― jed_ (jed), Monday, 30 May 2005 16:40 (eighteen years ago) link
"Not this crude matter...but think I that appeal it still has."
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 30 May 2005 17:45 (eighteen years ago) link
CLASSIC
― j blount (papa la bas), Monday, 30 May 2005 19:02 (eighteen years ago) link
"Feel the WRATH-uh of AlexANDUH-PLATZ-UH!"
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 30 May 2005 19:35 (eighteen years ago) link
― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Monday, 30 May 2005 22:00 (eighteen years ago) link
search:Merchant of the Four Seasons Ali: Fear Eats The Soul Fox And His Friends Effi BriestThe Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant The Marriage of Maria Braun The Third Generation In A Year of 13 Moons Lili Marleen
Despair is his only English language film.
Lola, Veronika Voss and The Stationmaster's Wife got some attention in the United States during the early 80s, but they're a bit slicker and less emotionally rich than his mid-to-late 70s prime (above).
Berlin Alexanderplatz is the masterpiece, an eight (?) part TV miniseries based on Alfred Doblin's novel from the 1930s
― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 30 May 2005 23:41 (eighteen years ago) link
― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 00:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― The Emancipation of Baaderonixx (KERERU 4 LIFE!) (Fabfunk), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 06:43 (eighteen years ago) link
search: lola, fear eats the soul, merchant of four seasons; destroy: lili marlene, the american soldier, chinese roulette
― N_RQ, Tuesday, 31 May 2005 09:14 (eighteen years ago) link
Fassbinder would have been 60 y.o. today. Hooray, I guess.
― phallocentric (desolate), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 12:17 (eighteen years ago) link
― N_RQ, Tuesday, 31 May 2005 12:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 12:42 (eighteen years ago) link
oh and 'satan's brew' is awesome.
― Owen Hatherley (owen), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 18:16 (eighteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 18:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 18:39 (eighteen years ago) link
― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 18:40 (eighteen years ago) link
mother kusters goes to heavenHas anyone since the other German movie with a similar title?
― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 18:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 18:53 (eighteen years ago) link
Me too, Ken. Did you see Alexanderplatz there? The two lead actors showed up at the end of the screening.
The only two RWFs I really can't stand (I've seen over 30)are "Querelle" (drugs do take their toll) and "Satan's Brew" (wacky farce was not his forte, and this is the painful evidence).
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 18:56 (eighteen years ago) link
Talk about "unhappiness porn." Actually I thought this one was pretty hot. (Chastity does take its toll.)
― L'Histoire d'Eric H. (Eric H.), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 18:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 19:00 (eighteen years ago) link
― The Emancipation of Baaderonixx (KERERU 4 LIFE!) (Fabfunk), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 19:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 19:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 19:12 (eighteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 20:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 22:17 (eighteen years ago) link
― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 22:19 (eighteen years ago) link
ihttp://www.einhorn-film.at/filme_qrst/satansbraten_1.jpg
― Vitbe... *pause*... Is Good Bread (Dada), Friday, 5 May 2006 10:16 (seventeen years ago) link
― the Enrique who acts like some kind of good taste gestapo (Enrique), Friday, 5 May 2006 10:20 (seventeen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 5 May 2006 12:31 (seventeen years ago) link
― the Enrique who acts like some kind of good taste gestapo (Enrique), Friday, 5 May 2006 12:34 (seventeen years ago) link
― Vitbe... *pause*... Is Good Bread (Dada), Friday, 5 May 2006 12:34 (seventeen years ago) link
You know, we attempted to do this once but they had a cap on how many movies you could rent out at one time at V1deo 2 G0 and slowly but surely the place's actually very impressive collection of RWF films started disappearing...so we kind of meh'ed it off and bogarted another director's collection instead. Lili Marleen is probably the one I like best when I think about it and force myself to decide.
big dvd release for half of his films pretty soon.
This is good news, cf. the first half of my post! When I go back to Amherst maybe we can work on completing our goal now.
― Allyzay Rofflesbot (allyzay), Friday, 5 May 2006 13:41 (seventeen years ago) link
as yet no-one's done 'the third generation' fer example.
― the Enrique who acts like some kind of good taste gestapo (Enrique), Friday, 5 May 2006 13:42 (seventeen years ago) link
― Vitbe... *pause*... Is Good Bread (Dada), Friday, 5 May 2006 13:43 (seventeen years ago) link
http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/index.php?c=y&s=c3081b19d9971d2ee5fc791fddcadc2c
― the Enrique who acts like some kind of good taste gestapo (Enrique), Friday, 5 May 2006 13:46 (seventeen years ago) link
Querelle Veronika Voss Lola Berlin Alexanderplatz Despair In a Year with 13 Moons The Marriage of Maria Braun Bolwieser Chinese Roulette Satan’s Brew I Only Want You to Love MeFear of Fear Faustrecht der FreiheitMother Küsters’ Trip to Heaven Effi Briest Fear Eats the Soul The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant The Merchant of Four Seasons Pioneers in Ingolstadt The American Soldier Beware of a Holy Whore Rios Das MortesGods of the Plague Katzelmacher
― Vitbe... *pause*... Is Good Bread (Dada), Friday, 5 May 2006 13:49 (seventeen years ago) link
― Allyzay Rofflesbot (allyzay), Friday, 5 May 2006 13:49 (seventeen years ago) link
kudos man.
it's fucking 28 hours long.
― the Enrique who acts like some kind of good taste gestapo (Enrique), Friday, 5 May 2006 13:51 (seventeen years ago) link
Veronika Voss LolaDespairThe Marriage of Maria Braun Bolwieser Chinese Roulette I Only Want You to Love MeFaustrecht der FreiheitEffi Briest Fear Eats the Soul The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant The Merchant of Four Seasons Pioneers in Ingolstadt The American Soldier Beware of a Holy Whore Rios Das MortesGods of the Plague Katzelmacher
― Vitbe... *pause*... Is Good Bread (Dada), Friday, 5 May 2006 13:53 (seventeen years ago) link
― Allyzay Rofflesbot (allyzay), Friday, 5 May 2006 13:54 (seventeen years ago) link
― Vitbe... *pause*... Is Good Bread (Dada), Friday, 5 May 2006 13:55 (seventeen years ago) link
natch it was made for tv.
― the Enrique who acts like some kind of good taste gestapo (Enrique), Friday, 5 May 2006 13:58 (seventeen years ago) link
Whatever, ppl be having their rather ridiculous strawmen shocker.
― Allyzay Rofflesbot (allyzay), Friday, 5 May 2006 14:03 (seventeen years ago) link
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 5 May 2006 14:05 (seventeen years ago) link
― Vitbe... *pause*... Is Good Bread (Dada), Friday, 5 May 2006 14:06 (seventeen years ago) link
-- Allyzay Rofflesbot (allyza...), May 5th, 2006.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[...] Fassbinder's assistant (and legal wife) said he preferred it be seen in two large chunks. [...]
-- Dr Morbius (wjwe...), May 5th, 2006.
dada otm, this is one of those occasions when you can safely ignore a famously egocentric cokehound.
― the Enrique who edits for clarity (Enrique), Friday, 5 May 2006 14:09 (seventeen years ago) link
― Vitbe... *pause*... Is Good Bread (Dada), Friday, 5 May 2006 14:11 (seventeen years ago) link
I can see why he'd say he preferred it to be watched in larger chunks, though but there can be logistical difficulties with that (ie I'm hoping the movie theatre gave intermissions so viewers didn't have to miss 5 minute bits and pieces of the movie if they had to pee sometime during the 8 hours--and also for those of us who can hold it, so we don't have to miss parts of the movie for ppl getting up and down constantly!).
― Allyzay Rofflesbot (allyzay), Friday, 5 May 2006 14:13 (seventeen years ago) link
― Vitbe... *pause*... Is Good Bread (Dada), Friday, 5 May 2006 15:14 (seventeen years ago) link
I watched it the other night, he plays it in his flashy sports car when he's driving about feeling lonely and unloved.
― Young Boys of Bernie (Tom D.), Monday, 26 October 2020 17:07 (three years ago) link
That reminds me, I forgot he did an entire film of Brigitte Mira singing Leonard Cohen songs.
― Young Boys of Bernie (Tom D.), Monday, 26 October 2020 17:09 (three years ago) link
it's in the gay bar
13 Moons has some nuts sonic & cinematic allusions: the opening scene uses Mahler's adagietto in a perverse parody of Death in Venice. Check out the way that the john is shot against the morning sky, it's completely Visconti. and then of course the notion of 'sublime/divine beauty' of that film is pretty much immediately destroyed when Elvira gets beat up, and the sex change is discovered right as the adagietto peaks.
Red Zora, Ingrid Caven's character, always appears on screen with the "Amarcord" theme.'
But the song that runs through 13 Moons is Connie Francis' "Schoener Fremder Mann," or "Someone Else's Boy." Big hit in Germany, not a hit in its English version. When Anton Saitz (Gottfried John) meets Red Zora in Elvira's apartment, she calls him "Schoener Fremder Mann."
The final shot of 13 Moons is one of the most powerful sequences in all of Fassbinder... they've discovered Elvira. He starts at the stairs, following his mother as the nun up. She is frisked by Gunter Kaufmann, who looks resigned and sighs before the camera slowly turns around and watches the nun walk into Elvira's room.
Camera follows, and peeks in: the nun graces Elvira's body, and walks by Saitz and Zora, both of whom have their backs to Elvira's body. We don't see their faces. We follow the nun into the adjacent room, where Eva Mattes, playing Elvira's daughter, bursts out of the shadows looking for someone, anyone, for comfort in the midst of crisis. She looks out, camera left, then turns camera right, and freezes. Camera slowly turns again, and begins its final tracking move, sliding down the hall faster than before following the nun as he descends the stairs. And of course during this scene, and this single shot, the Connie Francis song begins alongside the therapy tape of Elvira talking about her life.
The nun descends the stairs, and as soon as she disappears, the frame FREEZES and the therapy tape is cut off and the Connie Francis song comes ROARING up. "Tall handsome stranger, there will come a time one day, when all my dreams become reality..." and then that title card comes up, the day he finished, Goethe's birthday: "FRANKFURT AM MAIN / AM 28 AUGUST 1978."
And the record gets stuck, looping on the word "REALITY...REALITY...REALITY...REALITY...REALITY" drenched in reverb until the picture ex/implodes.
I've heard that 35mm prints of 13 Moons include about a minute of unexposed film at the end of the movie, conforming to the movie's recurring motif of reality and movieland coming into contact, interfering with each other, or destroying everything. Fassbinder's initial essay, written immediately after Armin Meier was found and probably one of the most moving things he ever wrote, tells Elvira's life story leading up to the movie and includes one interesting note of a piece with the Fassbinder interview that shows up on the TV toward the middle: after Christoph leaves Elvira in the second scene, she's supposed to be reading a copy of World on a Wire.
13 Moons is his most hopeful and encouraging movie to me because he not only managed to pull himself out of an unimaginably horrible personal tragedy and transmute it into a work of art that doesn't stand but flies above the others, a film shot entirely from the hip, conceived so quickly (Meier's body was discovered mid-June 1978, start date on the film is July 24, ends on August 28) that there's a power and a beauty so immediately connected to its source that dissection/construction appears impossible--it is a film that feels like it was ripped right out of RWF's chest, and it is his densest diamond.
― flappy bird, Monday, 26 October 2020 17:11 (three years ago) link
xp oh yeah nvm yea its when hes in his alfa romeo
― flappy bird, Monday, 26 October 2020 17:12 (three years ago) link
Take a look at the TV scene from 13 Moons, it's just fucking nuts, RWF indicts himself by intercutting Maurice Pialat's We Won't Grow Old Together with the documentary on Pinochet. RWF only appears on the TV screen once, but he's heard throughout the scene: right as Red Zora is taking a sleeping pill and going to bed, he's talking about how "I will not do anything to change my personal life or its situation. If I don't meet someone tonight, things will go on just as before, and I won't force myself to change them, even if they don't work."
Channel flips back to Pinochet documentary: "The general never missed an opportunity to express his contempt for parliamentary democracy."
And then that dip to black and cut to the rooftop panorama, a clear allusion to TRIUMPH OF THE WILL...
I mean, it's just staggering. Dude was in Godmode most of his career but jesus, this movie on another level.
― flappy bird, Monday, 26 October 2020 17:17 (three years ago) link
Thanks for this analysis. My problem with the final scene of In a Year with 13 Moons was that it was the ultimate fantasy of self-pity: a suicide followed by everyone who had ever done you wrong parading through the room to see your body.
My favourite Fassbinder is Beware of a Holy Whore, so perhaps I prefer him with a lighter touch than you do.
― Halfway there but for you, Monday, 26 October 2020 22:04 (three years ago) link
Beware is pretty nasty! But I know what you mean, the stakes are much lower: the death of a film/film collective vs. two hours of death and suicidal gutter philosophy. all of his films have their funny bits, it's something Europeans are so much better at mixing in. Like the bank scene in Fox and His Friends--it's total screwball. "Cash?" "Yes!" "Cash?" "Cash! Yes!" And that zoom in on the bank teller once they've left: "Cash, cash, cash. You say something enough, it loses all meaning." Even Hans smashing the record toward the end of Merchant of Four Seasons is funny.
Beware also has a key line for all of Fassbinder imo, and I think he says it himself: "Isn't it a shame being anti-bourgeois when you realize how bourgeois you are yourself?" That conflict is present in all his films, at least in the way Morbs put it in the Godard vs. Fassbinder thread: RWF was just better at and more interested in synthesizing the commercial and the avant garde. He was certainly more successful in that regard than Chabrol! Though I love him, too.
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 27 October 2020 03:33 (three years ago) link
The Perfect Storm and Querelle are an obvious double feature. Only question is who's on top? 😳 pic.twitter.com/dyHveMK5uF— Nicky Smith (@nickyotissmith) December 10, 2020
― flappy bird, Thursday, 10 December 2020 07:13 (three years ago) link
Whoa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOpOIHBjZAI
Uploaded 2 weeks ago
― flappy bird, Friday, 11 December 2020 06:29 (three years ago) link
oh amazing thanks for the heads up!
― plax (ico), Friday, 11 December 2020 08:01 (three years ago) link
Fucking jackpot! Theater in a Trance, his only documentary, uploaded as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhwIhFeKBLA
― flappy bird, Friday, 11 December 2020 17:11 (three years ago) link
mount cinema?
― Robert Gotopieces (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 11 December 2020 17:27 (three years ago) link
oh yah thats good
― plax (ico), Friday, 11 December 2020 18:35 (three years ago) link
Like a Bird on a Wire is so cool, as someone on Letterboxd said, the second half with the mirrors and bodybuilders seems to presage Lola & Querelle (altho it reminded me of Godard's segment in Aria).
― flappy bird, Sunday, 13 December 2020 22:58 (three years ago) link
Schoener fremder mann/"handsome stranger" pops up in so many of his films prior to the climactic use of the Connie Francis song of the same name in 13 Moons... check the early Antiteater films... "Handsome stranger" is one of the stock responses...
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 29 December 2020 20:15 (three years ago) link
Fassbinder filming the slaughterhouse sequence in In a Year with 13 Moons, summer 1978 pic.twitter.com/LCJhT23bm8— Nicky Smith (@nickyotissmith) February 24, 2021
― flappy bird, Friday, 26 February 2021 17:51 (three years ago) link
Not sure the white suit was a great idea.
― Punk's not daft (Tom D.), Friday, 26 February 2021 18:24 (three years ago) link
i saw this first during a period where it seemed like every second film i watched had an incredibly explicit animal slaughter sequence. of these i think touki bouki was the worst.
― plax (ico), Friday, 26 February 2021 22:43 (three years ago) link
the wake in fright kangaroo hunt traumatized me, i basically can't watch animals being killed in movies any longer.
― himpathy with the devil (jim in vancouver), Friday, 26 February 2021 22:47 (three years ago) link
I think for me it was the horse and cow in the long cut of Andrei Rublev. I don't remember anything like that from Touki Bouki.
― Halfway there but for you, Friday, 26 February 2021 23:02 (three years ago) link
interesting to hear the various reactions to these things--they all come to mind, though one that got me just tonight was rewatching Godard's Weekend, when the pig is sledgehammered on the head. The other one that I close my eyes for is the seals being clubbed in The Devil, Probably. I saw Wake in Fright years ago at a revival and remember nothing of the slaughter, just that it's in there somewhere. Roar is worth seeing for the reverse situation, actors being slightly to mediumly maimed by lions and shit. it's cool. I just watched Touki Bouki last week, they skin and cut a deer or something iirc. the colors are really saturated in that movie
― flappy bird, Saturday, 27 February 2021 06:32 (three years ago) link
but the slaughterhouse in 13 Moons is his most explicit depiction of the holocaust
Is that what it was meant to depicting?
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 27 February 2021 10:04 (three years ago) link
A chunk of the monologue is about Anton Saitz growing up in Bergen-Belsen
― flappy bird, Sunday, 28 February 2021 04:29 (three years ago) link
Some more pictures from the making of 13 Moons. I like to think that RWF wore this white suit for the entire 35 day shoot. pic.twitter.com/5Iv6ymgwJb— Nicky Smith (@nickyotissmith) March 2, 2021
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 2 March 2021 07:41 (three years ago) link
He'd been wearing the white suit since 1970!
― Punk's not daft (Tom D.), Tuesday, 2 March 2021 08:56 (three years ago) link
haha I know I know, he wears it in back to back films (American Soldier / Beware of a Holy Whore). Amazing he was able to keep it so clean in those 8 years. Then again, according to Kurt Raab, RWF "took more baths than the average German."
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 2 March 2021 19:59 (three years ago) link
With Ingrid Caven, 1974.
https://img.welt.de/img/icon/partnerschaft/mobile174506691/2972503117-ci102l-w1024/Conrad-JENNINGS-Rainer-Werner-FASSBINDER-und-Ingrid-CAVEN-1974.jpg
― When Smeato Met Moaty (Tom D.), Monday, 15 November 2021 23:28 (two years ago) link
Anyone have opinions on the new biopic?
― A Pile of Ants (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, 16 November 2021 01:49 (two years ago) link
Didn't know there was one.
― When Smeato Met Moaty (Tom D.), Tuesday, 16 November 2021 09:37 (two years ago) link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfant_Terrible_(film)?wprov=sfti1It’s showing in DC soon but on a midweek
― A Pile of Ants (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, 16 November 2021 14:20 (two years ago) link
I saw this biopic last night. A lot of the anecdotes were familiar from the book Fassbinder Film Maker, by Ronald Hayman, which I read ages ago, and I've seen all the films they depicted. I thought the main actor was very skillful, capturing him at his kindest and cruelest, and the film captured the relationships among his troupe too. The visual style is expressionist, with lots of pools of blue and red light in the darkness, and no exterior scenes, but it nodded to Fassbinder's style without ever being cute or clever about it.It's certainly better than Le Redoutable, the pointless Godard/Wiazemsky film that came out a few years ago, apparently the only biopic about a film director I've seen.
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 2 March 2022 21:31 (two years ago) link
Finally watched Martha, a rather sour Sirk pastiche with hints of Gaslight.
― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 11 May 2023 09:50 (eleven months ago) link
It’s awesome—Fassbinder called it a sadist and a masochist finding the ideal partner. Is it on DVD?
― Every post of mine is an expression of eternity (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, 11 May 2023 12:12 (eleven months ago) link
And of course there’s this dynamo of a shot:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiS2kJCLhgA
― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Thursday, 11 May 2023 12:21 (eleven months ago) link
Yes, I saw it on DVD.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 11 May 2023 12:25 (eleven months ago) link
It's on Criterion Channel too.
Id put it into the second-tier because the first half faffs around a bit.
― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 11 May 2023 12:31 (eleven months ago) link
Gets more and more hysterical as it goes on.
― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.), Thursday, 11 May 2023 13:33 (eleven months ago) link
what kind of freak gets in the front seat of a taxi
― Every post of mine is an expression of eternity (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, 11 May 2023 13:40 (eleven months ago) link
It's not top-tier RWF, sure.
― Every post of mine is an expression of eternity (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, 11 May 2023 13:41 (eleven months ago) link
I don't know, it's pretty damn good!
― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.), Thursday, 11 May 2023 13:42 (eleven months ago) link
Exactly -- good not great!
― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 11 May 2023 13:54 (eleven months ago) link
Good, not Querelle
― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Thursday, 11 May 2023 14:13 (eleven months ago) link
a milkshake?
― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 11 May 2023 14:14 (eleven months ago) link