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FASSBINDER, RAINER WERNER.
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Life, career, major films, style, themes, influences, critical views of German filmmaker.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Life, career, major films, style, themes, influences, critical views of German filmmaker.
Paper Introduction:
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the most prominent and most prolific of the filmmakers of the New German Cinema, a revival of the once-vital German film industry after the first version had been destroyed by World War II. His films addressed social issues in a way that helped open the cinema to new examinations of homosexuality, feminism, and similar concerns. From his earliest works, Fassbinder's writing and directing were intensely personal statements, and a sense of desperate loneliness, clearly derived from his childhood, infuses much of his work.
Films were made in Germany after World War II, but they were films associated with American companies or British companies and were primarily programmers, imitations of American melodramas, horror pictures, or British mysteries. A serious German cinema
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The play looks forward to the film Fear Eats the Soul, in which a similar hostility is aroused by the liaison between the elderly charwoman and the African immigrant worker (Hayman 1 5). Peter Iden et al. New York: Ungar, 1984. 24-36.Hayman, Ronald. The most important theme for Fassbinder is the relationship betweenthe individual and the group, and, because of this, he nearly always seespersonal relationships in a social perspective (Hayman 99). In his masterpiece, EffiBriest (1974), he forces the viewer to distance himself or herself from thematerial through the use of narration and stylization, including the use ofexplanatory subtitles, to create a disjunction between the realisticportrayal on the screen and the theatricality of the viewing andinterpretive experience (Kuhn 1 1). He was also a playwright, televisionwriter, and radio writer. The viewer is made to feel an estrangement similar to that affectingthe characters in many Fassbinder films. Prototypically modern creatures, they lack ameans of self-expression" (Kuhn 8 ). Fassbinder was a prolific filmmaker, producing as many as six filmsin one year; however, his influence comes not from the number of films hemade but from their quality and from the independence he showed as afilmmaker. Trans. The New GermanCinema was now a reality, and Fassbinder would become one of its mostprolific and prominent representatives. Ed. His parentsdivorced in 1951, and the boy stayed with his mother. Works CitedElsaesser, Thomas. The outward simplicity of Fear Eats the Soul (1973) emphasizes thenaturalness of the relationship between the black immigrant and the elderlyEmmi and thus highlights the prejudice in the reaction of others to thisunion. In the film Martha (1973), marriage is seen as an escape fromloneliness, although in fact it makes loneliness all the more powerful(Hayman 1 8). Klaus Phillips. The stylistic elements employed by Fassbinder are varied and oftenexperimental. In this story as well, though, Fassbinder finds an importantsocial theme: "To me the everyday oppression people experience iscriminal" (Töteberg and Lensing 3). Kuhn also notes that fundamental to an understanding of all ofFassbinder's work is his conception of his characters as the victims of animpersonal, alienated society. The Anarchy of the Imagination. Fassbinder's theatrical style hasa jarring effect on viewers used to conventional cinematic solutions.Throughout his career, Fassbinder tended to estrange the viewer by creatinga disjunction between expectation and delivery. The film in this way addresses both the artificiality of racialprejudice and the neglected needs and rights of old people. The German director Douglas Sirk, who had a long Hollywoodcareer, was one such influence, and his film Imitation of Life (1959) was aparticular favorite of Fassbinder's. In 1969,Fassbinder's work found a place in "establishment" theater at the BremerTheater. He performed as an actor and wrote the scripts for nearly all hisfilms as well as directing them. "Rainer Werner Fassbinder: The Alienated Vision." New German Filmmakers: From Oberhausen Through the 197 s. 76-123.Sandford, John. Fassbinder. His firstoriginal play was Katzelmacher, which he would later make into his secondfeature film. He helped revive the German cinema after decades of neglect andinspired a subsequent generation to continue to explore important socialthemes while experimenting with form and content alike. She left him largelyto his own devices, sending him off to the movies whenever possible:"Fassbinder's childhood clearly left its mark on him and his films: thecold, lonely lives of his characters and their desperate longing for loveand affection are a reflection of his own early experience"(Sandford 64). And yet eachtries desperately to make their thoughts and their desires their own"(Wiegand 35). The New German Cinema. Whencharacters do come together, it is often because they are united in theirloneliness (Hayman 1 2). His films addressed social issues in a way that helped openthe cinema to new examinations of homosexuality, feminism, and similarconcerns. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.Kuhn, Anna K. Not in the whole film. Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the most prominent and mostprolific of the filmmakers of the New German Cinema, a revival of the once-vital German film industry after the first version had been destroyed byWorld War II. Fassbinder has noted that thecharacters live in prisons, separated from real life, and that in all theirlives "nothing is natural. These characters often blindly and evenviolently lash out to defend themselves as best they can against forcesbeyond their control. Hisfather was a doctor and his mother a translator. In 1965, a body was set up to help subsidize new films by youngdirectors, and a breakthrough occurred in 1966, when a film produced byAlexander Kluge received eight awards at the Venice Biennale and severalother films by young filmmakers achieved prominence as well. The Bremer Theater also showed Fassbinder's first two films, LoveIs Colder Than Death and Katzelmacher (Sandford 63-65). "A Cinema of Vicious Circles." Fassbinder. New York: Tanam, 1981. Run Amok?, 197 ). Ruth McCormick. Hebegan attending a private drama school, and in 1967 he joined one of thefringe theater groups in Munich, the action-theater, where he first actedin, then directed, then wrote adaptations of various plays. From his earliest works, Fassbinder's writing and directing wereintensely personal statements, and a sense of desperate loneliness, clearlyderived from his childhood, infuses much of his work. New York: Da Capo, 198 .Töteberg, Michael, and Leo A. Kuhn cites the scene in which amotorcycle policeman is killed, and, as he clutches his stomach and doublesover, he exclaims in English, "Oh, boy": "Fassbinder's sense of ironycomes to the fore in this sequence, in which he cites the genre he isemulating only to estrange the viewers by frustrating their expectations.This manipulation of viewer expectations plays an increasingly greater rolein his later gangster movies" (Kuhn 8 ). A serious German cinema simply did not exist in any degree thatcould capture the attention of the world market. By the mid-197 s, he had made nearly 3 features in a varietyof genres: gangster films, political satire, screwball comedy, adaptationsof classical literature, science fiction, a Western, and a number ofdomestic melodramas. The filmevokes memories of Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows: "The melodramaof Sirk's films has become an important point of reference for Fassbinderin his attempts to make German films in the Hollywood manner" (Sandford 84-85). The police closed the theater on an excuse, first claiming faultyelectrical cables and then claiming that the theater had become "politicalcabaret," contrary to its license. Ed. Ed. Fassbinder is closely identified with the New GermanCinema, and his 1973 film Fear Eats the Soul brought the New German Cinemato the attention of a wider public outside West Germany (Sandford 63-64). Fassbinder actually made two short films some time before joining theaction-theater troupe: "The City Tramp" and "The Little Chaos." Clearly,the post-Brechtian theater was an influence on the developing writer andfilmmaker, and its anarchy and anti-establishment bent would color hiswork. His first film already has evidence of a stylistic gesturetowards the aesthetic demands of commercial filmmaking in the approachtaken toward the material: Like Godard, Melville and others, Fassbinder started out by imitating American movies, in particular gangster films . Never. Oppositionfrom the established film community, however, brought about legislationthat scotched the new movement, or at least set it back, until theFilm/Television Agreement of 1974, which provided for grants for therealization of promising filmscripts (Sandford 13-16). Fassbinder recycles his themes again and again,isolating the individual in contrast to group behavior. . The first of these is noted by Fassbinder himself when he saysthat his 197 film Beware of a Holy Whore marks a turning point in hisfilmmaking and a departure from the direct use of autobiographicalmaterial. Films were made in Germany after World War II, but they were filmsassociated with American companies or British companies and were primarilyprogrammers, imitations of American melodramas, horror pictures, or Britishmysteries. He was born in 1946 at a small spa in southwestern Bavaria. The styleand content match: "Life for Petra is theater; the artificiality of herlife is underscored by a theatrical rather than a cinematic mise-en-scène"(Kuhn 95). As with Godard ten years earlier, imitations is scarcely the right word. In the end, the victims become themselves theoppressors: "Fassbinder's characters all seek human contact and warmth butare unable to break out of their innate loneliness and isolation to achievea real communion with others. The fragmentation ofimagery and the experimental use of color are seen as well in Veronika Voss(1982), Fassbinder's third film in his later period about Germany in the195 s as beset by a form of post-war despair. In his first play,Katzelmacher, in 1968, he is concerned with group behavior as it tendstoward fascism: Miscellaneous aggressions, frustrations, resentments, dissatisfactions are channeled into an unreasoning jealousy of a man who looks different and speaks a different language . Assorted influences can be found on Fassbinder's work at differentperiods. Hans Epp in The Merchant of the FourSeasons (1971) is more and more lonely, even in the bosom of his family,and uses drink to do away with himself (as later Fassbinder characters willuse drugs). Certainly, Fassbinder's style was not fully formed with his firstfeature, Love Is Colder Than Death, but many elements in this film wouldmark the body of his work and identify themes he made uniquely his own.The film has a gangster setting, which would infuse the films ofFassbinder's early period, and, although the film is darkly pessimistic, itis also marked by flashes of comic relief. Fassbinder was educated at a Rudolf Steiner school and then atsecondary schools in Augsburg and Munich before leaving school in 1964,after which he took on a number of different jobs, including office work,decorating, and a post in the archives of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Fassbinder consciously imitated the American crime genre in this filmand stated that he chose a crime plot because such a story is easy to tell: "I felt I needed a simple plot for what I wanted to say" (Töteberg andLensing 3). The Hollywood film was a major influence on Fassbinder, although hereshaped it to his own purposes even as he sought to recreate it on aGerman basis. Lensing, eds. "The Doll in the Doll: Observations on Fassbinder's Films." Fassbinder. 25-56.----------------------- 11 In the 196 s, youngfilmmakers felt the need for a change and issued the Oberhausen Manifesto,generally regarded as the beginning of the New German Cinema, though of the26 signatories only one, Alexander Kluge, would later achieve worldprominence. His theatrical roots come to the fore in set-piece filmslike The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, all of which takes place in oneroom as if on a theater set. The Merchant of the Four Seasons represents a shift in direction anda maturing of style for Fassbinder: "The parody, the exaggeration, thestylization with which Fassbinder had previously tackled potentialtriviality are here replaced with the revelation of human reality behindthe routines of melodrama, the truth behind the clichés" (Sandford 75-76).This film was one of the major critical successes of Fassbinder's career. In The Bitter Tears of Petravon Kant, for instance, loneliness first drives Petra into her liaison withKarin, and loneliness then makes the failure of that relationshipunbearable: "The anger she discharges on the crockery, her daughter, hermother, her friend Sidonie and on Marlene does not distract her from theemptiness in her life" (Hayman 1 8). His childhood was filledwith literature and art, but still it was a lonely childhood. In his later films, such as Despair (1977), Fassbinder's work becomesmore complex. Kuhn notes, "Common to all, however,are the outsider 'hero,' the theme of alienation, and (with the exceptionof Herr R.) stylized, static camera work and stylized acting" (79).The final period noted by Kuhn comes with The Marriage of Maria Braun(1978) as Fassbinder achieved his dream of creating the German Hollywoodfilm (79). This is Fassbinder's most theatrical film; it was basedon his play, and the original five-act structure is retained. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992.Wiegand, Wilfried. Fassbinder is particularly concerned with loneliness and the angstthat it causes, and this is explored in terms of the isolation of thehomosexual in a number of Fassbinder's works. Tony Rayns. . London: British Film Institute, 1977. . The camera, however, moves selectively,forcing the viewer to observe in a way that would be impossible to controlon a theater stage. Fassbinder has acknowledged the importance of Sirk ininterviews: "Actually ever since I saw his films and tried to write aboutthem, Sirk's been in everything I've done" (Töteberg and Lensing 12).Fassbinder also made clear why he found Sirk so important to his work:"Fassbinder said that previously he'd believed it was necessary to keep hisdistance from Hollywood-style storytelling if he wanted to work seriously.Sirk had emancipated him from the fear of being vulgar" (Hayman 99). What intervenes in both cases is an unhappy consciousness, a mixture of love of cinema and an acute sense of a historical position very different from the Hollywood of the Forties and Fifties, and an equally problematic discrepancy between movie-buff and movie-maker (Elsaesser 27). The films after this period have a greater social relevance andbroader audience appeal, examining such themes as homosexuality (The BitterTears of Petra von Kant, 1972, The Fox and His Friends, 1974); the problemsof the immigrant worker in Germany (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, 1973), thebankruptcy of the Left (Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven, 1975), and feministissues (Effi Briest, 1974). Mirror imagery had long marked Fassbinder's style, and inDespair it reaches its height and achieves a thematic position in a filmabout reflections and distortions (Sandford 99-1 ). Kuhn finds that Fassbinder's development can be delineated in threephases. . A month later, 1 members, includingFassbinder, resurfaced as the anti-teater at the Munich Academy of FineArts, and in 1968 the group found a home in a bar in Schwabing. Sandford notes that "the action-theater was very much of itstime, anarchic, subversive, and critical, reflecting and reacting to theevents of the day" (64). Fassbinder's early films were either largelyderivative Hollywood-style gangster movies such as Love Is Colder ThanDeath (1969), Gods of the Plague (1969), and The American Soldier (197 ),or overt critiques of petit-bourgeois German society (Katzelmacher, 1969;Why Does Herr R. He produced and edited films, composed music andwrote songs.
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