Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- sevenarts
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- Derek Estes
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 8:00 pm
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- Der Müde Tod
- Joined: Thu Sep 21, 2006 9:50 am
Beaver. I am waiting for a release of the TV version, too.sevenarts wrote:Can anyone comment on the quality of New Yorker's Stationmaster's Wife?
- sevenarts
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- brownbunny
- Joined: Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:58 am
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i've only seen ali, and i cannot reasonably express my love of it. despite my lack of exposure to the rest of his catalogue, a local record store has a dvd set of year of 13 moons and another film (maria i think may be the title) for a nominal amount of 22 dollars. worth a blind purchase?
additionally, i raven to see more of wenders early films but am unable to come across anything in the video stores. anyone know the availability of his films on dvd (particularly kings of the road and alice?)
additionally, i raven to see more of wenders early films but am unable to come across anything in the video stores. anyone know the availability of his films on dvd (particularly kings of the road and alice?)
- sevenarts
- Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 7:22 pm
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DEFINITELY. The other film packaged with 13 Moons is Martha, and they're both among my favorites of the Fassbinders I've seen so far. They're both incredibly compelling, beautifully shot, and emotionally draining. I wasn't as blown away by Fear Eats the Soul as you were (it was my first Fassbinder as well), but 13 Moons certainly did the trick: it remains one of the most devastating, memorable films I've ever seen. The DVD quality is very good on all the Fantoma and Wellspring Fassbinders, too.brownbunny wrote:i've only seen ali, and i cannot reasonably express my love of it. despite my lack of exposure to the rest of his catalogue, a local record store has a dvd set of year of 13 moons and another film (maria i think may be the title) for a nominal amount of 22 dollars. worth a blind purchase?
- brownbunny
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- brownbunny
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- Michael
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 12:09 pm
For people who are discovering Fassbinder and wanting to learn more about this amazing director and his films, this is the best thread to explore starting with the first page. Lots of info here and also the The BRD Trilogy and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul threads.
- sevenarts
- Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 7:22 pm
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Just watched The Third Generation tonight, what a marvelous film. The Godard influence is incredibly pronounced, most notably in the soundtrack -- it's an incredibly dense collage of voices and noise to rival even JLG's most cluttered soundtracks. And the media plays a big role in this aural insanity. There's almost always a TV or radio on in the background, sometimes two, accompanied by music, voices reading from books, conversations, animal noises, anything else that can be thrown in to add to the cluttered, tense atmosphere. Fassbinder has perfectly captured a paranoid, cynical world where business executives plot terrorist threats in order to pump up business, and inept revolutionaries are only too glad to be manipulated in order to get some excitement.
As with all Fassbinder, this film is incredibly unsettling, mixing real brutality and ugliness with silliness and high camp. The terrorists are presented as entirely middle class, basically aspiring to the same lifestyle and desires that they were supposedly fighting against. It's also seemingly a fairly radical feminist statement, a critique of the ways in which leftist paradigms too easily fall back into the exact same man/woman dynamics that exist in the larger society.
And the visuals! Those sweeping camera movements that wind around the cell's cramped apartments, the campy posturing and costumes of Volker Spengler, the carnival ending... Just an amazingly beautiful film to look at, it really swept me up for its bizarre, hilarious, uneasy ride.
As with all Fassbinder, this film is incredibly unsettling, mixing real brutality and ugliness with silliness and high camp. The terrorists are presented as entirely middle class, basically aspiring to the same lifestyle and desires that they were supposedly fighting against. It's also seemingly a fairly radical feminist statement, a critique of the ways in which leftist paradigms too easily fall back into the exact same man/woman dynamics that exist in the larger society.
And the visuals! Those sweeping camera movements that wind around the cell's cramped apartments, the campy posturing and costumes of Volker Spengler, the carnival ending... Just an amazingly beautiful film to look at, it really swept me up for its bizarre, hilarious, uneasy ride.
- sevenarts
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I've read the Laurence Kardish book (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, The Anarchy of the Imagination, and the Thomas Elsaesser book, Fassbinder's Germany: History, Identity, Subject, and of the three, the Elsaesser book is by far my favorite. It's comprehensive, it has annotations on all his films contained within larger chapters of historical and personal context during the making of the films, so it functions as both film analysis and historical biography.
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- GringoTex
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 5:57 am
I finally caught up with Katzelmacher. I always put it off because the idea of a "stage-bound" early Fassbinder film based on a play about idle youth didn't sound like a good prospect to me. I was wrong.
I never thought I could be excited gain by static shots of lost souls sitting around staring into space. If Fassbinder hadn't taken up cinema, he could have been the greatest album cover photographer ever.
And the sound of the bisexual gigolo ripping down his zipper before fucking his girlfriend from behind in the second scene strikes me as Fassbinder's cinematic clarion call.
I never thought I could be excited gain by static shots of lost souls sitting around staring into space. If Fassbinder hadn't taken up cinema, he could have been the greatest album cover photographer ever.
And the sound of the bisexual gigolo ripping down his zipper before fucking his girlfriend from behind in the second scene strikes me as Fassbinder's cinematic clarion call.
- Matt
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm
I'm not sure what's going on, but all of the Wellspring Fassbinder DVDs have just become very scarce. Many online retailers list the titles as "out of stock," while some go so far as to say certain titles have been discontinued.
This site, which is usually pretty reliable, does not indicate any of them as out of print, so the discs may just be between printings. However, since the Weinsteins now own what used to be Wellspring, any nutty theory is plausible.
This site, which is usually pretty reliable, does not indicate any of them as out of print, so the discs may just be between printings. However, since the Weinsteins now own what used to be Wellspring, any nutty theory is plausible.
- Baron_Blood
- Joined: Sun Apr 15, 2007 1:12 am
- Location: Existential Hell
sevenarts wrote:Just watched The Third Generation tonight, what a marvelous film.
I just saw this the other day myself. I think it's already moved into my top three favorite Fassbinder's, maybe second only to In a Year with 13 Moons. However, it was the first Fassbinder I've seen in a long time. I've been thinking about revisiting some of my favorites. Especially Querelle, which was my first Fassbinder.
- charulata
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 12:19 pm
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(Very) interesting article from Times Literary Supplement on Fassbinder's relatively neglected poetry, plays and theatre work:
[quote]The new edition of Fassbinder's dramatic works has been given the more provisional title Theaterstücke (“Theatre Playsâ€
[quote]The new edition of Fassbinder's dramatic works has been given the more provisional title Theaterstücke (“Theatre Playsâ€
- blindside8zao
- Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2005 4:31 pm
- Location: Greensboro, NC
- jesus the mexican boi
- Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2004 5:09 am
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I just watched QUERELLE for the first time since, oh, 1990 or so, and it's killing me... Who is the voice-over narrator? It sounds like the guy who did the trailers for The Exorcist or The Ninth Configuration or something. The voice is in my head and it's driving me batty.
More thoughts on QUERELLE later, but will someone please answer this for me?
More thoughts on QUERELLE later, but will someone please answer this for me?
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- blindside8zao
- Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2005 4:31 pm
- Location: Greensboro, NC
I'm about to supplement my Nietzsche study with some Schopenhauer and was wondering if anyone had any comments on Fassbinder's use of Schopenhauer in In A Year with 13 Moons and whatever other movies. I don't know anything about Doblin but I coincidentally bought Berlin with World as Will and Rep. and the back cover says Doblin was very influenced by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche so I'm assuming RWF might emphasize whatever overtones the book has. Any comments? Also, does anyone know of any studies that have been done on this side of Fassbinder's work?