early fassbinder is more of an extension of his anti-theatre work ,despite his cinephile background the first 10 films he made were visually threadbare if your a novice start with the sirk inflected merchant of four seasons[the early fassbinder was more influenced by straub then sirk]
you know what,i forgot about’’ the american soldier’’ the appropriation of noir motifs ,extended to whorholian levels ,was really quite radical.very beautiful too.
is anyone else not interested in sharing their opinion or knowledge with master rudy
Interesting. I’ve seen many of his later films but the earliest film I’ve seen by him is The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972). What’s the best of his early stuff?
kakzelmacher[literally cat screwer]is a caustic study of bigotry and boredom among young germans,its stripped down aesthetic and stylized acting creates a distance between you and its alienated protagonists. that distance is instructive.
I have seen Whity and Marriage of Maria Braun.
@ LIAMALLEN? is anyone else not interested in sharing their opinion or knowledge with master rudy? whats that about?
Well Lou Castel was the star of “Quien Sabe?” and Fassbinder fell madly in love with him. So much so that he cast Castel as himself in his film a clef “Beware of a Holy Whore”
ahhhhh! I gotta say Lou Castel is one cool motherfucker. Fist in Pocket, is such a powerful film and his performance is phenominal. Thanks dave you always chim in, with these great kernals of knowledge.
oh and Quien Sabe is my favorite spagehtti western. I wanna read more about Franco Solians. I love every script he has written. Burn! is one of my favorite Brando movies
i love fassbinder so much, because he makes the most fucked up guilty pleasure movies that everyone wants to see but would never have the balls to make. at least that’s my opinion. i’ve only seen 4 of his films
I totally agree. He is aces.
Fassbinders films make me feel smarter than I actually am. Plus they have sex, cruelty and good dialogue.
LOVE LOVE LOVE
Love him so much.. :)
I had a look at the list of his flms on this site. There are still a few that are unavailable or scarce. I am tryng to get a copy of The American Soldier at a decent price. I think there is a Fassbinder Foundation. Are they planning to eventually make everything available? Does anyone know?
yea i have a copy of american solider you can get it through arrow films they have two box sets i have the first one which is like the early years, now these dont have all his films but a good chunk of em.
to add to my comment earlier, Whity is one of the most fucked up movies i’ve ever seen, and it’s awesome! the black people wear blackface and the white people wear whiteface!! who the fuck would dare film such outrageousness???
Just checked out those Fassbinder 8-9 movie sets on Amazon UK. They are ridiculously cheap.
Their films are about love and the search of love, In a Year with 13 Moons, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Ali Fear Eats Soul, but they always end with despair, anxiety and depression, The people who needs a lot of love end that way, it is a cinema of loneliness and outcasts, the transexual, the ex-prisoner, the foreign, the poor, the anarchist, the drug addict, the actress and Fassbinder.
Fassbinder was always an outcast, he felt that he was not part of his society. He even did daring, political statements about the supposed progressive aspects of the german society, for him it was a another form of fascism, the ending of Berlin Alexanderplatz points a lot to that, the people who search love but the sick society rejects and condemn them for being too weak. But the things are more complicated than that, this people are not always dreamers, they are somewhat as rubbish as everyone else, but you sympathize to them.
Whity is a fucked up movie and I cant even begin to start to devle into the characters problems and complexities.
“Beware of a Holy Whore” is based on the shooting of “Whity.” others involved withe the shooting of that film claim “Holy Whore” to be dishonest as the main problem was it was made at the height of Fassbinder’s affair with Gunther Kaufman and he was so crazy in love with him that it wrecked havoc on what would have been a far simpler film to make than it was.
David you always drop knowledge
Hey dave, Do you know anything about Fassbinder’s projects he was gonna do with Franco Nero. Nero mentions two in a introduction he did for Querelle, one being Cocaine. I know he was gonna do a movie about a dectecive agency in a disco with Gunter Kaufman.
Here is the link to Nero talking about Fassbinder’s Cocaine and other future projects that never happened
The Scorsese Fassbinder connection:
1. In Love is Colder than Death there is a character that wears and (bears a slight striking resemblance to Travis Bickle)in Love is colder than death the character is a black guy that rocks the same gun holster and even has some rather similar chest hair to bickle, I cant find a picture of this so I will take one with my shity camera phone, and let the minds here weigh in.
2. In The Departed, Nicholson rocks a very similar leopard print jacket that Fassbinder wore in the movie Kamikaze 89
3. The cinematography in Veronica Ross, really reminds me of Scorsese’s Casino
maybe ive gone off the deep end?
In the segment of New York Stories directed by Scorsese entitled “Life Lessons” I feel the whole movie is like a tipping of the hat to Fassbinder, in theme,characters and camera movements.
Also does anyone know anything about the following Fassbinder movie projects that never happened.
I am the Happiness of the World ( this was supposed to be the detective agency story with Gunter Kaufman set in the disco) Was the script written?
Rosa L ( Jane Fonda was supposed to be in this) Robert Katz mentions this in his biography of the man
Cocaine ( Franco Nero mentions this in the introduction above)
his remake of Joan Crawford’s Possessed (Robert Katz mentions this)
also where can one get his plays IN ENGLISH?
I also would like to get my hands on his plays in English.
Rudy
I just got a boxset of his movies, 9 of em. The early years. Love is colder than Death to Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant.
Now one of my all time favorite Spaghetti westerns is Quien Sabe also known as A Bullet for the General and on the back of the DVD for Love is Colder Than Death it says Fassbinder dedicated the movies to two of the characters in that film. What a coincidence! I cant wait to watch the movies,