#rw fassbinder

[bitter69uk]

Born on this day 82 years ago (25 December 1943): the eternally alluring actress and chanteuse Hanna Schygulla, one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s definitive muses (they collaborated on 23 films and television productions, including his meisterwerks like The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) and Lili Marleen (1981)) and one of THE essential faces and presences of New German Cinema. Happily, Schygulla is still active (I gasped with pleasure when she cropped up in Poor Things (2023)). Pictured: portrait of Schygulla in 1981.

[bitter69uk]

“Querelle, a strange blend of sodomy and homicide, is alternately appealing, intriguing and silly. Brad Davis is cast in the title role, that of a seagoing sexpot who’s desired by all of the principal characters and by several of the minor ones, as well … The action transpires on campy, blatantly artificial sets straight out of an MGM musical from the forties. (The lighting, too, is garishly theatrical). The soundstage is swarming with sweaty semi-nude sailors. The mooring posts on the dock are unmistakably phallic. Even the swooping Art Nouveau ornamentation on the windows is obscenely suggestive. Anything, apparently for erotic effect … we get the feeling that if they upped the decadence by one iota, the screen would start oozing fungus …”

/ Author Paul Roen reflecting on Querelle in his 1994 book High Camp: A Gay Guide to Camp and Cult Films, Volume 1 /

“The idea of murder often evokes the idea of sea and seafarers ...” opens Querelle of Brest, French literary bad boy Jean Genet’s notorious novel (written in 1947, published in 1953). It’s also the opening line of Querelle (1982), the great maverick German director Rainer Werner’s Fassbinder’s final film (he died of a drug overdose aged just 37 before it premiered) – which opened in French cinemas on this day (8 September 1982). Starring rugged Brad Davis in the lead role, Franco Nero and then-reigning queen of European art cinema Jeanne Moreau, Querelle is a fascinating, hallucinatory experiment, a powerful study of decadence and a feverish (wet) dream of a movie! Pictured: Davis and Fassbinder conferring during production of Querelle. Now sing along with me: “Each man kills the thing he loves …”

[bitter69uk]

Broadcast on German television on this day fifty years ago (8 July 1975): disturbing made-for-TV movie Angst vor der Angst (aka Fear of Fear) by bad boy of New German cinema Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945 - 1982). I’ve seen Fear of Fear only once, many years ago (it must have been at a Fassbinder retrospective at The British Film Institute), but it’s been lodged in my memory ever since. It’s one of the definitive European “women-having-a-nervous-breakdown” movies, to be mentioned in the same breath as Monica Vitti unraveling in Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964) or anything by Ingmar Bergman. Our tormented protagonist here is chic, affluent and beautiful but mentally unraveling thirty-something housewife and mother Margot, played by the mesmerizing Margit Carstensen (who Fassbinder also memorably utilized in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) and Martha (1974). His camera clearly loved devouring the planes and hollows of Carstensen’s remarkable face in extreme close-ups). Finding no compassion or understanding from her husband Kurt (Ulrich Faulhaber) or judgmental mother-in-law and sister-in-law (played by Fassbinder stalwarts Brigitte Mira and Irm Hermann), the distraught Margot self-medicates with cognac, Valium – and most worryingly, Leonard Cohen records. (It’s a bad sign when one of Fassbinder’s characters listen to Leonard Cohen. Here, it’s “Lover, Lover, Lover” and “Why Don’t You Try?” In Fox and His Friends – also released in ’75 – the doomed anti-hero opts for “Bird on a Wire”).

[bitter69uk]

Released fifty years ago (6 June 1975) today in West German cinemas: Fox and His Friends, one of the most lacerating statements by bad boy of New German cinema Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945 - 1982). I would have first seen this one studying Film Theory at university over thirty years ago. All these decades later, the movie still delivers the sting of a slap to the face. For anyone wanting downbeat, feel-bad and perverse Pride month viewing, Fox and His Friends is a must! (Apparently, it’s easily found on streaming platforms including Tubi). “The point of the movie’s title is, of course, that Fox has no friends,” Roger Ebert concluded in his review. “Years before Hollywood made its first faltering steps in the direction of a new frankness about homosexuality, Fassbinder was miles out in front. He was so comfortable with gay characters that he felt no hesitation in portraying some of them as selfish, brutal and grasping — as evil, indeed, as heterosexuals in other movies. Here is a movie about characters who define themselves by their sexuality, but the movie doesn’t. It takes the sexuality as a given and defines them by their values and morals. And in the sad, slow descent of Fox, Fassbinder indicts their materialism and narcissism. It was a neat trick, how often he was about to begin with the materials of soap opera and expand them into an indictment of society.” Even by Fassbinder’s standards, Fox’s ending is relentlessly bleak. (It’s a bad sign when one of Fassbinder’s characters listens to Leonard Cohen records. Here, it’s “Bird on a Wire”. In Fear of Fear – also from ’75 – the tormented anti-heroine selects “Lover, Lover, Lover” and “Why Don’t You Try?”). All the performances are wrenching (especially Fassbinder himself - still young and cute here before the drugs and alcoholism prematurely ravaged him - who steps in front of the camera to portray the doomed titular character). But I especially love Christiane Maybach (1932-2006) (pictured) as Fox’s hot mess alcoholic sister Hedwig who always seems to be wearing an Anna Magnani-style black slip.

[bitter69uk]

“Seeing a Fassbinder retrospective is better than drugs, liquor and sex put together”. John Waters

Born on this day 80 years ago: inspired, despairing and uncompromising director, playwright, actor and turbulent New German cinema visionary, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982) – a true titan of European art cinema. Expressions like “wunderkind,” “monstre sacré” and “enfant terrible” are all applicable here. All these decades later, his best films (off the top of my head, my favourites include Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Martha (1974), Fear of Fear (1975), Fox and His Friends (1975), In a Year of 13 Moons (1978), Veronika Voss (1982) and Querelle (1982)) remain wrenching and still sting like a slap across the face. Fassbinder also elicited career-best performances from the crème de la crème of German actresses like Brigitte Mira, Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann, Ingrid Caven, Hanna Schygulla, Barbara Valentin, Rosel Zech, Barbara Sukowa and Christiane Maybach. “Fassbinder had the reputation of being quite difficult to deal with in real life, but anyone who made as many films as his years on earth (especially if they’re all good) deserves the privilege of being a true monster,” John Waters concludes in his 1987 book Crackpot. “If Fassbinder ever got any sleep, maybe his genius would have evaporated.” Pictured: portrait of Fassbinder – black leather jacketed, smoldering cigarette on the go - by Peter Gauhe, 1970.

[bitter69uk]

On this day in European art cinema history (18 February 1982): Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s despairing black-and-white masterpiece (or should I say “meisterwerk” in this context) Veronika Voss (aka Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss or The Longing of Veronika Voss) was released in German cinemas. The film is pretty much saturated in premonitions of death: it was Fassbinder’s second last movie, and the last one released during his lifetime. (His final film was his adaptation of Jean Genet's Querelle – released posthumously - which I also love. The New German cinema auteur died on 10 June 1982 aged 37). Veronika covers the bleak circling-the-drain final days of the titular drug-addicted and doomed Nazi-era film star. It feels loosely inspired by Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) (Veronika’s demented melancholy evokes both Norma Desmond and Blanche DuBois) and is based on the true story of German actress Sybille Schmitz (1909 – 1955). The late Rosel Zech (1940 - 2011) is astonishing in the tragic lead role, especially in the musical sequence where she evokes Marlene Dietrich, throatily warbling the Dean Martin standard "Memories Are Made of This." In conclusion: If you must take a fatal overdose of pills, you might as well do it in a beautifully stark and minimalist all-white Art Deco room. And as John Waters puts it, “Seeing a Fassbinder retrospective is better than drugs, liquor and sex put together”.

[bitter69uk]

“Seeing a Fassbinder retrospective is better than drugs, liquor and sex put together”. John Waters

Born on this day: inspired, despairing and uncompromising director, playwright, actor and turbulent New German cinema visionary, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982) – a true titan of European art cinema. Expressions like “wunderkind,” “monstre sacré” and “enfant terrible” are all applicable here. All these decades later, his best films (off the top of my head, my favourites include Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Martha (1974), Fear of Fear (1975), Fox and His Friends (1975), In a Year of 13 Moons (1978), Veronika Voss (1982) and Querelle (1982)) still sting like a slap across the face. Fassbinder also elicited career-best performances from the crème de la crème of German actresses like Brigitte Mira, Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann, Ingrid Caven, Hanna Schygulla, Barbara Valentin, Rosel Zech, Barbara Sukowa and Christiane Maybach. “Fassbinder had the reputation of being quite difficult to deal with in real life, but anyone who made as many films as his years on earth (especially if they’re all good) deserves the privilege of being a true monster,” John Waters concludes in his 1987 book Crackpot. “If Fassbinder ever got any sleep, maybe his genius would have evaporated.” Pictured: very cute young Fassbinder (before the drugs and alcoholism prematurely ravaged him) in the titular role in Fox and His Friends.

[ba7ab-haifawehbe]

"But When we're together,we must be nice to each other.Otherwise life's not worth living."

Ali : Fear Eats The Soul (1974) | dir. RW Fassbinder

Production company :

Tango-Film