RW Fassbinder: C/D, S/D, Y/DA-Y/DA

saw Lili Marleen shortly after Todd Haynes' similar work for hire Dark Waters... glad that there's only one movie where RWF not only seems bored but the whole thing is so familiar & anonymous, not as blank as DW but by far the most inessential film of his I've seen.

RIP Volker Spengler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzIbKfkqOlg

Unlikely cultural figures wearing German football club kit - Rainer Werner Fassbinder modelling an 1.FC Köln shirt (+ cigarette!) pic.twitter.com/CRco5g4EIB

— German at Portsmouth (@GermanAtPompey) February 6, 2020

Especially unlikely as he was one of the world's biggest Bayern fans.

I'm sure I read somewhere he used to collect jerseys worn by Bayern players - something worn by Bayern players anyway!

Yes, there was a Fassbinder exhibition in Berlin that displayed his Bayern Munich shirt with the No. 8 on it. This was Paul Breitner's shirt number, whose Maoist leanings would probably have amused Fassbinder.

Fassbinder also turned up to the filming of 'Berlin Alexanderplatz' in a Bayern Munich T-Shirt, which would have gone down well with the Berliners.

https://pop9blog.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/025006.jpg

Yes, there was a Fassbinder exhibition in Berlin that displayed his Bayern Munich shirt with the No. 8 on it. This was Paul Breitner's shirt number, whose Maoist leanings would probably have amused Fassbinder.

I saw it!

Coming back to his films a second time, sometimes after months as with Mother Kusters, or a little over a year like 13 Moons, or 2+ years like Petra von Kant, Merchant of Four Seasons, and Beware of a Holy Whore. Obviously coupled with reading a few books on him and becoming familiar with every key player in the ensemble/'group,' is that these fairly dense arthouse movies suddenly open up and become much less heady, much more from the gut. 13 Moons is a special case, but the two things that stuck with me the most after revisiting it about 2 months ago were two simple shots: push-ins on Elvira as she walks in on Anton and Zora kissing on her bed and the devastation on her face, and when Irene gets the call that she needs to come over and open up the apartment.

In these shots, the monologues about Schopenhauer and the 'steaming life' of the slaughterhouse are for a moment wiped away for a pure primary color emotion, less of an imitation than the more straightforward melodramas. and even more astonishing that he did all of this from the hip, filming (as the opening credits say) from July 24 to August 28, 1978. I love how he 'signs' the movie in a way, obviously a film full of tossed of personal gestures, the most obvious being the brief TV cameo talking about having an 'unusual' childhood. less obvious now is the Amarcord theme playing whenever Red Zora/Ingrid Caven shows up. or how much the bathroom that Elvira and Zora go into when they first meet up resembles RWF and Armin Meier's apartment, as seen just months earlier in his Germany in Autumn segment.

I think it's his supreme achievement, maybe because he made it so immediately and intensely, more than anything else in his career. Armin Meier's body was discovered around June 10...... 45 days later they're shooting the first scene. I know, cocaine. that's not it. this is a film shot right from the heart, and though I knew it the first time I saw it, what struck me this time were its equal earthbound emotional effects.

Beware of a Holy Whore had the same pathos, an even headier and more inaccessible movie. but knowing that Lou Castel is wearing *that* leather jacket, the one that Fassbinder wears in everything for the first few years of his career. Knowing every key player and who plays who, I mean Irm's dubbing and send off are devastating. and he presides over it all... what distinguishes RWF among other similarly self destructive and provocative and abusive artists was his rigorous self critique, which was constant. perhaps what endears him to me the most is that he seems like a wounded, lost animal that wants so desperately for the world to be a better place, and his expression is so brilliantly crafted and beautifully immediate and direct. I'm grateful for him, particularly lately.

Found this on youtube the other day, surprisingly good discussion for a university. Also realized 2020 is indeed a moon year with 13 new moons. Criterion tweeted a photo of Ingrid Caven as Red Zora from the movie the other day, hopefully they're preparing a release this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri_1N3R7T-E

RIP Irm Hermann 💔

Oh no! RIP Irm ;_;

:-(

RIP

wasn't aware Irm was still around til 8 Hours restoration

I was gonna revive to ask about Martha.

She does as she pleases, she waits there for me. If that's the Martha you mean.

has anyone seen RWF's Women in New York? I think that's the last thing of his that features Irm in a significant role (she's only in Berlin Alexanderplatz for one episode right?)

omg had no idea what this revive was for until i spotted this elsewhere. rip

women of new york is insane, borderline unwatchable. all the sets are clearly built on the same stage and there's a floorboard that creaks in the same place no matter where the scene is set and it becomes increasingly distracting.

some guy, that RWF

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6965-irm-hermann-from-torture-to-triumph

DAMN

The cruelty Fassbinder directed at Herman began to extend beyond casting. In 1976, when they were working on the television movie Women in New York, Fassbinder slipped a tab of acid into her meal without telling her. Her circulatory system collapsed and it took her weeks to recover. “Maybe Fassbinder tortured me more than, say, Margit Carstensen or Hanna Schygulla because we were sleeping together,” she told Herlinde Koelbl in Die Zeit in 2015. “I also think that he took a lot out on me that was meant for his mother. People said that I looked like her, and she played a very large and not especially nice role in his life.”

Rfw was horrible yes

More thankful than ever for him during the pandemic. The only filmmaker I can turn to on any day if I'm despondent. He always makes me feel better, more sane.

I imagine a person who wrote, starred, and directed 7523 plays and movies in a 13-year period while in thrall to pills and alcohol was a delight to live with.

I thought he was fine with Margit Carstensen bc she was an established actress (not "his" star) and was in no mood for his carry on, while irm, schygulla and caven were treated pretty brutally

Whatever

Adjudicating a dead director's personal behavior is so BORING

Only because everyone itt knows already

I always thought he was the nicest to Schygulla because she was the most conventional star or something, but maybe I didn't read enough.

his peak for me are the Carstensen Joan Crawford vehicles he made in his Sirk phase.

yeah it's the other way around, HS balked at doing World on a Wire during Effi Briest and they'd didn't work together again for 4 years. RWF, during a game of Chinese roulette on the set of Chinese Roulette, told MS "I don't have any more ideas for your face." When they did Martha he fawned over her.

(Rewatched that the other day--someone pointed out something very funny, Helmut's silk polka dot pajamas after he brutalizes Martha toward the end)

also going through all his films again I noticed the Biberkopf thing of biting a lover on the neck after kissing them, is in almost all of his movies

it's kindof weird to try and separate films like Petra Von Kant or Martha or querelle from thinking about his lunatic troupe regime and his viciousness. don't think anyone was suggesting "cancelling" them though. plenty of nicer directors whose films could go in the bin first.

well, probably there are plenty of people suggesting cancelling them, not going to Google it though!

his peak for me are the Carstensen Joan Crawford vehicles he made in his Sirk phase.

I watched Querelle the other day, and I can honestly say no other Fassbinder I've watched could have prepared me for it. The sexual viciousness mentioned above is so completely stylised into some kind of fin de siecle decadence, rendering it unreal, yet still jaw dropping. bizarre to think the lead was in the Oscar bait Chariots of Fire just before, then he's in this.

Margit is Joan, caven is Dietrich, schygulla is a Romy Schneider heimatfilm Frau, always a little confused about who irm is in the pantheon.

my film faves were p much all terrible people, don't look at me

yah querelle is somewhat unique, but I think he has other outliers. Katzelmacher shocked me the first time I saw it, a really vicious straub huillet jibe but so elegant

I thought he was fine with Margit Carstensen bc she was an established actress (not "his" star) and was in no mood for his carry on, while irm, schygulla and caven were treated pretty brutally

He was mostly horrible to his lovers, so Hanna Schygulla was never treated badly, I think he got irritated by and jealous about the fact that she was becoming 'the star', even though that's why he wanted to work with her in the first place. Also I don't think he especially horrible to Ingrid Caven - well, unless you count him sleeping with the best man on their wedding night! But, you know, why would you marry RWF in the first place!

Margit is Joan, caven is Dietrich, schygulla is a Romy Schneider heimatfilm Frau, always a little confused about who irm is in the pantheon.

... his mother!

Yeah, ^this

to give them their dues, these ladies were all, also, nuts

also lol yeah I guess

Hanna is Dietrich
Margit is Bowie
Ingrid is Irene Dunne
Irm is Angela Merkel

I only saw it once but my impression of Querelle was that it made no sense and it ruled.

haha

Haven’t seen them all (trying—if anyone can hook me up with Lili Marleen I’d be grateful) but the only RWF I didn’t like is Katzelmacher. Couldn’t finish it. Querelle is uh...something else.

got a copy of Satan's Brew for a reasonable price on eBay. the case is um, a little sticky...

John Waters writes a letter to RWF for his 75th:

I remember when I first met you at the Berlin Film Festival. There you were with Douglas Sirk! You in your dirty Levi’s and leather, he elegantly dressed in a crisp white suit. I wanted to bow down. You were both kind and welcoming to me and my early trash epics which were just getting to be known in Germany. Douglas Sirk knew what Pink Flamingos was!? I was astounded and moved and it was all because of you.

Later, I was so proud when New Line Cinema, the distributor of all my films at the time, announced they were going to release your movie Despair in America. I played dumb when the publicist eventually complained that she had sent you two first-class airline tickets to come to New York to promote the film and even though you had accepted and flown over, you’d never shown up to do the interviews. I had seen you out at the leather S&M bars the night before but I kept my mouth shut. I don’t snitch on royalty.

https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/r-w-fassbinder-film-stills-pp/

Fassbinder and Kraftwerk: A Marriage Made in a New Germany

A member of the same bourgeois postwar generation as Hütter and Schneider, Fassbinder had similar artistic goals of forging a new German identity. As with Kraftwerk’s music, his cinema was not merely reclaiming what had been lost but moving into the future with something unique. “I would say that in 1945, at the end of the war, the chances which did exist for Germany to renew itself were not realized,” said Fassbinder. “Instead, the old structures and values on which our state rests now as a democracy have remained the same.” The admiration between Kraftwerk and Fassbinder was reciprocal. As bandmember Karl Bartos explained, “Fassbinder loved it . . . his crew were sometimes forced to listen to Kraftwerk eight hours a day on the set. He would play Autobahn and Radio-Activity to the point where no one could stand it anymore. It was a bit like brainwashing. Flattering to hear, though.” And sometimes, after a long day at Kling Klang studio, the band would put on the director’s film or TV work.

Though Fassbinder had used “Radio-Activity” in Chinese Roulette (1976), his coked-out chamber drama that starred Anna Karenina, Margit Carstensen, and Ulli Lommel, the track’s recurrence throughout the final episode of Berlin Alexanderplatz gives it a more natural, depraved home. Both the song and the epilogue attempt to articulate that new German identity, smashing together antithetical feelings, ideas, and cultural detritus. Featuring repurposed bleeps of a Geiger counter and a mellifluous pop hook, “Radio-Activity” neatly pairs with Doblin’s source novel, a work that is narrated by the chaos of a modern city and periodically needles its protagonist with the cacophonous sounds of mass media. Snippets of Kraftwerk’s song are used as markers of torture and agony, and upend the series’ carefully constructed historical verisimilitude. The disjunctions remove viewers from a simple understanding of history as a chain of cause-and-effect relationships and interconnected events, allowing them to see the imminent danger that can lie beneath seemingly banal times.

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/7143-fassbinder-and-kraftwerk-a-marriage-made-in-a-new-germany