411 Berlin Alexanderplatz

[sevenarts]

But for a person who was not blown away by Fear, do I still have a fighting chance with BA? Does anyone recommend I put down the money?

I think BA is an amazing achievement, but it'd be a pretty bad place to start for someone with very little Fassbinder viewing behind them, and who's ambivalent about what they have seen.

Fassbinder isn't easy for everyone to appreciate right off the bat, it can take watching a few of his films before you get more of a sense for what he's up to and what makes his work so interesting. I'd suggest picking out a few other Fassbinder films to watch instead, and exploring his career slowly to work up to BA. Some of his best, in my opinion, are Chinese Roulette, Martha, In a Year of 13 Moons, and Veronika Voss. If you don't like any of those, it's probably safe to say Fassbinder isn't for you.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Banana, try Beware of a Holy Whore. I recommend it to anyone new to Fassbinder. Maybe it's just me, but that film clicked for me for Fassbinder. I think it was the acting and the realisation of his worldview, but it's my favorite Fassbinder and I'd add it to you list. A good second choice is Veronika Voss.

[Lemmy Caution]

Banana, try Beware of a Holy Whore. I recommend it to anyone new to Fassbinder. Maybe it's just me, but that film clicked for me for Fassbinder. I think it was the acting and the realisation of his worldview, but it's my favorite Fassbinder and I'd add it to you list. A good second choice is Veronika Voss.

I don't know.
Holy Whore was the only Fassbinder so far where I felt like I was on the outside and not sure where the door was. And that's even with Eddie Constantine hanging out. Seemed to me that you needed to already be a Fassbinder fan to enjoy the insider scene.

13 Moons was my introduction, and really made me sit up and take notice. Veronika would also be my second choice.

As zedz sez there's more of this talk in the Fassbinder thread.

[Le Feu Follet]

Some of his best, in my opinion, are Chinese Roulette, Martha, In a Year of 13 Moons, and Veronika Voss. If you don't like any of those, it's probably safe to say Fassbinder isn't for you.

I would add Effi Briest.

[sevenarts]

I would add Effi Briest.

No arguments from me. It's a great film, like almost everything I've seen by Fassbinder, and it has the added benefit of being somewhat similar to BA in its approach to literary adaptation and the use of the original text -- so anyone wondering if they should spend 15 hours and $60+ on BA might be well served checking this one out first.

I love how everyone seems to have different favorites from Fassbinder -- there's virtually no concensus on his work even 25 years after his death. He made so many films, and of such consistent quality but varied aesthetics, that if you ask just 100 people for their #1 favorite Fassbinder, you'll probably hear all 40+ of his films mentioned. It makes a lot of these Fassbinder recommendations threads somewhat daunting, though, for those wondering where to start.

[Le Feu Follet]

I love how everyone seems to have different favorites from Fassbinder -- there's virtually no concensus on his work even 25 years after his death. He made so many films, and of such consistent quality but varied aesthetics, that if you ask just 100 people for their #1 favorite Fassbinder, you'll probably hear all 40+ of his films mentioned. It makes a lot of these Fassbinder recommendations threads somewhat daunting, though, for those wondering where to start.

I very much agree. I have always thought that when there is not much consensus on a director's best film it's a good indication of that director's talent; Hitchcock, Bergman, satyajit ray and Hou Hsiao Hsien spring to mind.

I wasn't suggesting that I think Effi Briest is his best film; just a film that would provide a gentle transition into Fassbinder for someone who is not familiar with his idiom. Another one I'm always tempted to show people to show them how amazing Fassbinder can be without being difficult is The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant.

[chaddoli]

I got into Fassbinder on a melodrama kick, seeing Far From Heaven in theaters, then going back to see All That Heaven Allows and finally Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. I think this film is an excellent, accessible introduction, if for no other reason than my mom watched it with me and loved it.

[domino harvey]

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was my first Fassbinder film but it underwhelmed me. It took everyone extolling praise on Fassbinder to get me to watch more of his films, so I can't say I second the Ali rec

[Le Feu Follet]

After MS have had a year or two working on Slimserver what will it be like? It is my opinion that MS software is excessively complicated, bloated and dreadful, with many features that are badly designed, or have not been properly engineered before they are released to the market. No figures are available about how much time is spent in industry and commerce keeping MS software working, and coping with frequent upgrades that few poeople want. I think if such figures were available we would be scandalysed.

For anyone who is not familiar with MS's history, which includes generating unnecessary and confusing error messages, wasting eveyone's time, just to thwart the competition, here are a couple of links.

I've been in IT since the days of DOS and I now am responsible for Netware, Linux and Windows servers, so I do have some relevant experience and some bases for comparison, and I think Microsoft=bad.

[domino harvey]

Certainly a post fitting with the WTF spirit of the Epilogue

[Robin Hamlyn]

Having watched about eight hours' worth of the series, I think I'm ready to chip in with a few thoughts.

Although ineluctably drawn to the piece, I have some major reservations, primarily concerning the narrative strategies that Fassbinder deploys. Doblin's novel shuttles nimbly between third-person narration and various modes of interior discourse, creating a volatile, mercurial relationship between Biberkopf's consciousness and the outside world. Unfortunately, rather than finding a cinematic analogue for these techniques, Fassbinder attempts to transpose them, and at times the result is astonishingly clumsy, with Franz simply giving utterance to his literary counterpart's interior monologues. This sits very awkwardly within the film's nominally realistic framework, almost bringing certain scenes to a grinding halt. (This is most apparent when Franz and Barbara Sukova are being visited by one of the crooks who may or may not be about to pull a gun on them.) In addition, Fassbinder's own voice-overs seem to occur arbitrarily and give the impression that things have been quite haphazardly tacked together.

Then there's the strange, nay inexplicable, magnetism that Herr Biberkopf seems to exert over beautiful women. Maybe that's how it was in Weimar, I don't know. Good luck to the fellow, but I certainly don't see him as an essentially benign "everyman" — he has killed a woman not in the heat of the moment or accidentally, but in two distinct phases of sickening violence.

Finally, I thoroughly objected to the animal slaughter scene. Something in me rebels at the prospect of any living thing being deliberately harmed for the purpose of a film.

For all that, these are compelling discs. The historical texture is richly detailed, and many of the performances are astonishing (if grotesque!).

Rob H.

[denti alligator]

To piggyback off of Rob, my wife found all the women characters (with a partial exception to Eva) to be completely unbelievable, undeveloped, and--as she put it--simply stupid. Why would they be drawn to Franz?

Responses?

[pemmican]

I also found melodrama a great entry point into Fassbinder: Ali, Fear of Fear, Merchant of the Four Seasons, Martha, and Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven have become favourites. Of these, Fear of Fear seems to get the least credit - a take on the "woman's picture" involving the breakdown of a somewhat hemmed-in housewife, I think anyone who liked Haynes' SAFE would find it a very interesting experience...

P.

[domino harvey]

To piggyback off of Rob, my wife found all the women characters (with a partial exception to Eva) to be completely unbelievable, undeveloped, and--as she put it--simply stupid. Why would they be drawn to Franz?

It never becomes a problem because no other character questions it-- his ease at gaining women is within the internal logic of the film

[s.j. bagley]

I finally managed to watch the entire thing over a couple days. Absolutely fantastic, and ranking up there with my favourite Fassbinder works. The only way this package could have been better, is they'd been able to include a copy of the novel as well.

[markhax]

the only way this package could have been better, is they'd been able to include a copy of the novel as well.

The novel is extraordinary, but as Ian Buruma wrote recently in The New York Review, it desperately needs a good translation, even though he concedes it is ultimately untranslatable. The reason: The Berlin dialect. One can translate the meanings easily enough, but not its special music, for which Döblin had an unparalleled ear.

[s.j. bagley]

i'm not so sure that it does need a new translation, as i think updating the language in it may remove it a little too much from the time.
unless, of course, a new translation is done that doesn't attempt to update and modernise the language.

[denti alligator]

It was only in the Epilogue that I first noticed the slower speed, namely when Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" plays.

By the way, I thought the Epilogue was one of the strongest parts of the film.

[klee13]

It took me almost a week to watch this movie, and I finally feel ready to write a few words on it.

First of all, I completely agree with Denti on the Epilogue. It ties the entire movie together in a way that nothing else could. I may not watch the entire movie back to back ever again, but I can definitely see myself watching the Epilogue again in the near future. An interesting note about the organization of the film is that I felt like I was watching a TV series until about halfway through the eleventh chapter. From then on I viewed the entire thing as a movie.

A lot of people have complained about the repetitive nature of the visual style in this film, but I think that is pretty much par for the course for a fifteen and a half hour film. If the style changed every episode, not only would it be only classifiable as a TV series, but it would be terribly inconsistent and schizophrenic. The thing that kept it from getting boring for me was that the story doesn't introduce all of it's main characters at once. Consider: Two of the story's most important characters, Reinhold and Mieze are not introduced until the end of the second and third discs, respectively. Furthermore, each character lends a distinct flavor to the story, (illustrated very well by the set's box art) so the movie stays consistently fresh. In addition to Lamprecht Günter who was obviously excellent, I thought John Gottfried was really great too. Reinhold is not a typical villain, and doesn't even play the part of one in the story until close to the end, but Gottfried's stammering speech made me uncomfortable from the very first moment he was introduced on.

For what it's worth, this is the first Fassbinder film I've ever seen, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I've had opportunities to watch other films of his in the past, but his body of work never really interested me up until now. However, I think that if you are the type of person who can sit through a fifteen and a half hour movie, it doesn't really matter whether you are the type of person who will enjoy a Fassbinder film anymore.

In response to the earlier comments about how almost every woman in the movie jumps into Franz Biberkopf's lap at the first opportunity they get, I think I might have an answer to why that is. I obviously have not seen it before, but I believe Fassbinder's The BRD Trilogy uses female characters as an allegory for the state that Germany is in. Well, I think that it is possible that he was trying to do the same thing here: In pre-Nazi era Germany, the people were ready and willing to follow anyone (i.e.: Hitler, once he came around) who had power and promised to make everything better. Franz might not have always been a very good example of the latter, but he definitely had a dominating physical presence. (Or at least until certain events halfway through the movie transpire.)

Basically, I liked Alexanderplatz a lot. The length of it almost makes you feel like you're in the environment of Weimar-era Germany, a neat trick. I definitely want to check out some more of Fassbinder's work now.

[Murasaki53]

I think BA is an amazing achievement, but it'd be a pretty bad place to start for someone with very little Fassbinder viewing behind them, and who's ambivalent about what they have seen.

Fassbinder isn't easy for everyone to appreciate right off the bat

I have to say that 5 episodes into this series I am having a very hard time trying to work out what everyone sees in it or why I should persist with the exercise. To me the dialogue is unconvincingly lumpen and banal while the characters are uniformly unappealing and seem more like cyphers for some unfathomable point of view than real people. And the whole thing seems random, aimless and unengaging.

And yet I don't want to dismiss Berlin Alexanderplatz out of hand as dry art-wank because I know from viewing directors like Tarkovsky that it can take time to acclimatise to the perspective of an auteur.

So can anyone give me any any pointers about how to view something like this as I am seriously floundering here?

[Der Müde Tod]

So can anyone give me any any pointers about how to view something like this as I am seriously floundering here?

Fassbinder's Alexanderplatz should strike a chord with someone who has felt out of place (or hasn't "fit in") at some point. The film is very much about realizing (or not realizing) that this is the case, and ways of coping (or not coping) with it. It is a film about finding oneself. I like to understand it as continuation of Dostoyewski's Crime and Punishment via Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz. The basic question is always the same: How can somebody, who has lost the connection to society, for whatever reasons, redefine himself. This, of course, is only one of many starting points. There are many others, esthetic ones or historical ones. For me, it is not Fassbinder's most important work, but I can very well understand that he wanted to make this film, and I've enjoyed it twice so far.

[domino harvey]

Mieze is why I'd recommend the film, a character who I don't think is even introduced until the 7th part (I think?)-- the viciousness of their fight near the end of the film, I can't remember what part, but it is as scary and real as a domestic fight should probably look, and the intensity of their relationship means more when we've been following Franz making episodic mistakes and poor choices for six hours prior, to see everything snowball... this is for me an epic study of human cruelty

[colinr0380]

An interesting CinemaScope article.

Television—good, bad, great(?)—is sequential in both the narrative and franchising sense. Its aim is continuation and reproduction, until it is no longer economically (or, more rarely, aesthetically) feasible; its demands on our attention are an entreaty to survive. It is a (co-)dependent relationship, and thus one pursued with the weapons of dependence: persuasion, cajolery, seduction. The monumental work, by contrast, determines its own limits, assumes authority over its own boundaries; it is self-terminating, a dead fact rather than a grasping, going concern, and it speaks to us with the authority of the dead. In its progressive reincarnations from smaller screens to large and back again, by its inability to be consumed within any one medium, the work itself is the sacred space within which it enacts itself.

[Harry White]

An interesting CinemaScope article.

Thanks. I'm half way through the film (just watched episode 6). Each episode is better than the last...

[adeeze]

Not to piss people off for the lack of my research, but can someone quickly tell me what this Jutzi version of the film is all about? Is it another director, or is it something cut from the original? Is it included on the criterion release?