Auteur List: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

[swo17]

I found my re-viewings helpful to sort out my memory, though if you're short on time I'd actually prioritize the lesser seen stuff that you may be unfamiliar with, like the films you can only see on YouTube. Those were among my favorite discoveries for this project

[senseabove]

I suppose it's only fitting that I actually really liked Satan's Brew by the end of it. It's the highest of the few comic films/films with major comic elements for me. Its style of shouty absurdism doesn't typically work for me, and I did get juuuust about tired of it a few times, but then some incidental thing would crack me up and suck me back in, like Lilo Pempeit's "Oh, I guess that's alright then" when the banker tells her who knocked her over, or when Kurt Raab tells Margit Carstenson she can't devotedly trail him on this trip as she normally does because he's going to go fuck someone, and she responds by staring in blank confusion, then flicking her tongue twice like some kind of prudish, disapproving, confused frog.

[therewillbeblus]

It made my list, but the first 30 minutes are also the best (and would be fine enough, or better, as a short film) so it's worth giving up if you aren't on its wavelength by that point

And if that doesn't give you an idea of how thoroughly awful the film is, I don't know what will!

I think we can all agree it's a mess, but the question is whether or not it's a mess with hidden merit. I see it as a successful failure, meaning that it's a necessary wake-up call for Fassbinder as he fails to gain catharsis from spilling his hedonistic thoughts with no filter. It's an interesting film when you stop trying to view it as a surface-level comedy that's trying too hard, and look into why Fassbinder is trying so hard. I already defended this reading pages back in greater detail, but I also understand how someone could be so disinterested and repelled by the content that any rope to engage with the subtext would dissolve (or, to say it in the spirit of the film's insanity, perhaps it's too hard to search for the effort to find value in a film that's trying this hard to find value in confessing value-less shreds of self), though I disagree with other readings posed here on what the film is trying to do, and welcome a conversation on that!

[TMDaines]

Submitted. I love being a dad, but it sure curtails my time available to watch lots of films in my free time. Ambition to finally finish Fassbinder off very much flopped!

[Lemmy Caution]

Satan's Brew is rather cartoonish fetishism. I've seen it before.

[therewillbeblus]

I suppose curt dismissal is one way to engage in a discussion on differing opinions with a closed mind. Constructive post.

[yoshimori]

I suppose curt dismissal is one way to engage in a discussion on differing opinions with a closed mind. Constructive post.

I quite like Satan's Brew, but I was more engaged/activated by Mr Caution's two word dismissal than I was by most of the lengthier analyses above, so, for me, yah, (relatively) constructive.

[Lemmy Caution]

Th problem I have is unearthing my Fassbinder DVDs.
Chinese Roulette and Fear of Fear were kicking around and visible for months. But now I cant find them. I think Ch Roulette doesn't have English subtitles, and so I haven't seen it before.

I did excavate Whity, Satan's Brew, Gods of the Plague, Pioneers of Ingolstadt, Martha, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Querelle and 2 copies of Petra von Kant and her tears. Watched Gods of the Plague last night, which would have made for a fairly solid 15 minute short, but rambles on for feature length. Not sure why everyone is so enamored of sullen Franz, maybe it's the great sideburns. Another Fassbinder that is okay enough but not terribly engaging. Too meandering and vague for my taste.

I'll see what else I can find. I'd like to rewatch Effi Briest, Lola and Lili Marleen. I think there's a German film container in the one cabinet, but I'll have to move stuff just to be able to open it.
I'll rewatch Whity and Querelle and then pop on a few episodes of BA if I can't find other Fassbinders.

[Sloper]

I hoped to find more time to post in this thread – blame my job, which entails a lot of tedious spreadsheet-scraping and often puts my right hand out of action – but I’ve enjoyed reading along, and have very much enjoyed going on a Fassbinder-bender (Fassbender?) over the last few months.

Having previously seen only one of his films (Maria Braun) I have now seen 22 (including Eight Hours and Berlin). Fassbinder will probably never be one of my favourite directors, and I definitely share some of the frustrations others have expressed here, but it’s been a fascinating and rewarding experience to binge-watch so many of his films. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a sustained run with a single director before, and the films have been varied enough to keep me engaged. That said, I did notice myself sighing hoarsely during some of the most recent viewings – I kind of wanted to hurl Rio das Mortes out of a window – so I may need to take a break now...

One thing I’ve appreciated is that, as with Bergman, you get to see the repertory cast rotate through very different roles, only here the variations are even more drastic: it was genuinely thrilling to cycle through the many faces of Gottfried John, Margit Carstensen, Brigitte Mira, and others. But more than that, it was thrilling to sense the blurred edges between these films, to feel the paranoia of World on a Wire and the abusive relationship in Martha seeping into isolated moments of Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day, as if these films that were made so closely together, and (in my case) watched in quick succession, could start to infect each other. I guess this is a symptom of a director who has a consistent (and enjoyably toxic) worldview but who also takes on an eclectic range of different projects.

To draw another Bergman parallel, I was also struck by how Fassbinder is always reflecting on the medium(s) in which he is working – theatre, cinema, and television – and on their unique capacities and limitations. Here are some more thoughts on this in relation to Effi Briest and Berlin Alexanderplatz, and in reaction to some of the comments made so far:

Like a lot of the Fassbinder’ films in this period, too, there’s both an emotional pull for the characters’ dilemmas and strong distancing through various means – the acting for one thing is particularly underplayed or inhibited… Christian Thomsen articulates well how the film consistently seems to “turn the film into a novel” instead of the other way around, for example in the way Fassbinder keeps the lengthy literary form of the dialogue, or the way the narrator will read lengthy passages of the text describing a scene or a plot development while visually we’re watching a much more banal scene, sometimes almost frozen. I quite enjoyed the observations by Erica Carter in the Arrow book essay on the film about that the way the omniscient narration imposes itself at times on the characters’ voices (it’s particularly striking and explicit towards the end in two scenes where the narrator and the characters’ voices actually audibly compete for attention), so that in the end the film isn’t only a critique of the society the novel depicts but also of literary realism itself.

Fassbinder valorizes the literary original by the use of intertitular extracts, copious narration drawn from the novel (the scene that might be the film's emotional climax, when Effi sees Annie on the tram, is entirely conveyed by Fassbinder's narration), on-screen documents (letters, telegrams), and the use of 'blank pages' in the film's frequent fades to white and, profoundly, in the black-bordered empty frame accompanying the report of Effi's death… The literary and cinematic layers of the film are also beautifully integrated with its theatrical one, in which performances play out at length in long shot, using blocking to express shifting character relationships, and many of the actors wear heightened make-up that evokes the stage.

The first thirty minutes and the last thirty minutes of this are peak work, but I found the middle 4—was it four?—hours just a tortuously plodding journey, tree after tree after tree after tree, nary a forrest in sight. Basically from the arrival of Krampus until the fatal discovery, the development is neither severe enough, seductive enough, nor complex enough; everyone's motivations are, like Martha's, told not shown, or shown not told, and for Fassbinder's peculiar severity to truly succeed for me, I guess I just need those to be blended.

I respectfully disagree with senseabove, for what's being shown and told in disconnect between image and text leaves the real (non)answers of complex psychology in the elisions… [At the end] we witness the parents ruminate on serious, deep, and most significantly unanswerable rhetorical questions from an aloof distance, before the father halts all introspection and avenues for emotional growth, with a sharp "That's much too vast a subject." These are the final lines of the film, but it doesn't end there; no, the pause is sustained in a painfully-long shot of them sitting stagnantly in silence- cementing the diagnosis of western individuals operating defense mechanisms of oversimplicity and shallow conversation to cover up these intangible holes, instead of working through the discomfort to fill them. Though, as Fassbinder might posit himself, while there may not be any solutions to these impediments, they demand to be explored.

In an earlier post, I talked about how Nora Helmer drains A Doll’s House of almost all emotive and even dramatic content, creating a very powerful ‘distanced’ or ‘alienated’ effect, and the same process has been applied in adapting Fontane’s novel. Reading Effi Briest after watching the film, I was surprised by how engaging, human, and sympathetic it was. Many of the characters – Effi’s parents, Innstetten, and especially Johanna – are transformed by Fassbinder into much colder, almost robotic versions of their counterparts in the novel. Fontane’s Johanna, for instance, is essentially a kind and well-meaning presence in Effi’s life, secretly delighting in her sense of superiority to Roswitha, and secretly proud of her bond with Innstetten (whom she appears to be in love with) following the divorce, but nothing like the machete-faced Irm Hermann performance we see in the film.

Not only are the characters severely de-humanised, but the story is also robbed of much of its flow and momentum, being carefully divided up into a series of polished fragments. This is a common – and often very effective – approach to distilling a novel into a feature film, and in this case it reminded me a lot of Terence Davies’ The House of Mirth. (Side-note: I think that film borrows its place-and-date bookends from In a Year With 13 Moons.) But it can make it hard to engage with the narrative, as senseabove’s comment suggests, especially when the fragments are as inscrutable as they are here. The inclusion of literary ‘chunks’ in the narration and intertitles doesn’t help to smooth things over but instead makes the edges even rougher: it’s like a deliberately awkward, imperfect translation, a meditation on an ‘un-filmable’ novel rather than an earnest attempt to re-tell Fontane’s story.

The strange thing is that when Fassbinder actually does film an un-filmable novel – Berlin Alexanderplatz – he takes the opposite approach, heightening rather than dampening the emotions and the drama, and making the narrative more comprehensible rather than less so. But the effect is similar, because again this feels like a knowingly compromised version of the original text.

I found Döblin’s novel very challenging and confusing due to its constant blending together of voices, often within a single paragraph or even a single sentence, and without any guidelines for the reader about who is speaking or what tone they’re using. You almost have to read it out loud at times in order to follow the story, piecing together the meaning from various contextual clues as you read and re-read them. It’s a lot like Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (which came out two years earlier), in that it evokes very powerfully the cacophony of voices that constitute urban life, but it demands even more from an audience looking to make sense out of this apparent chaos. At times I felt like I was close to ‘tuning in’ to the book’s wavelength, but a lot of the time I just felt impressed, and interested, but alienated. It’s as if Döblin were trying to write an un-writable novel, showcasing all the ways in which text-on-a-page is unable to reproduce the sensory and emotional overload of Berlin (low)life.

The TV series, by definition, is unable to reproduce the types of confusion that you get in the novel, because we can always see who is speaking and hear their tone of voice; and, not by definition but by virtue of limited resources, the series is also unable to contain all the details and the range of characters, stories, and settings found in the novel. As has been said in the film’s own thread, it strongly resembles filmed theatre at times, with long takes, often shot from a great distance (for the small screen!), in a limited number of sets. When passages from the novel are recited, either by the characters or by the narrator, this feels like a proud admission of failure on Fassbinder’s part, all the more so when these passages are recited over the same flashback sequence over and over again.

Fassbinder forces the viewer to think about the infrastructure around these cultural artefacts: what does this story mean as a novel, as a play, as a film, or as a TV series? How does it change when transposed between these frameworks? And how can it test, disrupt, and subvert each of these frameworks, as well as conforming to them? In other words, much the same questions Fassbinder wants us to ask about people and the various structures (marriage, the workplace, etc.) they inhabit or are appropriated by. Seeing this common theme treated in such a kaleidoscopic way has been one of the great pleasures of this project for me.

[Matt]

THE RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER LIST

01 Martha (1974) 16
02 Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) 15 (1)
03 Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) 12 (3)
04 The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) 14
05 Veronika Voss [Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss] (1982) 14 (4)

06 In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) 11 (2)
07 The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) 13 (1)
08 Lola (1981) 11
09 Merchant of Four Seasons (1972) 11 (1)
10 Fontane Effi Briest (1974) 8 (3)

11 Fox and His Friends [Faustrecht der Freiheit] (1975) 10 (1)
12 Fear of Fear [Angst vor der Angst] (1975) 10
13 World on a Wire [Welt am Draht] (1973) 11
14 Chinese Roulette [Chinesisches Roulette] (1976) 8
15 The Third Generation (1979) 7

16 Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven (1975) 8
17 Nora Helmer (1974) 6
18 Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day [Acht Stunden sind kein Tag] (1973) 5
19 Katzelmacher (1969) 5 (1)
20 Beware of a Holy Whore [Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte] (1971) 6

# of ballots, out of 17 total (# of ballots with film ranked first)

ALSO RANS

Love Is Colder Than Death [Liebe ist kälter als der Tod] (1969) 3
Gods of the Plague [Götter der Pest] (1970) 3
American Soldier (1970) 2
Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (1970) 5
Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1971) 2
Whity (1971) 6
Jail Bait [Wildwechsel] (1972) 3
Bremen Freedom [Bremer Freiheit: Frau Geesche Gottfried - Ein bürgerliches Trauerspiel] (1972) 2
I Only Want You to Love Me [Ich will doch nur, daß ihr mich liebt] (1976) 4
Satan’s Brew (1976) 3
Women in New York (1977) 4
Stationmaster's Wife [Bolwieser] (1977) 2
Despair (1978) 3
Germany in Autumn [Deutschland im Herbst] (1978) 4
Querelle (1982) 4


ORPHANS

Kaffeehaus (1970) / Rio das Mortes (1971) / Niklashausen Journey (1970) / Lili Marleen (1981)

UNGELIEBT

City Tramp (short, 1966) / Little Chaos (short, 1967) / Like a Bird on a Wire [Wie ein Vogel auf dem Draht] (1975) / Theater in Trance (1981)

VERMISST

This Night (short, 1966, considered lost)

[Matt]

Incredible come-from-behind win for Martha with not a single first-place vote. That's our girl!

Also, check out 1974: #1, #2, #10, and #17 all from the same year.

[Rayon Vert]

OK, now Criterion has to release it.

Thanks a lot Matt - great project.

[criterionsnob]

I guess I should’ve rewatched Martha. Thanks Matt. I’ve enjoyed reading all of the opinions here.

[knives]

Thanks Matt for this.

[therewillbeblus]

Wow, that really goes to show how vital these discussions are for motivators to re-evaluate/revisit works. I doubt Martha would have placed so highly without the likes of zedz and sloper championing the film from such rich angles.

Thanks for taking the reins on this one, Matt!

[swo17]

Thanks, Matt! I called this:

I'm proud of myself that I was able to fit in at least one film from every year 1969-1982, though 1974 was unquestionably his greatest

My list:

01 Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)
02 Martha (1974)
03 Nora Helmer (1974)
04 Angst essen Seele auf (1974)
05 Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)
06 Lola (1981)
07 Bolwieser (1977) AUCH-RAN
08 Acht Stunden sind kein Tag (1972-73)
09 Die Niklashauser Fahrt (1970) WAISEN
10 Die dritte Generation (1979)
11 Frauen in New York (1977) AUCH-RAN
12 Deutschland im Herbst (1978) AUCH-RAN
13 Angst vor der Angst (1975)
14 Das Kaffeehaus (1970) WAISEN
15 Whity (1971) AUCH-RAN
16 Welt am Draht (1973)
17 Warum läuft Herr R. Amok? (1970) AUCH-RAN
18 Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (1982)
19 Liebe ist kälter als der Tod (1969) AUCH-RAN
20 Ich will doch nur, daß ihr mich liebt (1976) AUCH-RAN

[therewillbeblus]

My list:

1. Fontane Effi Briest, or Many people who are aware of their own capabilities and needs just acquiesce to the prevailing system in their thoughts and deeds, thereby confirming and reinforcing it
2. Berlin Alexanderplatz
3. World on a Wire
4. Lola
5. Chinese Roulette
6. The Longing of Veronika Voss
7. Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day
8. Martha
9. Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?
10. Fox and His Friends
11. Jail Bait
12. Fear of Fear
13. Germany in Autumn (Episode 2: RWF)
14. Nora Helmer
15. The Marriage of Maria Braun
16. The Merchant of Four Seasons
17. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
18. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
19. Satan’s Brew
20. Whity

[Sloper]

Well it's about time Martha got a break. Here's my list:

1. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
2. Fear of Fear
3. World on a Wire
4. Fear Eats the Soul
5. Martha
6. Effi Briest
7. The Marriage of Maria Braun
8. Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day
9. Beware of a Holy Whore
10. Nora Helmer
11. Veronika Voss
12. Chinese Roulette
13. Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
14. Berlin Alexanderplatz
15. In a Year With 13 Moons
16. Fox and His Friends
17. The Merchant of Four Seasons
18. Bremen Freedom
19. Love is Colder Than Death
20. Lola

The top 10 are films I either love or at least 'really like'; the rest are films I strongly admire or, at the very least, find fascinating and look forward to watching again. I also saw Niklashausen, Rio das Mortes, and Katzelmacher, and they were the only films I watched for this project that I actively disliked.

Thanks again Matt for making this happen!

[domino harvey]

Congrats to Matt on getting 17 ballots!

[senseabove]

My list:
1. In a Year with 13 Moons
2. The Merchant of Four Seasons
3. The Marriage of Maria Braun
4. Lola
5. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
6. Fox and His Friends
7. Chinese Roulette
8. Fear of Fear
9. Veronika Voss
10. Nora Helmer
11. Beware of a Holy Whore
12. Satan’s Brew
13. Germany in Autumn - Episode 02: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
14. The Third Generation
15. Gods of the Plague
16. The American Soldier
17. Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
18. Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?
19. Martha
20. Whity

Kinda wish I'd swapped Martha out from near the bottom of my list to save Like a Bird on a Wire from it's unloved state—it's by no means great, but I had fun. Worth it just to watch Brigitte Mira go from sober to stone drunk to sober in one uncut take and then sing sad songs to a bar full of leathermen.

Also, is This Night not lost, as the RWF Foundation website claims?

[Matt]

Also, is This Night not lost, as the RWF Foundation website claims?

I’ll change that on the list.

[Red Screamer]

My list, with the caveat that I still have some catching up to do:

01 Fox and His Friends
02 Martha
03 Berlin Alexanderplatz
04 Querelle
05 Fear of Fear
06 Lola
07 Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
08 Katzelmacher
09 In a Year with 13 Moons
10 The Marriage of Maria Braun

This was a great, fun crash course in the filmography of a director I'm still figuring out. Thanks Matt, zedz, and all other coconspirators.

[knives]

I guess I’ll share as well.

1. Berlin Alexanderplatz
2. Querelle
3. Lola
4. The Third Generation
5. The Marriage of Maria Braun
6. Despair
7. Fontane Effi Briest
8. Whity
9. Women in New York
10. Fear of Fear
11. Nora Helmer
12. Martha
13. Beware of a Holy Whore
14. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
15. Gods of the Plague
16. Katzelmacher
17. Fox and His Friends
18. Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
19. Merchant of Four Seasons
20. World on a Wire

[Rayon Vert]

1. The Merchant of Four Seasons
2. Berlin Alexanderplatz
3. Eight Hours Don't Make a Day
4. Martha
5. Effi Briest
6. Lola
7. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
8. Veronika Voss
9. Fear Eats the Soul
10. I Only Want You to Love Me
11. The Marriage of Maria Braun
12. Beware of a Holy Whore
13. Fox and His Friends
14. Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
15. The Third Generation
16. World on a Wire
17. Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?
18. Pioneers in Ingolstadt
19. Love Is Colder Than Death
20. Rio Das Mortes (yes, I'm the one)

I managed to catch 32 features and the two early shorts. Unfortunately I decided to wait until vol. 3 of the new RWF Arrow boxsets comes out to see Fear of Fear, rather than watch the less-than-optimal version that's up on youtube.

[Matt]

My list:

Veronika Voss [Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss] (1982)
Chinese Roulette [Chinesisches Roulette] (1976)
Third Generation (1979)
Fear of Fear [Angst vor der Angst] (1975)
Fontane Effi Briest (1974)
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
Merchant of Four Seasons (1972)
Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)
Martha (1974)
Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)

In the interest of total transparency, it turns out that my list (made in advance of receiving any other lists) *did* have an effect on the final rankings. The top three were so close in total points that my exclusion of Berlin Alexanderplatz was enough to drop it from #1 to #3. But a handful of other lists didn’t include it, and the eventual #1 was on every list but one, so my list doesn’t feel like much of an outlier.