw about fassbinder and his. what tells you that these are snapshots of fassbinder's life other than the fact that they look and feel like they might be? frownland was one of the best movies of last year and it featured a protagonist who was essentially playing a more extreme version of himself, but if ronnie bronstein didn't tell me that i might've guessed otherwise.

also, you might like mike leigh.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: New Feeling on September 08, 2008, 09:00:43 PM
well, that's the main thing.  They look and feel like it.  And that is the way the film is structured.  There is no story per se, only scenes of life related to certain themes.  The extremely personal nature of some of those scenes, particularly the ones of domestic dispute with his lover Armin, combined with the overall structure and dead-seriousness of the piece, lead me to believe that this is the case.  It's as if Fassbinder was asked to explore some themes, and saw them quite readily in his own private life.  Now while I still have no idea that this is in fact based on scenes from his life, the film suggests the idea to me, and that idea as I see it is the most amazing thing around, and I still believe that it has almost never been successfully attempted by anyone else. 
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: New Feeling on September 08, 2008, 09:23:14 PM
also, I have seen Frownland, a singular experience, and if the guy who was the star had made the movie I think it would've come very close to what I'm looking for.  Unfortunately he didn't. 

and yeah I love Mike Leigh to pieces but he hasn't done this shit either far as I know. 
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: w/o horse on September 08, 2008, 11:08:53 PM
What you're talking about is really incredible.  I'm being serious because a lot of times my friends and I will talk about the difficulty in translating intensely autobiographical material to the inherently sensationalizing medium of film.  I think you're narrowing the definition to purposely ignore logical allowances for ability and potential but I think if more films could be made under the conditions you're describing it'd be awesome.  It'd extend the meaning of film.  And although it's not exactly what you're meaning, Robert Kramer's Milestones attempts the same (making the aforementioned allowances but presenting it completely similar to what you're meaning).
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: New Feeling on September 08, 2008, 11:57:38 PM
I agree completely and I'm extremely glad you feel this way.  I'll make mine and you make yours and we'll meet at Cannes 2009!
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: w/o horse on September 09, 2008, 05:25:47 PM
You know I think it's what Cassavetes wanted to do, and I think what he did was radically close for his time/place.  His intentions were there - probably if he and his core group of collaborators hadn't been actors they would have really mined deeper, but because they approached filmmaking from an actor's perspective they thought of character building.  His intentions were also realism and authentic depiction.

Kent MacKenzie's The Exiles is another film like Milestones, except even closer to what we're talking about.  If MacKenzie himself had been in the film it would have been exactly what you're asking for.  What he and his friends attempted was the creation of one of their actual singles days over the course of a week's shooting.  You can see in the credits (at IMDb too) that they were playing themselves.

And Lightning Over Water does fit this.  Maybe not the others mentioned in that previous post, but Lightning Over Water does.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: New Feeling on November 01, 2008, 09:27:34 PM
I just re-watched My Dinner With Andre for the first time in a decade and what an amazing movie!  Anyway, it is an obvious example of the sort of thing I'm talking about.  It of the one-scene variety. 
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: analogzombie on November 19, 2011, 09:00:24 PM
Criterion to release Fasbsinder's World on a Wire on Feb. 21

World on a Wire is a gloriously paranoid, boundlessly inventive take on the future from German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, as well as a flavor entirely his own, Fassbinder tells the noir-spiked tale of a reluctant action hero, Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch), a cybernetics engineer who uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy. At risk? (Virtual) reality as we know it. Originally made for German television, this recently rediscovered, three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the weird world of tomorrow from one of cinema's kinkiest geniuses.

DISC FEATURES

New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Fassbinder's "World on a Wire": Looking Ahead to Today, a fifty-minute documentary about the making of the film by Juliane Lorenz
New interview with German-film scholar Gerd Gemünden
New English subtitles
Trailer for the 2010 theatrical release
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Ed Halter
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: mogwai on November 20, 2011, 03:58:36 AM
I've been thinking of buying "The Merchant of Four Seasons". Is it any good?
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: classical gas on November 20, 2011, 09:58:49 AM
^  That movie should be arriving in the mail any day now.  So I hope it's good.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: New Feeling on November 20, 2011, 12:51:51 PM
Merchant of Four Seasons is a good one.   :yabbse-thumbup:
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: squints on November 20, 2011, 02:15:57 PM
Quote from: analogzombie on November 19, 2011, 09:00:24 PM
Criterion to release Fasbsinder's World on a Wire on Feb. 21

World on a Wire is a gloriously paranoid, boundlessly inventive take on the future from German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, as well as a flavor entirely his own, Fassbinder tells the noir-spiked tale of a reluctant action hero, Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch), a cybernetics engineer who uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy. At risk? (Virtual) reality as we know it. Originally made for German television, this recently rediscovered, three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the weird world of tomorrow from one of cinema's kinkiest geniuses.

DISC FEATURES

New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Fassbinder's "World on a Wire": Looking Ahead to Today, a fifty-minute documentary about the making of the film by Juliane Lorenz
New interview with German-film scholar Gerd Gemünden
New English subtitles
Trailer for the 2010 theatrical release
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Ed Halter


this is great news, i read an article about this show a while ago and have been desperately trying to find a copy of it anywhere. Super excited.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on November 20, 2011, 03:42:26 PM
It's on Hulu. I think it's wonderfully weird and beautiful.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: analogzombie on November 20, 2011, 05:14:39 PM
Quote from: The Perineum Falcon on November 20, 2011, 03:42:26 PM
It's on Hulu. I think it's wonderfully weird and beautiful.

I didn't know that. Thanks for the tip, signing up for the trial now.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: Neil on November 21, 2011, 01:18:51 AM
Quote from: analogzombie on November 20, 2011, 05:14:39 PM
Quote from: The Perineum Falcon on November 20, 2011, 03:42:26 PM
It's on Hulu. I think it's wonderfully weird and beautiful.

I didn't know that. Thanks for the tip, signing up for the trial now.

You will not be let down.  Over 200 Criterion films on there as well.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: The Perineum Falcon on November 21, 2011, 05:59:12 PM
Their channel on Hulu claims 549, but most do not have a proper Criterion release; there are, however, some instances of their future releases.

Oddly enough, WOaW is the only Fassbinder currently available.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: analogzombie on November 22, 2011, 07:55:33 PM
Finished World on a Wire. It has that very deliberate Fassbinder pace and a tremendous payoff, even if it loses it's resonance in the wake of all that have come after.

Looking forward to the Blu-Ray release but I don't think I could take it in one sitting in a theater.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: wiped_out on April 22, 2012, 04:43:08 PM
I have a few questions for some Fassbinder fans?

Were is the documentary about the making of Querelle? Where can one view that? something Babylon. I am dying to see it, Critierion should put both Querelle out and that documentary as a speical feature.

Why isnt Kamakazie 89 on DVD? Remasterd DVD please! In the mean time I will get the VHS!

Were is that documentary that was briefly shown in the special features of the Criterion BRD trilogy which feature the great actor, Kurt Raab, looking sickly, I think its a documentary about him dying from AIDS. Considering how much on a great actor Kurt Raab was why isnt that doc available?

Has anyone seen or heard about what I am talking about?
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: wiped_out on May 03, 2012, 11:18:45 PM
I think after I am done with finals I am taking a trip down to the Fassbinder foundation, I think they are based in the city, I am gonna pose these questions direct.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: wilder on June 13, 2012, 06:44:58 AM
Two Rainer Werner Fassbinder biopics (http://twitchfilm.com/news/2012/06/euro-beat-dueling-rw-fassbinder-biopics-accusations-of-cannes-corruption.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TwitchEverything+%28Twitch:+Everything%29) in the works.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: wilder on June 30, 2012, 05:39:16 PM
via criterionforum

Quote from: Cinephrenic
Films playing at American Cinemateque credits Janus Films for the following:

MARKETA LAZAROVA

and a bunch of Fassbinder:

THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT
LOLA
VERONIKA VOSS
FOX AND HIS FRIENDS
THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS
MOTHER KUSTERS GOES TO HEAVEN
THE AMERICAN SOLDIER
FEAR OF FEAR
SATAN'S BREW
CHINESE ROULETTE
EFFI BRIEST
BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE
GODS OF THE PLAGUE
LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH

Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: wilder on August 22, 2013, 03:14:22 AM
'First Fassbinder' on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/groups/35mmandrisdamburs/videos/72773421)
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: wilder on September 17, 2013, 07:02:41 PM
Bourbon Street Blues, a short film directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1979)
via The Seventh Art

Douglas Sirk is usually credited as being the co-director of Bourbon Street Blues, his final film from 1979. Even with this being the case, it still feels very much like one of his late-period melodramas, except the action transpires in a run-down apartment building rather than the pastel world of 50s suburbia. The film concerns an alcoholic, cockroach-fearing tenant who has failed to pay her rent and the argument that ensues between her, her landlady, and another resident of the building (played, very impressively, by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, an early known champion of the director). In true Sirk fashion, the scene, through several emotional monologues, evolves into a bittersweet parable about losing sight of your dreams and finding solace through an imagined reality. It feels like a strangely appropriate conclusion for a director who ended his career at what was, arguably, the height of his artistry.

Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: wilder on April 20, 2014, 05:28:11 PM
Lincoln Center sets Fassbinder retrospective
via SCREENDAILY

Fassbinder: Romantic Anarchist (Part 1) is being dubbed the most extensive presentation of Fassbinder's films in New York since 1997 and runs from May 16-June 1.

The two-part series at the Film Society Of Lincoln Center will include all Fassbinder's theatrical features and much of his television work as well as films he starred in, films that influenced him and films influenced by his work.

Part 1 will cover almost all of Fassbinder's work leading up to 1974. Part 2 screens in November and will cover 1974-1982.

"Fassbinder worked practically at the speed of thought and left behind a body of work so improbably large, so packed with ideas and emotion and meaning, that we often still seem to be catching up with him," said Film Society director of programming Dennis Lim.

"In some ways, the time is always ripe for a Fassbinder retrospective. More than three decades after his death, he still looms large, a widespread influence and a singular force. His films are undimmed and untamed by the passage of time — more than that, many of them seem more vital than ever these days."

Fassbinder completed nearly 40 features between 1969 and 1982, when he died aged 37. Screenings include Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, The American Soldier, Love Is Colder Than Death and Whity.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: wilder on May 15, 2014, 11:16:24 PM
Admin edit: Video is NSFW (workplace-dependent)


Fassbinder: Romantic Anarchist - Trailer for Lincoln Center's upcoming retrospective

Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: wilder on June 19, 2014, 04:29:50 AM
Todd Haynes on the evolution of Fassbinder's narrative style, from Criterion's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul DVD:


Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: wilder on October 25, 2014, 07:19:34 PM


Part II of the retrospective, November 7th - 26th at Film Society Lincoln Center (http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/fassbinder-romantic-anarchist-part-2)
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: Just Withnail on October 25, 2014, 07:45:17 PM
Quote from: wilder on October 25, 2014, 07:19:34 PM


Part II of the retrospective, November 7th - 26th at Film Society Lincoln Center (http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/fassbinder-romantic-anarchist-part-2)

I'm currently living in Berlin, and the possibility of one day watching Fassbinder without subtitles is one of my biggest incentives for learning German.
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: wilder on March 13, 2018, 03:49:29 PM
Janus' trailer for Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (1972) (https://vimeo.com/259423327)

The astonishingly prolific Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982) directed over 40 movies in 15 years. Yet one of his most sprawling works has remained unreleased in the U.S. until now: the epic 1972 EIGHT HOURS DON'T MAKE A DAY. Commissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, upending expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany from a critical—yet far from cynical— perspective. Over the course of five episodes, the project tracks the everyday triumphs and travails of the young toolmaker Jochen (Gottfried John) and many of the people populating his world, including the woman he loves (Hanna Schygulla), his eccentric nuclear family, and his fellow workers, with whom he bands together to improve conditions on the factory oor. Rarely screened since its popular but controversial initial broadcast, EIGHT HOURS DON'T MAKE A DAY rates as a true discovery, one of Fassbinder's earliest and most tender experiments with the genre of melodrama.

Opening at Film Forum in NY on March 14th with a nationwide theatrical tour to follow.

Currently available on blu-ray from Arrow (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eight-Hours-Dont-Limited-Blu-ray/dp/B072NZDZXX/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521242788&sr=8-1&keywords=eight+hours+don%27t+make+a+day+blu+ray) in the UK, Criterion forthcoming
Title: Re: Fassbinder
Post by: Just Withnail on March 19, 2018, 03:41:26 AM
Everyone in NYC should run to see this, it's incredible. Acerbic as always with Fassbinder, but also very humane and funny. Spends hours building up the characters, then at one points sets them all loose in a crazy choreography in one of the best party sequences I've ever seen.