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Showing posts with label Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Show all posts
In my last blog entry I noted that there are certain films concerning Rainer Werner Fassbinder that are impossible to find with English subtitles. I’ve learned in the time since I put that post up that some of those films are indeed “on the underside of the Net” with English subtitle files (mostly fan-generated); however, a number of them are still “MIA” as far as subtitles go. However, Jon Whitehead, webmaster and mastermind of the incredible resource Rarefilmm, has now unleashed a wonderful gift for English-speaking, non-German-understanding Fassbinder fanatics in this period between the 77th anniversary of RWF’s birth (May 31) and the 40th anniversary of his death (June 10).
I concluded my last post with a link to the otherwise unseeable The Wizard of Babylon, the 1982 doc by Dieter Schidor, without English subtitles on YouTube. That film was initially distributed by New Yorker Films in the early Eighties and then — poof! — it was gone. Out of distribution, utterly impossible to find. It was SO difficult to lay hands on a copy that I was amazed it was shown again at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center in November of 2014 as part of an RWF festival. That print, I learned upon attending the screening, was a copy from Australia owned by a university. So, seemingly, that particular copy was the only one available anywhere with English subtitles. Until now.
RWF with star Brad Davis.
Jon has made it his mission to find movies that have never appeared on disc, or which seemed to have disappeared entirely from distribution. When he noted there was a German copy, taped off TV, of Wizard, I was stunned — the film wasn’t even retrievable from the aforementioned “underside of the Net.” But there was one big problem, in that the copy was, of course, in German, sans subtitles for those who love RWF but don’t know German.
Jon went to work on this as a “special project,” and finally, after utilizing different translators, the result is up on Rarefilmm and is now the single instance of a subtitled copy of Wizard appearing on the Internet. The film itself is mostly a behind-the-scenes look at Fassbinder’s last film, an adaptation of Genet’s Querelle of Brest.
Fassbinder’s Querelle (1982) is a gorgeous-looking picture that is kind of a muddle — but RWF was allowed his very rare muddles, as his filmography is astoundingly solid, especially for someone who worked so quickly and produced so much. As I’ve often said on the Funhouse TV show, the amazing thing is not that RWF was prolific, it’s that so few of his films aren’t truly wonderful.
The Warhol poster for the film.
Back to Wizard: As a look at the making of Fassbinder’s last film, the doc is interesting, but Fassbinder also authorized a second filmmaker (Wolf Gremm) to shoot a doc on the set of Querelle, so there is another film out there on the making of that film. (Rainer Werner Fassbinder — Letzte Arbeiten, aka “Last Works,” 1982) Schidor got an exclusive, though: He got Fassbinder to agree to an interview, which took place on June 9 of 1982, reportedly 10 hours before Fassbinder’s partner and editor Juliane Lorenz found him dead on his bed.
The making-of part of the doc is actually most interesting when we hear from Burkhard Driest, who wrote versions of the script and played a featured role as “Mario.” Driest disliked RWF’s “very cynical attitude” about manipulating his actors — in this case, Driest questioned Fassbinder about the way a fight scene was to be shot, and Fassbinder taunted him about being scared of doing the scene.
This kind of interview is valuable not because we want to seek out people saying RWF was an incredibly difficult person, but to find out how this attitude was felt by those who were new to his sphere. Otherwise, making-of films become exchanges of compliments and nothing more.
Franco Nero and Jeanne Moreau are in this mode, elaborating how much they wanted to be in the film and how happy they were with their work on it. Schidor questions Moreau about her unique position in the cast, as she was the only person on-set who had ever met Genet. (Who was also contacted to write an opening comment for the film but turned it down; Genet lived until 1986.) She is able to speak about meeting the writer several times but not about his opinion of his work, as he never discussed that with her.
The first revelation is the narration for the film, written in the first and second person (“from” Fassbinder and “to” Fassbinder) by author Wolf Wondratschek, spoken by actor Klaus Löwitsch. It’s quite unsentimental, considering it was presumably written (or could’ve at least been altered) after Fassbinder’s death. It reflects on Fassbinder’s depleted physical state (especially his obesity), his desire for fame, but most of all his drive to keep working no matter what the circumstances or results.
Sample: “I want to be the cover of TIME magazine. I will make it, and that makes me happy, and I admit that. That is luxury. Work when ugliness finally reconquers all beauty.
“A feisty, fat body, a monstrous bastion against any affection that only makes you suspicious. It also protects you from the expected hugs. Even those you shyly long for. Getting ugly is your way of staying alone.
“That’s luxury. How the world’s stars dance in front of your camera, and you’re standing next to them in the shadows with your Bavarian wheat beer. Nothing is more fascinating than being famous. Because nothing compares to the horror when the dreamt-up becomes reality.
Fassbinder, Brad Davis, and some guy who visited the set.
“Get ugly and work. Then, only then, should they come. The beautiful kings of film. The queens and the photographers.”
And then there is the one very important reason to see the film (if one already knows some of Fassbinder’s work): his last interview. As I noted in the last blog entry, while he is less than 12 hours away from death, he does not appear particularly sick, or particularly high. His answers are articulate and well thought out. He does seem very heavy, though, and his breathing is labored. Along with that he seems tired, extremely tired.
But, given that he produced
three early shorts (one is lost to the ages)
one short contribution to an anthology film (the most singularly personal thing he ever made for any medium)
one TV variety special
eight telefilms, two of which were two-parters
one documentary
twenty-eight fictional feature films, and
two miniseries for TV; the second of which, Berlin Alexanderplatz, is arguably his masterpiece and perhaps his most personal fictional work
it makes perfect sense that he finally, sadly, was very tired at the age of 37 and very much needed to rest on June 10, 1982.
You can access The Wizard of Babylon at Rarefilm at this link. Make up your own mind as to whether Fassbinder’s final interview is something that should be hidden away from RWF’s fans (as his mother desired) or if it is a very important document in terms of understanding Fassbinder’s thoughts at the end of his life, as some of us believe.
I don’t speak or read German. Thus, my deep fascination with the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder has been inhibited. I have relied over the years on the kindness of subtitlers to supply subs for his films, and am happy to report that, at the current time, you can find English-subtitled copies of every one of his features and telefilms somewhere on the Internet, except the second part of Bolweiser.
In the world of Fassbinder-lit, it’s been dire: the collections of his early writings and interviews with him have gone untranslated for a long time (18 years for the interview book so far).
Thus, you can imagine my conflicted feelings when a YouTube poster named “Raoul Révéré” began to post a host of INCREDIBLY rare films concerning Fassbinder and other German directors, albeit with no English subtitles. Révéré has posted *dozens* of very watchable copies of films made by directors whose work Americans never get to see.
The fact that they are untranslated is indeed maddening — not since the traveling festival of Fassbinder’s films in 1997 (that began as a comprehensive show of everything he directed at MoMA) has there been such a veritable flood of RWF-related material available to viewers worldwide. I thus present the following with mixed emotions, but in celebration of Fassbinder’s birthday (which is today, May 31) and in commemoration of his death (which took place on June 10).
It would be delightful if the many people who “fansub” films for free would tackle these films, but it seems unlikely. It would make sense, however, to start a sort of crowd-funding project to get these films (perhaps just one or two to start with) subtitled for Fassbinder fans who would love to see them. Count me in if such a thing can be arranged with a bilingual person who has the time and the inclination (and charges a reasonable rate for translation of movie dialogue). I can be contacted at the email found at mediafunhouse.com.
For those who would find respite in the Google “auto-translate” option for Closed Captions, I must warn you: that way lies madness. The films that do have that option on Révéré’s channel proceed — as they do in “heard” English — to produce sentences that are mere word-salad and seem to have a vague relation to what is being said (many words are “misheard” by the program), but which make no sense and ultimately undercut the viewing experience. (Read: You’re better off with whatever plot synopsis can be found online, even if it’s only a line or two.)
Back to the trove of Révéré: The specialty on this YT channel is apparent — filmmakers who follow Fassbinder in their love of Hollywood (and German post-war) melodrama and others who craft visually arresting kitsch/camp/gay imagery. The bulk of Révéré’s online trove centers around the writer-painter-filmmaker Herbert Achternbusch and Fassbinder. In the case of the latter, Révéré has posted a number of films that fit into the categories outlined above and also happen to feature members of Fassbinder’s acting ensemble in supporting roles.
Before I delve into the film directly relate to Fassbinder, here is a list of those, for the diehard RWF fan.
A “missing in action” title that did have a U.S. distributor (“Promovision International”) and yet never showed up on U.S. DVD is A Man Like Eva (1984), directed by Radu Gabrea. It’s an odd picture, in that its main conceit is that Eva Mattes (who starred in Fassbinder films, including Petra von Kant and the missing (but available on the “underside” of the Internet) Jail Bait) plays RWF.
Ms. Mattes does a good impression of RWF, but the film does leave out one aspect of Fassbinder’s non-stop activity, namely drugs. One assumes Gabrea left this out to further concentrate on Fassbinder’s relationships with his performers and crew.
Moving closer to Fassbinder, Révéré has posted Heute spielen wir den Boß (“Today we play the boss,” 1981), the only theatrical feature directed by the composer of the immaculate music in Fassbinder’s films, Peer Raben. The film stars and is coscripted by Fassbinder's ex-boyfriend, star, and crew member, Kurt Raab. Other Fassbinder mainstays in the cast are Ingrid Caven, Rosel Zech, Harry Baer, Irm Hermann, and Gunther Kaufmann.
Raab died of AIDS in 1988. A documentary about his life appeared in 1989. Sehnsucht nach Sodom (“Yearning for Sodom”), was directed by Hanno Baethe, Hans Hirschmüller, and Raab.
There are seven documentaries on Fassbinder on the Révéré channel — alas, these as well are all in German and have no translation to any other language. Each one of them contains rare footage of Fassbinder interviews and shows him directing on-set. I leave out here the full-length interview filmed in his Paris apartment, as that has appeared as a supplement on U.S. DVD.
The first documentary is Es ist nicht gut, in einem Menschenleib zu leben (“It is not good to live in a human body,” 1995), directed by Peter Buchka. It can be found here.
Doc 2 is Ich will nicht nur, dass ihr mich liebt (“I don’t just want you to love me,” 1992), directed by Hans Günther Pflaum.
Doc 3 is Ende einer Kommune? (“End of a commune?”). Directed by Joachim von Mengershausen, it is probably the RAREST of the RWF docs. It was released in 1970 and shows Fassbinder and his colleagues rehearsing and attending the premiere of his first film, Love Is Colder Than Death, at the 1969 Berlin Film Festival.
Doc 4 is Der Kulturbetrieb braucht so was wie mich (“The culture industry needs someone like me”).
Doc 5 is Etwas, wovor ich Angst habe, setzt mich in Gang (“Something I’m scared of gets me going,” 1982).
Doc 6 is Der Mensch ist ein hässliches Tier (“Man is an ugly animal”).
Lastly, Révéré has posted three films that Fassbinder acted in, only one of which appeared on U.S. VHS. The first is 1 Berlin-Harlem (1974), directed by Lothar Lambert and Wolfram Zobus. It contains RWF ensemble members in the cast: Ingrid Caven, Peter Chatel, Gunther Kaufmann, and Evelyn Künneke.
Fassbinder appears at 116:20, with Caven outside a movie theater. That scene is here.
Shadow of Angels (1976) is the most controversial project that Fassbinder was ever involved with. It began as the Fassbinder play “The Garbage, the City and Death,” which contains a character called “the Rich Jew.” It has been noted by critics that the character is not an anti-Semitic stick figure, but the play attracted protests and smears against Fassbinder in the press.
The film adaptation is akin to the bleaker films in Fassbinder’s canon (like In a Year of 13 Moons), but Swiss filmmaker Daniel Schmid handled direction for Shadow. Schmid is seen here introducing the film on German television. Online he is quoted as saying that the film takes place in “a Germany where no one is starving and no one is scared anymore, and the only two people who are still sensitive are the prostitute and the Jew, because both of them are outcasts.”
The most amazing discovery for Fassbinder fans who enjoy watching him act in films directed by others is a 1971 telefilm directed by Peer Raben, Die Ahnfrau — Oratorium nach Franz Grillparzer (“The Ancestress”). The cast includes RWF, Margit Carstensen, Hans Hirschmüller, Kurt Raab, Irm Hermann, Ulli Lommel, Ingrid Caven, and Hanna Schygulla.
For those who would like to try to follow the plot without knowing the language, the plot of the 1816 play by Grillparzer is this (well, at least according to Grillparzer’s Wiki bio): “It is a gruesome fate-tragedy in the trochaic measure of the Spanish drama, already made popular by Müllner's Schuld. The ghost of a lady who was killed by her husband for infidelity is doomed to walk the earth until her family line dies out, and this happens in the play amid scenes of violence and horror.”
Raben’s stylized production of the play truly makes one wish this film did have subtitles.
And finally, a film that did play in the U.S. but has disappeared in the last 40 years. And for which we DO have a translation of the key portion (but not on the film itself on YT). The film in question is Dieter Schidor’s The Wizard of Babylon (1982), which shows the making of Fassbinder’s last film, Querelle (1982) but even more importantly features his last-ever interview, conducted the evening before he died at the very young age of 37.
There is another making-of film about Querelle, Wolf Gremm’s Letzte Arbeiten (“Last works,” 1982), so while Schidor’s behind-the-scenes look at the production of Fassbinder’s last film is very interesting, it isn’t unique. The interview most certainly is.
It’s not all that long, but the film begins (for 6 minutes) and ends (for 11 minutes) with this last interview. The important thing to know is that Fassbinder is not out of his mind on drugs. He does not look like he is dying — he simply looks very, very tired. (Which makes sense, given the output of films, plays, TV work, and writing he created from 1969 to 1982.)
His answers are extremely coherent and quite eloquent. I will include two here:
Schidor: Rainer, you’ve just concluded your 41st film, Querelle, based on a novel by Jean Genet. What made you film this radical novel by Genet after your feminist films, Maria Braun and Veronika Voss? Or, why did you postpone it for so long?
RWF: Well, I didn’t shoot feminist films but films about human society. Querelle is a utopian draft in contrast to society. That’s what it’s in contrast to, it isn’t feminist film as opposed to men’s film. These films were to describe a society as well as possible. It’s easier to do this with women. Querelle is the draft of a possible society… which, judging by all its repulsiveness, is wonderful. Therefore, they don’t contradict each other but complement each other....
Schidor: You started to create a kind of German Hollywood with Lili Marleen and Querelle, which were both extremely big studio productions.
RWF: That was once an expressed thought of mine. What I’d like is a Hollywood film, that is, a film that’s as wonderful and as easy to understand as Hollywood but at the same time not as untruthful.
So now, with the re-entry into public view of a “lost” Fassbinder documentary and its key sequence translated into English, I can conclude my celebration of the 77th anniversary of RWF’s birth.
Thanks to superior cineaste Paul Gallagher for his help with this piece. Thanks also to Jon Whitehead of Rarefilmm.com for letting me know about this YT channel and in discovering the print materials about Wizard of Babylon. Rarefilmm.com is here.
When YouTube kicked into high gear in the mid-2000s I was flabbergasted. I knew of it as a “viral videos” site, but suddenly friends began sending me links to clips from cult British acts (most notably the Bonzos and Cook & Moore) that were being posted by fans with crazy video collections. During that time there were two Rainer Werner Fassbinder-related clips that went up quickly and went down even faster. I didn’t know how to save anything from the site that early on, but now, years later, I have been able to rewatch both of the clips, and I offer the second one to you in celebration of the 77th anniversary of Fassbinder’s birthday today (May 31).
The video in question is a short b&w film directed by and starring Udo Kier called “Last Train to Harrisburg.” Now, anyone who has followed film in the last nearly four decades knows Udo, and knows of his power to steal scenes away from higher-paid stars. (His bit as the angry wedding planner in Melancholia is just one of dozens.) He can literally make a film worth watching even when it is terrible – and he has admitted that just a small percent of his films were actually good, and an even smaller percent were great.
Udo Kier and RWF.
However, “Harrisburg” is a very special case. It’s a short that has reportedly only been shown theatrically three times, in film festival settings. It is also the only directorial effort by Udo, and it contains him as 2/3rds of the cast, playing both a man and a woman having a fevered conversation in a train. If that isn’t enough to make the film incredibly special (and wild, truly wild), it moves from must-see to “Wow, that actually happened?” when one finds out that male-Udo and female-Udo in the film are both lip-synching to the voice of another artist — namely Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who participated in this short by reading apocalyptic passages from the Bible.
In the case of “Harrisburg,” though we do not have subtitles, we do have a document written by a film historian who saw it at a film festival that sheds some light on its making and its contents.
Hofer’s account notes that the film was shot at Ostbahnhof, a railway station in Berlin. Kier was in Munich to make a film for the author Wolf Wondratschek with Fassbinder actress (and one-time wife) and renowned torch singer Ingrid Caven. Wondratschek dropped the project two days before it was to start. Hofer continues: “But Udo Kier had already arrived, so Wondraschek left him all the material, including the cameraman. Kier had to improvise. He was ambitious, he smirks, wanted to be a producer, director, and actor all in one.”
Male Udo in "Last Train..."
Kier’s age during the filming is given as being “in his early Thirties” so we can assume (given that he was born in 1944) that it was shot in the late Seventies. The final date given for the film at film festivals is “1976–1984,” presumably because Kier finally put the finishing touches to it in ’84.
It is stressed that the title for the film was to reflect the meltdown at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “A voyage to extermination,” said Kier, according to Hofer. Fassbinder was then recruited to provide a narration (and thus, dialogue) for the film. At first RWF wanted to read from Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet, but that could’ve created copyright problems, so it was decided he would read from the Bible. Kier said (via Hofer): “And then we found some really nasty things in it. The hands of merciful women cook their own children. Things like that are in there, you wouldn't believe it. We thought, we will surely get an award from the Catholic Church."
At this point Hofer describes the film, which consists of an opening with a man in a Biblical outfit (read: fur pieces on his shoulders, arms, groin, and legs) who kills a sheep in what looks to be an empty slaughterhouse. Then we see Kier in his dual roles as both a man and a woman (American soldier and dignified lady) who are seemingly not a couple (or were long ago) arguing in a railway compartment. The film finishes with the man who killed the sheep going up to a lectern to speak. Throughout we do hear RWF reciting Bible passages (although his voice turns to that of a young boy toward the end of the train sequence).
Udo Kier in Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Here is where the translation of Hofer’s document and the Bible quotes mentioned in the film (which, yes, I followed, dimly, using the ridiculousness that is the Google “auto-translate” feature on Closed Captions in YT) might lead the way to decipher when the film was actually shot (as well as a second element I will go into below). Although Kier dates the film as beginning in 1976, it would seem from both the title — which refers to an event (the Three Mile Island accident) that occurred in 1979 — and the Bible quotes mentioned, that Kier made his film after Berlin Alexanderplatz (in which he appears in a small role), which is narrated by Fassbinder and in which he reads passages from Alfred Doblin, and at points other elements creep in, such as Bible quotes.
Hofer states that the man and woman are quoting the Book of Revelation to each other (with Kier, again, lip-synching to Fassbinder’s voice). The first passage she quotes, though, is from Jeremiah:
“Wild donkeys stand on the barren heights and pant like jackals” (14:5-6). Jeremiah is also read from in the narration of Alexanderplatz (Jeremiah 17: 6-9) as noted here. Was it perhaps the case that Fassbinder did his narration for Kier’s short film while also doing the narration for his own epic masterwork? (Or did he give Kier outtakes from the Alexanderplatz audio recording?)
Hofer’s account of the film also provides a quotation that definitely comes from the book of Revelations 8:8: “And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood.” A final quotation, starting “Cursed be the day I was born!” come from Jeremiah 20:14. Hofer then notes that, after the screening ended, Kier thanked RWF for his work on the film. He is asked when he last saw the film and answers, “Twenty-five years ago.” (1987) Hofer concludes, “Kier's voice breaks, he turns away. He doesn't want to succeed in sounding casual now.”
From Berlin Alexanderplatz.
From "Last Train to Harrisburg."
A final note on a discovery that I couldn’t find any mention of online. The footage of the man killing the sheep in the empty slaughterhouse appears in Berlin Alexanderplatz, episode 4 from 33:36 to 34:38. Kier and/or Lachman “flipped” the image, as the footage in Kier’s film is a mirror image of the footage from the Fassbinder original. (And also in b&w.)
This ties Udo’s film even closer to Fassbinder at the time of Berlin Alexanderplatz and makes me wish he had officially released the film online and discussed its making at some length. It’s a compelling piece, even untranslated as it now sits on YT. And it certainly is an interesting footnote to Fassbinder’s filmography.
Thanks to superior cineaste and friend Paul Gallagher for finding the Hofer document and saving the video clip for me, for further perusal.
The miracle of Rainer Werner Fassbinder was not that he
wrote and directed so many films, plays, TV-movies, miniseries, and shorts, all in
the span of 13 years (from 1969 to 1982). The startling fact about his work — as I’ve noted
before here and on the Funhouse TV show — is that the works he produced in that
period were so uniformly excellent. (There are only two or three films that don’t
work and some telefilms that are simply filmed plays.)
This year is the 75th anniversary of his birth. He was one
of those people who was clearly not meant to live until a ripe old age, as his
feverish activity could only exist with youth, even though the messages he
communicated in his films are timeless. It was interesting that five days
before his 75th “birthday” (May 31) one of his earliest stars and live-in
collaborators, Irm Hermann, died.
Of all the actresses he worked with, Hermann was very unique
in that he made her into an actress – he did the same with his mother and his
lovers, but Hermann was talented enough to have a career as a character person
long after Fassbinder’s death (regularly working in movies and TV until 2018).
That work is known in Germany but in other countries, we know her solely for
her films with Fassbinder and other New German Cinema directors who were
clearly working on the same wavelength (Schlondorff, Herzog, Ottinger,
Schlingensief, etc).
Fassbinder cast her as housewives, servants, best friends,
and dutiful wives, among other roles. Her prim and proper demeanor, and
mannequin-like face, is an indelible part of the early iconography of RWF’s
films. When she chose to have a child as a single mother and not let him adopt
it, their relationship as friends (and sporadic lovers) was pretty much over, but
he invited her back for small roles in two of his later films.
Despite her incredibly reserved appearance, she gave
impassioned interviews. In order to tell her story one is best served quoting
her own words from three of the chats she had about Fassbinder — two with
authors assembling books on his life (one a very positive portrait, the other
very negative) and one for a documentary about him (made by a New German Cinema
enfant terrible who seemed to enjoy being a thorn in RWF’s side).
What comes out of these interviews was a pure view of
Fassbinder the artist – unassailable – and the man – given to tantrums, verbal
harangues, and even physical violence. What we the audience got from him are the films,
which are for the most part densely layered and sublime.
As John Waters so tersely and accurately put it, “I hear he
was a monster, but I never had to live with him.”
*****
Hermann was one of the first actors to come under
Fassbinder’s spell, and her description of the environment in which she lived with him
reflects the heavy emotion that is an undercurrent in his films. It also
reinforces the kind of cult leader-leader behavior RWF indulged in to keep his
collaborators on their toes. (Having a “favorite,” keeping others in disfavor,
punishing a collaborator by not allowing them to be active in the group.)
Eight Hours Are Not a Day
Hermann met RWF when he was 20 and she was 21. She was a
middle-class young woman who had no artistic aspirations. She met Fassbinder through a
friend who was going to drama school and found him an alluring figure, perhaps
because of his contradictory shyness and audacious ambition to be a director.
He asked her to be in his short film “The City Tramp” (1966).
“He was so shy, so, so shy. He said he wanted me to play
this part, but he couldn’t offer me any money. I told him I didn’t know
anything about acting, and he said it didn’t matter; it was only a small part.”
[Katz, pp. 24-25]
“He was the first person who took me seriously. He
recognized something in me which I was not yet aware of myself. He liked things
about me that no one else liked — my style and my manner.The fascination was mutual, though, a mutual
flame….
“Soon after 'The City Tramp' he moved into my apartment on
Ainmillerstrasse. Love gave me wings. Suddenly I could do whatever I wanted.
Every door was open to me, because I wanted them to be.” [Lorenz, p. 20]
When Fassbinder befriended someone, he enchanted (and
seduced) them:
“He was, how shall I say it? My dream of dreams. Oh, the way
he treated me! So dearly, so kindly, so courteously, so humbly. He was so
fascinating! Nothing like the Fassbinder of later times.” [Katz, p. 25]
“My girlfriend told me that [Christoph] Roser was Rainer’s
fiancee. But that didn’t stop me. I’d had no experience at all with
homosexuals, so I guess I didn’t hear her or want to. I was innocent. I would
never believe it, and even now that he’s dead, I don’t really believe that he
was homosexual. I know he did it, but not in his heart of
hearts.” [Katz, p. 23]
She went further in her discussion of her initial reaction
to the gay lifestyle in the Rosa von Praunheim documentary
Fassbinder’s Women (2000): “At the time I was totally absorbed in
the scene, but not the gay part, even though I was confronted with that while I
was with him. I still couldn’t believe it. I thought people could be converted.
I lived in hope. But I saw it all for myself. I hung around in front of the
toilet blocks without any idea of what was going on. Rainer went inside and I
waited. Sometimes it took a long time, and I couldn’t understand why he took so
long. In that respect I have a very poor imagination.” [Praunheim]
Katzelmacher
She wound up living with a mutual friend, Ursula Strätz, the
immaculately talented composer Peer Raben, and Fassbinder. (She had earlier
lived with Raben and Fassbinder when they were a couple — she would sleep on
the floor, while they slept on a mattress.) All three of his roommates had a
deep love for Rainer. (Roser was out of the picture by this time.)
“Intimate, wasn’t it? He was always switching people. It was
very hard for me, very hard and very new. It went against all my middle-class
upbringing, the ultimate horror. But I was so bound up with him, dependent on
him and at the same time protective of his needs.” [Katz, p. 31]
Unfortunately, there has yet to be a definitive biography of
RWF in English. The closest we have is the 1987 Robert Katz book Love
Is Colder than Death, which is mostly a carefully cultivated
selection of the most negative gossip about Fassbinder and friends. At one
point, he discusses the sex life between Hermann and Fassbinder (who did have
girlfriends while he had boyfriends, and had sex with all of them).
Katz’s book is a combination of interviews he conducted (as
with Hermann) and sleazy stories from books written by Fassbinder’s cohorts
(like Kurt Raab); these books have never been translated, so the Katz book is
the go-to source for those who don’t read German and who are curious about
Fassbinder’s life. On the very sleazy side, he chose to mention that
“copulation between [Rainer and Irm] was sometimes unnatural, if Rainer’s
indiscreet confidences are to be believed: there had been vegetable and mineral
phallic substitutes.” [Katz, p. 120] No source is given for this rather torrid
little item.
The Merchant of Four Seasons
So, why did she stay with him? Well, besides recognizing that
he was a person of immense talent, he was also fun to be around when you were
in his good graces:
“… Soon we were all wrapped up in his world of perception,
his ideas of reality. His world also became my own.” [Lorenz, p. 21]
“We did a lot together. It was our closest time. We went to
the English garden and cafes. We listened to music, played pinball, smoked. We
went to the cinema two or three times a day. It was exhausting. I wasn’t
allowed to sleep or be sick. We never got bed before four. At six we were up
again. We never stopped. It was our most intensive time. It was so intense that
it lasted for ten years, despite rifts between us…. And he loved being loved.
In those days I called myself Number One wife.” [Praunheim]
But money was hard to come by, before Fassbinder became a
critical darling with The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971).
Praunheim asked Hermann about a story that was first mentioned publicly in one
of the memoirs we never saw in the U.S. — namely that Fassbinder was eager at
one point to pimp out Irm and Ursula.
“I’m incapable of prostituting myself in any way. I can’t. I
simply couldn’t do it…. Yes, he liked that idea, the little ‘Mack the Knife.’
He liked that idea. It made him feel powerful. But it didn’t actually work.”
[Praunheim]
The Merchant of Four Seasons
Even during the happiest period of their lives together,
Hermann suffered emotionally (and physically) from Fassbinder’s intensity:
“… he dominated me. I wasn’t left alone for a second. He
dictated what we did night and day. He got jealous when I went to buy milk.
‘What took you so long?’ I’d hurry but it was always too long. He really got
very jealous.”
He had turned her into an actress but could be very harsh
when directing her:
“He delighted in tormenting me publicly. ‘Tell the silly cow
to put her head on one side.’During
Katzelmacher he never let up. Tears used to run down my
cheeks.” [Praunheim]
Katz’s book again becomes the go-to source for the
“underside” of the relationship between Fassbinder and Hermann. Katz didn’t
have enough sleazy content in his book as it was, so he included an essay
written by Peter Berling about the notoriously dreadful shoot of
Whity (1970), one of Fassbinder’s strangest films. (The
shoot was depicted in his later film Beware of a Holy Whore
(also 1970!)).
Berling wrote: “He slapped [Hermann] in front of us all. ‘Where’s my
money?’ he wailed…. Irm burst into tears. ‘You promised to marry me’ were the
words that came out of her mouth. ‘You promised to have children with me. Why
don’t you marry me?’ [Katz, p. 212]
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Her biggest success with Fassbinder (which won her her first
acting awards) was playing the adulterous wife of the protagonist in
The Merchant of Four Seasons, the beginning of Fassbinder’s
“Sirkian” period. On the set of that film, she was, in her own words “treated
like filth…. [I] was continually reduced to tears in the filming.” [Katz, p.
68]
The group dynamic was always about who was in favor with
RWF. “... somebody would eventually fall into disgrace…. One member of the group
always had to be in disgrace to show the others how terrible it was….He switched from one person to another, but
there was always a black sheep in the flock….” [Katz, p. 51]
In the Praunheim doc, she explains, “He wanted reassurance
that we loved him. He wanted that all the time. It was pathological.”
[Praunheim]
Praunheim further probes how the situation changed after
Fassbinder started receiving federal prizes for his films. With
Merchant, the films then became successful at the box office
and there was finally ready money for the films’ budgets – Hermann had earlier
even served as Fassbinder’s “agent,” during the early lean times, trying to
sell his two early shorts to film festivals and to get him acting and directing
jobs.
“After Eight Hours Are Not a Day and
Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, money started to come in. I
didn’t earn anything until 1972.” When Praunheim notes to her that Fassbinder
won five federal film prizes for Katzelmacher (1969), she
replies, “That’s right, but he made five films in 1971 with that money. And
bought several Stingrays. And he supported Gunther Kaufmann, who wrecked one
expensive car after another.” [Praunheim]
Fox and His Friends
Curiously enough, though, Hermann, who was one of the more
mild-mannered (and clearly not overtly ambitious) of Fassbinder’s
collaborators, was one of the first significant rebels in his inner circle.
(Hanna Schygulla, the most independent person in his initial ensemble, was the
first to break away, after the stormy shoot of Effi Briest
in 1974.)
She explained the basics of the situation to Juliane Lorenz
in the latter’s book of interviews, Chaos as Usual: “As time
went on, I felt constricted in the parts he wrote for me. But you see, I had no
choice. I had to accept them if I wanted to be with him. It was that simple.
Whenever I had personal disagreements with him, I would simply be dropped from
the next movie or stage play. There you are.” [Lorenz, pp. 21-22]
“When Rainer dropped his favorites because someone else took
his fancy, they were flung into despair. It was the same for me too. I was in
the same situation. I’d left my bourgeois life. I’d become a ‘film star.’ I’d
won a film prize early. And then he wouldn't cast me. I was out. You feel suicidal
then.” [Praunheim]
Effi Briest
After a number of indignities, Irm refused to be in a play
directed by Fassbinder where her character was merely a sex object. This
rebellion sent him around the bend: “I knew it was a test, but I said, ‘No, I
won’t do that,’ and I persisted. He couldn’t conceived of my refusing him, and
he tried everything. He almost beat me to death on the streets of Bochum, but I
screamed and I yelled, knowing in my heart that I was finding the strength to
leave him.
“Then, in the very next film, he wanted me to play a whore
in a garter belt, and when I said no, he came around early the next morning
holding a bottle of milk, and he hit me on the head with it. But I didn’t do
the part. He tried again and again to dissuade me; then he stopped. I had
defeated him with my inner strength.” [Katz, p. 82]
During Fassbinder’s staging of Women in New
York (his rewrite of the Clare Booth Luce play The
Women), Hermann got pregnant by her then-boyfriend. In the spring of
1977 RWF offered to marry her and adopt the child. She refused and had the child
while unmarried (later marrying the boyfriend who was the baby’s father).
“...I had only to set eyes on him and I would start to cry
out of love…. It was so difficult for me, but I decided — for what I believed
corresponded to the truth — to have the child all alone. I never regretted it,
and today I’m still thankful, very thankful.”
Irm in later years
Fassbinder was angry and hurt but checked in with her at the
hospital repeatedly and finally wished her well. She wound up calling her son
“Franz,” RWF’s favorite name (and his pseudonym for many years).
He also brought her back into the fold for a regular role in
Berlin Alexanderplatz and a supporting role in Lili
Marleen. She no longer needed him for acting work, though — for the
next four decades, she appeared in over 130 roles in German movies and
television.
She reflected on the relationship in later years — it was
initially love on his part and was always love on hers: “Surely I dreamed about
him every night. No, I did not get him. I wanted him, always, but I did not get
him.” [Katz, p. 121]
Four of "Fassbinder's
Women" today
Two of the insights she gave to Praunheim as memorials for
RWF equally sum up her view of her own life: “The medium of film is a drug.
It’s a drug. Everyone falls for it. Who says no to it? It’s a dream factory.
And the dream factory is nicer than the outside world.
“I still feel extremely close to [Rainer]. I don’t really
know how he spent his last years, but I’m sure he suffered a good deal. I’m
sure he wasn’t happy. I don’t know how things are judged in the next world, but
I think he’d already been through hell on Earth, despite all his fame. He was
punished enough. I don’t think you have to suffer twice. He suffered enough.”
[Praunheim]
*****
And, in commemoration of the 75th birthday celebration,
let’s address again the issue of Fassbinder’s prolificness and the items that
can be gotten legally and “from other sources” in the U.S.
For the tally, it must be noted that RWF made:
Two early shorts
One short contribution to an anthology film (which,
curiously, is the most singularly personal thing he ever made for any medium)
One TV variety special, and
Eight telefilms, two of which were two-parters
One documentary
Twenty-eight fictional feature films, and
Two miniseries shot for TV; the second of which,
Berlin Alexanderplatz, is arguably his masterpiece and
perhaps his most personal fictional work.
His dream of Franz Biberkopf's dream.
All made, need I add again, in a period of 13 years. (RWF died in June of 1982 at the very young age of 37.)
Of the above, all have appeared on U.S. DVD (thanks to the
sterling efforts of Juliane Lorenz and the Fassbinder Foundation), except for:
The documentary (Theater in Trance, 1981)
Five of the telefilms (incl. one two-parter), and
Two of the fiction feature films (Jail
Bait, 1972 — which has been legally enjoined from being distributed,
and Lili Marleen, 1980)
Viewers of the Funhouse TV show will be aware that the
majority of the above “MIA” titles are indeed available in some places online
with English subtitles (the missing telefilms were shown at the one comprehensive
festival at MoMA in German with no subtitles).
The complete, utterly missing item – this despite it being
announced for DVD release by a noted arthouse label — is the two-part telefilm
Bolwieser (1977), which has only ever been available in the
U.S. as the feature film The Stationmaster’s Wife (and has
been out of print since New Yorker Films gave up the ghost).
As a heavy-duty fan of Fassbinder’s work, I find it
interesting to check the video-clip sites every few years, since you never know
what might show up. In preparing this piece I went looking and found some
wonderful items. Those will be presented at the bottom, though — first, let’s
see, at this particular moment, which of the “missing” (read: no U.S. DVD
release) are available online.
RWF’s first telefilm is a filmed version of his updated and
minimalist adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s The Coffeehouse
(1970). It’s only for the diehard fan, but it’s nice to know that the film is
(again, at this particular moment in time) immediately available on YouTube
with English subtitles.
The hands-down best of his plays filmed for television is
his own Bremen Freedom (1972). It’s one of his chronicles of
an “emotional slave” (a devoted wife, mother, daughter), but here the slave has
something up her sleeve — namely poison she gives to each of her oppressors.
Fassbinder did a beautiful job stylizing the proceedings. (This clip has no
English subs.)
An equally important missing film is the 1972
Wildwechsel (aka “Jail Bait” in English). This is a
beautifully crafted fiction feature by Fassbinder, but it is unable to be shown
commercially because the playwright, Franz Xaver Kroetz, had it banned.
Presumably as time moves on, his relatives won’t be as narrow-minded. (Another
clip without subs.)
Another filmed play — in this case, Fassbinder’s rewrite of
Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, entitled Nora
Helmer (1973). Interesting, worth watching, but not a major work.
Available on YT in its entirety, with English subs.
A supremely stylized filmed play, Women in New
York (1977) is RWF’s rendition of Clare Booth Luce’s The
Women. It’s a rather arch piece, but the visuals are so sublime, it’s
worth it. Available with English subtitles here:
As noted, the complete Bolwieser is just
about impossible to find. However, a French network has made available an
interview Fassbinder conducted on location for the film, with some footage of
RWF working with Michael Ballhaus. The clip is in German, with French subtitles
available on the Closed Captions.
Fassbinder deftly sidesteps the question of influences but
answers questions about how his style is a blend of Hollywood fantasy and
German reality [my own loose translation of the French translation]: “My
interest for the cinema was born from the fact that my mother, when she wished
to be calm, or when she had visitors, would give me 1 mark 20 and send me to
the movies. And this happened in West Germany, and I watched American films.
There you have a German reality.
“And if I make use of this [in my films], that’s because the
American cinema produces a better sense of identification through an awakening
and a call to to the emotions. For me, that’s something very positive. On the
other hand, there are many elements that disturb me in American films. In
particular, they propagate a fake and lying ideology. I said to myself that if
I could make films that are as beautiful and magnificent as the American films
I love, and yet recount true stories, that would be ideal.
“And for someone to recount real stories, they must have
their own sense of reality, meaning the country in which one lives. For me,
that means making German films. And I try to make them as if we were in Hollywood,
as if the actors with whom I work were Hollywood actors. Which does not mean
that they are better. I do think that ours are better, but American actors have
an aura that adds to a film. Our actors don’t have that, that kind of care for
their image. But we can still proceed as if that was there.”
The one major (in terms of budget and prestige) Fassbinder
film that is “MIA” in the U.S. is Lili Marleen, which has
never been released on any home-entertainment format here (going back to
thedays of VHS — nothing). The film can
be found in its entirety on the ok.ru site with a German soundtrack and a
Russian one. Here is the trailer, in German:
And while Lili Marleen is the highest-profile
Fassbinder film to hit the great divide in terms of release, Theater
in Trance(1981) is clearly the most unique. His only documentary, it
chronicles the acts that appeared at an international theater festival.
Fassbinder reads from Artaud’s The Theater and its
Double on the soundtrack. The film is up on YT in its entirety with
Portuguese subs, but it is a film that is often played without subtitles of any
kind, as it encompasses theater acts from several different countries,
all performing in their native languages.
*****
The final half-dozen spotlighted items are either
films that have indeed been on DVD in the U.S. but are now easily accessed
online (at this moment, in this particular period) or have never been on U.S.
video and likely will not be.
The first is one of those items — it’s in fact where one of
the Irm Hermann interviews excerpted above appears. Fassbinder’s
Women (2000; original German title “For me, Fassbinder was all that
existed”) by Rosa von Praunheim is a work that both honors the talent of
Fassbinder and also brings up the many stories about his treatment of his
lovers and collaborators.
There are other serious documentaries about Fassbinder, but
those can already be obtained on the various U.S. DVD releases of his
films. The Rosa doc is most likely not going to be coming out legally in this
country any time soon. So...
Fassbinder’s first 10 (pre-Sirk) films exist in a world unto
themselves. Among these, there are films about characters who behave like
they’re in a movie and then there are more theatrical works, which show RWF
forging his own visual and scripting style as a filmmaker.
Katzelmacher (1969; literally “Cat fucker”)
is one of the latter — it’s a cinematic rendition of his play about a bunch of
layabout working-class Germans who (the women) lust after or (the men) loathe a
foreign guest-worker, played by Fassbinder himself. It’s a film that is both
intentionally “distant” (read:Brechtian
alienation) and is also an interesting entry in the “hanging out with nothing
to do” subgenre of young adult films that are made in every culture every few
years and define a generation — Fassbinder defined his generation as one that
was bored and blamed their troubles on immigrants. It’s quite a creation.
While Fassbinder did only make one documentary feature, he
also made a documentary short, which was a segment contributed to the anthology
film Germany in Autumn (1978). Rather than show documentary
footage relating to the terrorist attacks of the time or making up a fictional
reflection on the events, he chose to film moments from his own life, making
himself the “villain.”
We see him with his lover, Armin Meier, starting an
argument; then we see him debate his mother (Liselotte Eder) and likening her
to a Nazi. It’s still a rather shocking piece, because most artists would’ve
chosen to make themselves the hero of a piece of nonfiction cinema (or, at the
very least, a “brooding artist”), whereas Fassbinder was fine with assuming the
mantle of the argumentative brute.
One needs a respite after the real-life arguing in the last
entry, so I must offer Rainer Werner and Hanna rocking out in a barroom
Rio Das Mortes (1970) to “Jailhouse Rock” (this should
always and forever be up on YouTube):
There are two long interviews that have been included on
U.S. Criterion releases — one could be handily titled “RWF in a park” and the
other “RWF in his Paris apartment.” (Both are currently available on YT.) There
is a veritable host of untranslated interviews (or, sadly, interviews that the
poster *did* translate but only gives us one minute of, as happens here).
And here is a full hour-long, German-only documentary with
both film clips and interview clips never yet seen in the U.S.
But of all the lovely things to be beheld on the Net, I am
rather deliriously happy to report that one clip I have very much wanted to see
again since it was initially on YT (and then was pulled off, rather
peremptorily), has been available of the last two years, in the middle of a
compilation of rare clips about or with Fassbinder.
I speak about his appearance on a TV show shot in the Circus
Krone in Munich. The show in question is “Stars in der Manege,” a “Circus of
the Stars”–type TV variety show in which celebrities perform different acts.
(You can see Eddie Constantine leaving with his animal act as the clip begins.) Here for one five-minute period, at 26:45 in the video below, we find Rainer Werner Fassbinder performing a
magic act with Hanna Schygulla to promote Lili Marleen — set
to RWF’s favorite song of this period, “Radioactivity” by Kraftwerk!
Follow the Boys
I saw this in the mid-2000s when fans started posting rare
footage on YouTube and my mind exploded. Then, a few months later (after it had
been quickly removed from YT), it finally occurred to me (being bereft of
translation or anything written about the appearance) what they were
recreating. Namely the magic act Orson Welles used to perform with Marlene
Dietrich during WWII, called “The Mercury Wonder Show,” performed for U.S.
soldiers in California. The act was recreated by the two in the 1944 film
Follow the Boys.
There are many moments in Fassbinder’s films where one gets
the impression that he was channeling von Sternberg and Hanna was his Marlene —
this is pretty much the apotheosis of all that. (And he surely relished playing
the part of the magician — the little dance he does while Hanna is floating in
air is rather remarkable.)
And in case you’re looking for still more rarities, this
compilation also contains: a German TV commentator speaking about RWF, Hanna
receiving an award, a downbeat song whose lyrics are nothing but the titles of
Fassbinder films, an interview with his mother (which I’m certain can be seen
in some U.S.-available doc), Ingrid Caven singing on a variety show, yet
another untranslated interview with RWF (sliding down in his chair), a clip
from a 1992 Schlingensief film (Christoph seemed intent on both paying tribute
to RWF and demolishing his legacy with shrill, weird, high-key apocalyptic
farces that use RWF’s actors; a woman plays RWF here — the second time that
happened on film….), Brigitte Meara singing to leather men (from the “Like a
Bird on a Wire” TV special, directed by Rainer), and a view of his gravestone.
Sources:
Katz, Robert, Love Is Colder than Death: The Life
and Times of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Random House: New York, 1987
Lorenz, Juliane (editor) Chaos as Usual: Conversations
about Rainer Werrner Fassbinder, Applause: New York, 1997
Praunheim, Rosa von, English subtitling for Für
mich gab's nur noch Fassbinder (aka Fassbinder’s Women, 2000),
documentary by Rosa von Praunheim
