30 years ago yesterday Rainer Werner Fassbinder was found dead at the age of 37 — he had died overnight, and the film 20,000
Years in Sing Sing was in the VCR near the mattress he slept on. In the three decades since his departure, film
buffs the world over still haven’t caught up with his singularly brilliant and
eternally vibrant body of work. I’ve documented on the Funhouse TV show my
fascination with the work of RWF, and I wanted to commemorate this anniversary
with a little “survey” post offering the best Fassbinder video links on YT.
I will present
these in three batches: the first are interviews, the second are film clips,
and the third are film clips involving music. In the first category I would of
course first refer readers to two clips from my second interview with Juliane
Lorenz, the head of the Fassbinder Foundation.
There has been
some controversy over the years about Ms. Lorenz’s leadership of the FF from
disgruntled individuals who knew RWF, but there can be no argument that she has
done an exemplary job in getting Fassbinder’s works back into circulation in
perfect prints and in keeping his memory alive.
In my first
interview with her, we spoke about her personal relationship with him, but in the second interview, I focused much
more on his work. She worked hand-in-glove with him as the editor on all of the
later features he made (including the titanic Berlin
Alexanderplatz), and so I asked her about his habit of only shooting
single takes of scenes:
Since he was a
master of “distancing” techniques, Fassbinder was often accused of being “cold”
to his character’s difficulties. I asked Ms. Lorenz about this:
Fassbinder did
several interviews on TV in Germany, but almost none of them have been
subtitled in English. Thus I will point you to his appearance in Wim Wenders’
short Room 666 (1982), in which Wenders asked his colleagues
to comment on the “future of film” (since even back in 1982, video was destined
to usurp the cinema). Here is Fassbinder’s response to this question:
The longest and
best interview with RWF to be subtitled is a 1978 chat with Peter W. Jansen
that was conducted in his Paris apartment. The chat almost works like a therapy
session, as the interviewer probes Fassbinder’s emotions and relationship with
his work:
For those
hardcore devotees like myself, there is nothing finer than discovering a truly
rare piece of footage, even if it is not subtitled. Here is a documentary on
Fassbinder and Sirk that shows the two men shooting the never-seen-in-America
(except for one unsubtitled showing at MOMA in NYC) Sirk short Bourbon
Street Blues (1979).
*******
Now onto the
films. I would recommend that anyone who is not familiar with Fassbinder’s work
check it out in a movie theater, since he was a master of moving the viewer
“in” and “out” of the action visually, and that just ain’t gonna register if
you watch his films on anything smaller than a normal-sized TV set. In case you
really do want to become acquainted with his work, the collector who put up a number of great Chabrol films, some great Truffaut and Rohmer films, and an equal amount of Bergman pics has also
been putting up a lot of Fassbinder films.
Of the titles
this gent put up (I’m going to take the plunge and assume such frenzied fan
behavior came from a male):
— the single best
intro to Fassbinder’s work is Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
— the most famous
and “normal” title is The Marriage of Maria Braun
(1979)
— the *rarest* is Lili Marleen (1981) (which has
never been out on US VHS or DVD)
— Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) is
recommended for diehards who’ve seen the other films. OOP on DVD.
— Fox and his Friends (1975) is one of his greatest German
humiliation™ films ever — yes, some day I’ll trademark that term, which I’ve
been using on the show for over 15 years now. OOP on DVD.
— Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven (1975) is a slight film, but entertaining
nonetheless. OOP on DVD.
— Satan’s Brew
(1976) is a title I’d warn every one but
the most diehard fan away from.
To close out
the films-online section, I must reference his masterpiece, Berlin
Alexanderplatz (1980). The film contains the full range of emotion
and is not only the finest thing Fassbinder made, but one of the finest things
ever made for television (right up there with the works of Dennis Potter, Rod
Serling, and other TV innovators). Here our hero, Franz Biberkopf, has a little
discussion with his drinks:
*******
*******
And now the
music. Fassbinder’s third short, The Little Chaos (1966) is
a gorgeous little number that combines his Godard influence and his dark sense
of humor, with a nice closer that beautifully uses a song by the Troggs:
Rainer rocks out
with his greatest female star (although I do love all the others), Hanna
Schygulla. This little bit of dancin’ is from Rio Das Mortes
(1971):
Fassbinder
absolutely loved Kraftwerk, and specifically the group’s song “Radioactivity.”
He used it in Berlin Alexanderplatz, but here is its first
appearance in an RWF film, in Chinese Roulette (1976):
And because one
of the cornerstones of Fassbinder’s work was the absolutely beautiful scores
of Peer Raben, I once again link to my montage of favorite musical moments from
Raben in Fassbinder’s films:
No comments:
Post a Comment