Author | Martin Brady, Tony Rayns, Margaret Deriaz, Erica Carter, Elena Gorfinkel, Mattias Frey, Andrew Webber, originally published in the May 2017 issue of Sight and Hearing
Compile the | Office Aegean
On June 11, 1962, the "heart of the New German Film Movement" stopped beating—Reiner Werner Fassbinder became an ally with the devil because of his long unbridled work, overeating, heavy smoking, excessive alcoholism, chaotic bisexual life, drug abuse, sleeping pills, stimulants and other drugs, and eventually died suddenly.
The young director, who has been given titles such as "the most fruitful genius of the new German cinema", "the prodigy of German cinema", "Balzac of Germany", "the cinema giant on par with Godard and Pasolini", and "the most attractive, talented, unique and original young director of contemporary Western Europe", has gone through a short, brilliant and controversial life. In this short lifetime, he unleashed the destructive power of reality and emotion into a highly personal stylized film space, bursting out of the fleeting but incomparably dazzling flower of light and shadow in the history of German cinema.
"I don't throw bombs, I just create movies." --Reiner Werner Fassbender
Back in 1973, just four years after the release of Love Is Colder Than Death – and in those four years he made more than a dozen films – the German newspaper Die Zeitung ran six pages of an article titled "The Exhausted Genius Youth: Reiner Werner Fassbinder – From The Theatre Commune to the Art Factory".
Who would have thought that less than a decade later, Fassbinder, who had already made more than forty feature films, died suddenly at the age of 37, and to this day, he is still the miracle and genius of the new German film movement in people's minds. Time magazine described him as the "most talented and prolific" filmmaker of his generation, while The Scotsman said it was "as easy as someone else's cigarette".
Fassbinder's untimely death is not unrelated to long-term uncontrolled work, overeating, heavy smoking, excessive alcoholism, chaotic bisexual life, drug abuse, sleeping pills, stimulants and other drugs
Words of praise, reverence and controversy have accompanied Fassbinder from beginning to end, and not only because his filmography is phenomenal in both quantity and quality. His early play Preparadise Sorry Now, staged at the London Institute of Contemporary Art in February 1972, brutally juxtaposes the dialogue and sexual violence between Ian Brady, the "Swamp Killer" (the notorious teen murderer of the 1960s Britain), and his accomplice and girlfriend Mira Sindley, and what Fassbinder called "cult ritual cannibalism."
Thomas Pendry, MP of the Workers' Party of England, launched a petition to boycott the play. Gerald Kaufman and his colleagues passed the petition and ensured that the play would not be staged as planned in cities such as Manchester and Salford in the future. Fassbinder's shocking and candid nudity in the short film collection German Autumn (1978), co-authored by several directors, responds directly to the balder-Mainhof organization in the late 1960s and early 1970s (the Red Army Detachment, a German anarchist organization led by Andreas Bader and Ulrike Meinhof, claiming to have tried to create a more humane social system in Germany in the name of "national moral corruption", but its essence was to counter violence with violence. ) terrorist activities.
In the film, Fassbinder abuses his partner, Amin Mayer, one of his many lovers, and smokes cocaine— an outraging accusation against him that he is judged to be an exhibitionist. It has long been argued that his transgender film Thirteen Moons (1978) has an anti-Semitic tendency in its portrayal of Jewish housing agents living and working in Frankfurt, and his extravagant melodrama Lily Marlene (whose war scenes are from Sam Bergeron' war scenes) set in the Third Reich. Peckinpa's films were borrowed) and was charged with "Nazi Quirky."
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about his short and soaring career is that, in addition to the breadth of his work and the exuberance of its vitality, he has never lost the fundamentals of creativity and experimental spirit.
In 1986, he took on a role in Jean-Marie Straub and Danny Elle Huyer's short film The Groom, the Liar and the Pimp – an experience he took so seriously that he described it as a major event in his life, refusing to be politicized even after he later tried to deny the influence of Brecht's theory on him.
This cyclicality in Fassbinder's film sequences is very precisely reflected in his radical post-terrorism work The Third Generation (1979). It is a grumpy and hysterical, comical and crazy stick comedy, and obsessed with the postmodern style, often quoting the films of Fassbinder himself and others.
A year before his death, Fassbinder even made an experimental documentary, The Theater of Surprise, which documented Fassbinder reading a review by Antonan Aalto at the 1981 International Theatre Festival in Cologne. This may be Fassbinder's only optimistic film.
Later in his career, Fassbinder was met with accusations of nihilism, oblivionism, left-wing pessimism, and perhaps only his close associate, Peter Mathersmill, the producer of his miniseries, was able to properly and accurately evaluate Fassbinder's complex political ambitions, which he summed up as "a radical and pure, biblically simple utopian world, a future society free of exploitation and oppression, without any fear—the fear of others, and, in particular, of each individual's fear of himself—" of the world".
Fassbinder has been given titles such as "the most fruitful genius of the new German cinema", "the prodigy of German cinema", "Balzac of Germany", "the cinema giant on par with Godard and Pasolini", and "the most attractive, talented, unique and original young director in contemporary Western Europe".
Apparently, fear haunts the characters in Fassbinder's films, and even two of his best films are known for fear: Fear Eats Soul (1974) and Fear in Fear (1975). The latter is led by Margit Carstensen, one of Fassbinder's few royal actresses – the other two being Hannah Hühgula and Irm Heilmann – who successfully pioneered a new career after the Fassbinder era, starring in the 1990s as Germany's only well-deserved Fassbinder heir, Christopher Schlingersef's films German Chainsaw Frenzy (1990) and Horror 2000 – German Intensive Care (1994).
Fassbinder's influence on later generations was worldwide – for example, Todd Heins' Far from Heaven (2002) and François Oujon's Dry Wood Fire (1999, adapted from Fassbinder's early dramatic works). In recent years, a rather striking phenomenon has been the reappearance of Fassbinder's works on the stage in Germany, and a large number of Fassbinder films have been adapted into stage plays on the theme of changeable and taboo sexual relations and the recent "crisis" of immigration.
2015 Why Did Mr. R Kill? The bizarre adaptation of the film was staged at the Munich Chamber Theatre directed by Suzanne Kennedy; cult stage director Thomas Ostermeier also brought Maria Braun's Marriage to the Berlin Schobiner Theater (premiered in 2007 and reenacted in 2014); the theatrical version of Fear Devouring Souls by Turkish-German director Hakan Savvas Mikan was also staged at the Gorky Theater in Berlin in 2014; and Katzemahr this year at the Deutsches Theater. Directed by Jessica Gross.
These works have transformed into the exciting and somewhat surprising "reincarnation" of Fassbinder's works, and Fassbinder himself will surely applaud them.
Fear haunts the characters in Fassbinder's films, and even his best films are known for fear.
Given Reiner Werner Fassbinder's emotional and psychological dependence on working with partners, he can hardly be considered an "outsider" as defined by Colin Wilson (a behaviorist and psychologist). But there is no doubt that Fassbinder spent most of his life fascinated by the "other" so much that he pursued two non-Caucasian (i.e., non-white) men with wives and children, and a strong masculinity, and it is clear that he was intoxicated by his unique way of life and enjoyed the qualities that distinguished himself from his other kind.
The image of the outsider in Fassbinder's films is a stark pointer for society to create such an oppressive circle. The spearhead of repression is likely to be directed at outsiders, but the point is that this person, male or female, will become a victim, and he may indulge in self-hatred, such as Hans Eppe in "The Merchant of Seasons" who died of alcoholism.
Theoretically, Fassbinder does have the objective conditions to be an outsider. He came from a broken middle-class family: his parents divorced when he was 6 years old; his mother sent him to boarding school while she herself had several "unfit" lovers; and finally his mother remarried to marry a stern dictator who would not let Fassbinder live in his house.
In addition, he was a homosexual and opened up his identity, and it should be noted that the society at that time was far less tolerant of homosexuality. He turned both of these situations into his own advantages, and the lack of family led him to develop a love of cinema and a deep understanding of society, and he used sex to earn a living and then came into contact with new social circles. (The unspeakable gossip that he pimped the better-looking Yudu Chilla far more than he would have made as a male prostitute himself.) ）
What makes Fassbinder really look like an outsider is his low level of formal education, and he doesn't have a college degree. In fact, no director after Kenji Mizoguchi has been able to be so self-taught or work so hard that he can at least reach the same level of education and take a place in contemporary society. Rejection by two film schools in Berlin stimulated Fassbinder's determination to one day become a filmmaker.
Fassbinder never seems to see himself as a victim, although in Beware of the Holy, the character director Jeff, based on Fassbinder, does become hysterical due to the pressure of his work.
Katzmacher, an early short play by Fassbinder and then made into a film, is a very clear story about outsiders. Jogos, a foreign worker from Greece, arrives in a suburban residential area where disputes and resentment are stirred up among eight residents, and then becomes a scapegoat and vent for the frustration and remorse of the people there.
Fassbinder himself starred in the theatrical and film versions of Jogos, implying Fassbinder's empathy for the character. Both works teach a typical Brecht lesson, pointing to the point that society tends to create such a circle of oppression.
Katzemacher is an early short play by Fassbinder, which was later made into a film, and is a very definite story about outsiders.
The spearhead of repression is likely to be directed at the outsider (or perhaps the weakest and most incompetent member of the group), but the point is that this person will be a victim of both men and women, and he/she may indulge in self-hatred (such as Hans Eppe in The Merchant of Seasons), but it is also very likely to fight back against life.
Most importantly, individuals, whether integrated into the collective or community, tend to provoke the victim as a substitute for his inability to solve his own fundamental problems. From this point of view, the implicit allegories of all sadomasochism-masochists are the source of ideas that Fassbinder returns again and again in later sequences of works.
That's why in Fassbinder's films, there is no particular defense for outsiders: no equal rights for gay people, no emotional betting on black migrant workers, no crying for anyone's rights. In its place is anger at oppression and exploitation. Fassbinder never seems to see himself as a victim, although in Beware of the Holy, fassbender's character director Jeff (Loew Castell) does hysterical that he was squeezed dry by the team's demands.
His focus on the marginalized is not to appeal for sympathy and understanding, but to rebel against the circumstances of victimization. If the protagonists in his film are ultimately defeated, they will die like Maria Braun, destroying everything in the big bang.
Fassbinder began his career as a director in Munich, not far from the turbulent 1968 of the revolution and much further away from Paris and Berlin, the epicenters of the revolution. This sense of unreal disconnection that is taking place in major political events characterizes the character and style of his early films. Perhaps the best example is American Soldier (1970), the last installment of his gangster trilogy (after Love Is Colder Than Death[1969] and Mad Men [1970]).
In the film, Fassbinder plays Franz Walsh, who lives in Munich, is bored and calls himself a gangster — a name that perfectly captures Fassbinder's ambiguous mentality at the time, combining the names of the male protagonists in Alfred Deblin's novel Alexanderplatz in Berlin (Franz Bibkov) with the surname of one of his favorite Hollywood directors (Raoul Walsh).
Fassbender and Loser Zech, the heroine of Veronica Firth's Desire.
This slightly absurd combination of European high art and American pop culture, borrowed from the French New Wave, is key to understanding early Neo-German cinema, and is also evident in the contemporary cinema of Fassbinder's Munich peer Wim Wenders. Back to The American Soldier, in a 1974 interview with Christian Brad Thomson with Fassbinder, the latter admitted: "In that time period, my interpretation of cinema was more politicized, but now I think 'cinematic dialogue' is more important." ”
The Munich Film School, which has a loose connection with the Television and Film University in Munich, is considered to have the characteristics of "sentimentalism". In Thomas Elsese's book The New German Cinema: A History, the author uses the term "sentimentalist" in contrast to "contentists" — political filmmakers in Berlin, Frankfurt, and elsewhere — who describe them as "people disappointed by the failure of protests, sociological and political courses" and "finding refuge in the film from melancholy and frustration."
Lily Marlene (1981) borrows from the life story of World War II singer Larry Anderson.
In "American Soldier", the retired Vietnam Veteran who returned to his hometown of Munich has this temperament, his life is aimless, and the content of his life is to eliminate the sworn enemies of the corrupt police forces (this film is a tribute to Owen Lerner's 1958 work "Contract Murder").
When the anti-hero gangster succinctly says, "Nothing happened in Germany"—repeating the angry English graffiti at the beginning of Straub-Huyer's work The Groom, the Liar and the Pimp (1968): "Stupid and decaying Germany, I hate it here, I wish I could have left sooner.". Fassbinder tried to capture some of the "68 mania" in Godard's films in Nicklaushausen's Journey, but it was already 1970, and the atmosphere was more nihilistic than socialism, and the atmosphere of exhaustion and anarchic resistance was weak.
Fassbinder mocks West German communism in Mother-in-Law Kuster goes to Heaven (1975).
Of course, this does not mean that Fassbinder is not a political filmmaker—in addition to queer and body politics, his "foreign worker" films Katzemacher (1969) and Fear Devouring The Soul (1974) reveal fascism and prejudice in everyday life, as well as his works that satirize Germany's post-war trauma, the Trilogy of the Federal Republic of Germany (The Marriage of Maria Braun [1979]; Lola[1981]; Veronica B. Lee' The Desire of Firth", but his films do not show a certain ideological responsibility and ambition as in straub-Huyer, Pete Nestler, Harlan Faroch or Christian Zeevel's "Workers' Films" and other directors or works.
In 1986, Fassbinder took on the role in Jean-Marie Straub and Danny Elle Huyer's short film The Bridegroom, the Liar and the Pimp – an experience he took seriously.
Fassbinder's queer politics owes much to Werner Schroeder, whose role as photographer Dyst in Beware of the Holy (1971) is deeply rooted. The political and historical conflicting entanglements presented in Fassbinder's later films—even on the issue of terrorism at the time—are always concrete, subtle, deep in the marrow, and have a sense of frivolous irony.
Perhaps the most prominent example of this feature is The Third Generation (1979), a return to the characters of the "Gangster Trilogy". The film opens with the majestic Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin — the bomb-destroyed spire has never been repaired again — as a reminder of the cruelty of war — and a reference to Prime Minister Helmut Schmidt's remarks against the "Balder-Mainhof" terrorist organization; the film ends with a hysterical and absurd parody of guerrilla warfare, presenting a Bakhkin-esque revelry.
Its (anti)politics was premeditated to provoke leftists –such as his mockery of West German communism in Mother Kuster (1975) – while his sexual perversion and nihilism sought to provoke the right. Fassbinder's strong notion of political autonomy, together with his sincerity and indignation, which often detracted from prejudice, chauvinism, and stubbornness, ensured a perpetual denotational and current-time nature in his film work, even beyond the problems faced by Germany during german reunification and beyond after his death.
Berlin Alexanderplatz is based on Alfred Deblin's novel of the same name.
Fassbinder was not only an astonishingly prolific and creative artist, he had seen so many films, read so many books and listened to so much music that it was hard to imagine how he could have done it in his short life. He started early on—he was obsessed with movies from the age of seven, and as a teenager he fell madly in love with literature, which he called "a personal journey around world literature."
His youth encounter with Alfred Deblin's novel Alexanderplatz in Berlin (which Fassbinder later adapted into a television series) provides us with what is perhaps the most extreme example of his tension with the work of art: "Reading this book helped me avoid becoming a complete, downright pathological, dishonest, and desperate person; it kept me from finally sinking." ”
Fontana's Lonely Heart, Nabokov's Despair, Jean Genet's The Battle of Brest, and other excellent works of literature that Fassbinder brought to the big screen are all very personal and passionate: "I would have chosen to shoot other writers because if I had been I would have written the same story." He said this with great humility.
Art, for Fassbinder, is never simply for the sake of art itself. One of the most valuable lessons That Fassbinder taught in Berlin's Alexanderplatz was to confront people against the reality in which they lived, and then apply that need to his films.
Paradoxically, what has enabled him to go down this path is some hollywood melodrama full of deceptive techniques and excesses, the latter of which he discovered and learned from Douglas Syke's films. These works will eventually become "life-related films". In his own Syke-influenced melodrama, the colors, compositions, and camera movements are meticulously arranged, not as gratuitous effects, but as a revelation of the social and psychological state of the characters.
Unlike the pretentious so-called friends of the "fox", Fassbinder's aesthetic taste "is neither pretentious nor elitist."
His earlier works, influenced by American B-grade films filtered by the New Wave, gave little consideration to their appeal to the general public. But the figurative borrowing of many of Fassbinder's early gangster films is not just a tribute, but also an important expression of the characters' desire for charm and freedom. They're not real gangsters, he points out — but just "people who watch a lot of gangster movies."
Like Fassbinder himself, the characters in his work find solace time and time again in art and popular culture. Music is the most common means, whether it's Leonard Cohen, Donizetti or sentimental German ballads, which are carefully selected and listened to by the characters in the film, and most of the time, the record player with the music seems out of place in the dilapidated apartment or suffocating mansion where it is located.
There are also characters who perform themselves with the help of music, fine arts, upholstery and other artistic disciplines, which is a way of showing themselves to others, and Petra von Conte in Petra von Conte's Bitter Tears (1972) may be one of the most outrageous representatives of this type.
Second, because of the simplicity of Fassbinder's films, the cultural taste is also a sign of the class in which the characters live (for example, his 1975 work "The Fox and Its Friends", which tells the story of a touring exhibition group employee and his duplicitous upper-class lover), the snob uses his high taste to ridicule and exclude those who are considered to be at the bottom of society.
Fontana's "Lonely Heart" and other excellent literary works that Fassbinder put on the big screen, each of which is a very personal passion.
Unlike the pretentious so-called friends of the "fox", "Fassbinder's aesthetic taste" is neither pretentious nor elitist. His ability to pick the greatest number of cultural references has been useful, and it is absolutely indispensable to understand and enjoy his films.
His well-known use of actors who have established their screen image (e.g., Anna Karina, Decker Bogard) evokes memories of their previous works, or he names the mischievous names of his characters in his films, borrowing the names of film directors (e.g., Lang, Fuller, Walsh, Schrondorff, Houmai) or the protagonists of novels (e.g., Franz Biberkov in Doblin's novels), which are like easter eggs that the director planted for the audience in the movie, and those who understand it will smile. Viewers who don't find these careful machines won't be excluded.
Above all, Fassbinder was keenly convinced that film, like music and literature, should be interesting. As much as his beloved works are, the sheer entertainment contained in them is as distinguished by the potential to subvert and change the world.
One of the many myths that surround Fassbinder is his close relationship with women. This legend is reflected in the fact that countless charismatic actresses have mixed their seductive appeal into dissenting gender politics issues in Fassbinder's films, giving them an ambiguous temperament.
In his early films, the hysterical image of a housewife by Irim Heilmann reveals what Fassbinder believed was based on mutual exploitation. Margit Carstensen's portrayal in Marta (1974) is the prototype for a series of later victims in the melodra— from Petra in Petra von Conte's Bitter Tears (1972) to Barbra Sukova's Lola (1981) or Veronica Foss's Desire (1982) starring Rozer Zeech. Their temperament, a mixture of submissive masochism and gentle savagery, makes them both pathetic and terrifying: as Heilman once said of the characters in Fassbinder's films, they are all "devoid of humanity."
For those actresses who have profoundly interpreted these real celebrities and famous characters, the challenge is very daunting.
Fassbinder, too, in one of his most well-known interviews, spoke of his views on women, whom he believed were "repressive on the one hand, but not entirely, because they use this repression as a weapon to create terror." He added: "If I focus on female characters, I can express my ideas more freely and appropriately. ”
Note that his use of "characters"—not characters—is very apt here; for what interests Fassbinder in the women of his big-screen works is not their inner experience as a film character, but more as an aesthetic image rich in feminine beauty: a collection of form, posture, and action that together constitute a popular idol and social image that is bound by tradition and is particularly constrained.
Fassbinder chose stars from popular German film genres to evoke their femininity, perhaps most impressively, in Fear Eats Soul (1974), in which Fassbinder brought in comedy star Bridget Mira to play the heroine Amy, and the seductive blonde sexy Barbra Valentine, who laid a recognizable genre picture of the film's cross-cultural and cross-class love story, and their ultra-stylized performances also kept their distance from the audience who were grieving over the fate of the characters.
Lola (1981) pays tribute to lola Lola, played by Marlene Dietrich in the film The Blue Angel (1930).
Similarly, Fassbinder used a similar approach to the well-known image of the star. Veronica Firth's Desire (1982) is a celebrity biopic based on the loosely adapted life of Morphine-addicted German star Siby Schmitz. Lily Marlene (1981) borrows from the life story of World War II singer Larry Anderson. Lola (1981) pays tribute to lola Lola, a nightclub singer played by Marlene Dietrich in the film The Blue Angel (1930).
For those actresses who have profoundly interpreted these real celebrities and famous characters, the challenge is very daunting. As we all know, Fassbinder is a very authoritarian director, and he will strictly choreograph every action of the actors on the set.
Hannah Hühgula, who starred in several of Fassbinder's works, including the most famous The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978), once described herself as a "remotely manipulated marionette"; Ingrid Cavan (Love Is Colder Than Death, 1969; Why Mr. R Kills Like Crazy, 1970) claimed that she was just an object for Fassbinder's "use" to fill the frame of her idea.
Both Cavan and Húgula fought against Fassbinder, and after Cavan left Fassbinder, he began working in a cabaret, and Hsugula argued with Fassbinder about his approach to directing during the filming of Lonely Hearts (1974) and then became estranged from each other. Xugula later commented that at first she found her dull tone "unbearable."
But later, she found that the sound she made conveyed "a sense of vibration", a voice that had always been "bound" and "wrapped", but because of this, she clearly expressed the emotion of "hoping to escape from the bondage" in her own timbre, tone and tone.
Like all of Fassbinder's royal actresses, Hüghula's Effie does not end up "belonging to him"; her performances, along with others such as Valentine, Mira, Cavan, Sukova, Heilman, or Zehi, confront the bondage imposed on them by the characters, highlighting the tension between female desire and social conventions, and increasingly revealing the precious qualities of gender political criticism in Fassbinder's films.
Human suffering and humiliation are fundamental elements of the Fassbinder cinematic universe. The suffering of the characters in his films is mental, while the harm they suffer is visible.
At the end of Fear Eats Souls (1974), Ali, a Moroccan guest worker, experiences racial predation and emotional rifts. In Marta (1974), the masochistic Martana's contrived movements reveal her fatalistic submission to her manipulative husband, Helmut. In Thirteen Moons (1978), Ibera/Alvin, a transgender who is in unrequited love, undergoes sex reassignment surgery in pursuit of the rich Anton Setz.
Throughout Fassbinder's work, it depicts the brutality of what is cruel and cold, and the sudden despair that arises from the unequal emotional relationship based on the domination-exploitation model, all of which is presented in the body of the characters.
The relationship between the abuser and their prey is shown even in his earlier films. Katzemacher (1969) reveals the social abuse of "Greeks from Greece" Jogos. For a handful of debauched German petty-bourgeois youth, the strange immigrants became the targets of their fantasies, the social surfaces they opposed and violated. They fabricated notorious guilt on his head because he was a foreigner and beat him on that ground.
There is no doubt that, based on his own unhappy childhood and his erratic orientation towards male and female, the hypocritical and blunt opposition between the so-called righteous puriter and the morally corrupt aggressor would become more complicated here in Fassbinder. On the contrary, he would drag down all these roles that were inevitably exploited in the post-war capitalist economy.
In his most provocative works, Fassbinder enjoys the sense of the victim's search for conquest in a Byzantine way, and the perpetrator's desire to dominate, eventually becoming his prey and falling into his own love debt.
In Petra von Conte's Bitter Tears (1972), Petra's fascination with the young Karin is echoed by The cynical latter realizing that Petra would be helpful in her life; when Petra leaves Petra after a steady career rise, Petra attempts to develop an intimate relationship with Marlene, the silent servant she often denigrates and insults. Marlene rejected her and packed her bags for her. Marlene had nothing more to give than to serve Petra as part of the contract, or rather, what she preferred was Petra's idea of abusing her and her harsh control architecture.
Avoiding the simple binary opposition that distinguishes the oppressor from the oppressed at the level of moral code, Fassbinder's films reveal the ultimate devastating plot of insurmountable subordination, impossibility of emotional connection, and corroded emotional betting. His Syrkian", "Chain of Victims" film, found a richer way of portraying the suffering of minorities and marginalized people as a result of the unequal exchange of power. These embarrassing women, homosexuals, immigrants, and other outsiders speak out and put their actions into repressed historical violence, as well as into mediocre daily abuses and ugliness.
Marta (1974) is probably the pinnacle of Fassbinder's focus on the image of the victim, or his purest form of expression, a Gothic-style melodrama about the heroine Marta's acquiescence to her denial of her personal and personal freedom.
Her domineering husband, Helmut, took Marta to the playground and insisted on riding a roller coaster despite the latter's objections. Marta's expression was painful, while Helmut showed terrible pleasure and enjoyment in the face of her pain. Michael Bauhaus placed the camera at the viewpoint of Marta and Helmut, swooping and ascending as the roller coaster swooped and ascended. This process destroys the charm of love and the mental intimidation of Helmut against Marta. Marta rushed out of her chair and vomited in the corner; Helmut immediately proposed to her, but Marta thanked her.
Then, during her honeymoon, Helmut ordered Marta to bask in the sun and leave her asleep in the sun. We saw Marta lying like a corpse on the hotel bed, her whole body burned by the sun. Helmut began to ravage her sunburned flesh, where the ultimate in marriage was the rape of the flesh. Fassbinder has an infamous statement: "The women who allow themselves to be oppressed are more beautiful than the women who rise up to resist." ”
Although this is an anti-rhetorical rhetoric aimed at women criticizing patriarchal violence, it also states that humiliation and meanness can provide a radical path for characters to achieve self-subjectivity and specificity in satire. Marta is eventually enslaved permanently; she suffers a car accident and is paralyzed as a result of her escape, leaving her confined to Hellmuth's watchful eye forever in a wheelchair. Romantic imaginations of marriage and their belonging to each other are cruelly practiced in an extreme way.
In Thirteen Moons (1978), Ivila/Alvin, a transgender who is in unrequited love, undergoes sex reassignment surgery in pursuit of the rich Anton Setz.
Throughout Fassbinder's work, his focus on the use of power and its spiritual costs ultimately settles into unfathomable agnosticism. The insurmountable chasm between lovers, friends, lovers, and other one-on-one relationships—Amy and Ali, Ivilla and Setz, Petra and Marlene, Marta and Helmut, Franz and Eugen—are always on the verge of betraying each other.
Fassbinder followed in the footsteps of Antonin Aalto, searching for potential beauty in cruelty, and his films always articulated a basic idea, as the film historian Thomas Elsether once expounded, the subject's endless desire for this vicious reality and the decaying and collapsed world, resulting in countless sufferings, which are also unequal.
Anyone who wants to learn about Fassbinder's approach to collaboration should check out Joassim von Mongshausen's TV documentary "End the Conversation?" 》（1970）。 The documentary was included in Arrow Pictures' latest Blu-ray compilation of Fassbinder's works.
The film talks about Fassbinder's experience from the public theater on the outskirts of Munich to his small achievements at the Berlin film festival, and the documentary shows how Fassbinder recruited members of his theater in the process, persuaded them to accept their decisions, and gained the hope of becoming a recognized leader. Not only was Mongershausen not blamed for not being positive enough in his documentary, but Instead Fassbinder placed him in a role in his film River of Death (1970).
In addition to treating his close partners in this way, Fassbinder also gained some sort of privilege by bringing these people together. The reason he's so prolific and so passionate about his work is to bring his team together.
During the filming of Beware of the Prostitute (1971), Fassbinder also threw a cup of rum coke at the royal photographer.
Countless books and Fassbinder's own films have explained the relationship between the members of the Action Theater and the Anti-Theater Group and Fassbinder's love and killing. Irm Heilman, in particular, seems to have been in a masochistic situation even in the 37 years since Fassbinder's death in 1982, dedicating countless hours, experiences, and money to Fassbinder's plans and projects, only to be rewarded with supporting roles in a number of films, humiliation on and off the set, and eventual rejection.
The reason for all this is simple: Fassbinder's "standard way of committing crimes" is to bully others in order to make them do what they ask them to do. He made the people in his troupe discord with each other, favored each other, even insulted some people, and did not even pay the actors a meager salary, leaving the money to continue making movies.
There are many rumors about Fassbinder's misdeeds, such as the fact that he once gave him several very expensive cars in exchange for the affection of the black Bavarian actor Günter Kaufmann, who always crashed them , and when he returned to his wife and children, Fassbinder punished him by leaving him naked and whipped in "Weedy". Producers and the technology sector are also at the mercy of Fassbender, and it is inevitable that someone will be harmed in the process.
Maria Braun's Marriage was the last film Fassbinder used by cinematographer Michael Bauhaus to work with him.
Admittedly, there have been dictatorial tyrants in the history of the film industry — from Eric von Stelaucher to Joseph von Sternberg to Richard Brooks — but Fassbinder doesn't quite fit this tradition. In many ways, he's more like Andy Warhol, casually provoking them with a few careful machines to spur them on to give more and better performances. The result is that Fassbinder observes it from his own perspective, hinting from the way the whole world works: villains specialize in attacking those they perceive to be weak, while at the same time hoping to provoke a strong revolt from them.
During the filming of Beware of the Holy Prostitute (1971), when he threw a cup of rum Coke at photographer Michael Bauhaus, whatever the consequences of this evil act, Fassbinder's purpose was not to part ways with the Bauhaus. They continued to work together—more and more tacitly—until the Bauhaus went to the United States after Maria Braun's Marriage (1978); Fassbinder was in charge of several films himself until he met Chavey Schwarzenberg, who became Fassbinder's new royal cinematographer.
In the wake of the terrorist incident in West Germany, the directors collectively responded to the political climate of the time, and they co-produced the film German Autumn (1978), in which Fassbinder highlighted in his section that his seemingly inhumane treatment of collaborators fostered their sense of self. Fassbinder's episode shows his bullying of his boyfriend, Amin Mayer, and arguing at the kitchen table with his mother, who paranoidly shouts clichés such as "security." Fassbinder's approach to the people he depends on is like a performance he learned from them.
As a multicultural disruptor, Fassbinder is likely to appear on a late-night TV talk show with gibberish, talking about his latest work, or being plagued by scandals about his sexual orientation, substance abuse, and so on, as usual as he appeared in a fan magazine. Theatre, radio dramas, television shows, newspaper satires, TV movies/series and stage plays: In addition to film, Fassbinder is an omnipresent public figure who is not afraid to plunge into new things or challenge many forms of artistic expression.
Fassbinder was quick to seize the opportunities inherent in the burgeoning television industry.
As an appetiteful and non-picky eater, Fassbinder draws inspiration from numerous German traditions and mediums, from operas to soap operas. Mixing popular trends with nostalgic classics, his early gangster films such as Love Is Colder Than Death (1969) or God of The Plague (1970) depicted the lives of third-generation immigrants. Rommel is like France's Jean-Paul Belmondo, who in turn is the French version of Humphrey Belmondo. Bogart – The early French New Wave moved to the outskirts of Munich with a large immigrant population and was full of homosexuality and boredom.
The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972) has a Brecht-style performance and narrative pattern.
Perhaps the most fruitful of Fassbinder's wisdom hybrids stemmed from his lifelong commitment to theatre, where he was not only a director, screenwriter and actor, but he also led the Tower Theatre Company in Frankfurt, an experimental troupe organization of collective decision-making, which was eventually shut down.
Disputes with local authorities and accusations of anti-Semitism sparked media outrage and the cancellation of the stage play Garbage, The City and Death, and theatrical form influence permeated many Of Fassbinder's films, from the Mannerist stage styling in Katzer Mahel (1969), to the lengthy character dialogue and claustrophobic fear in Petra von Conte's Bitter Tears (1972), to The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972) and Lonely Hearts. (1974) Ribbrick's style of performance and narrative mode.
The lengthy character dialogue and claustrophobic fear in Petra von Conte's Bitter Tears (1972) show that theatrical influence permeates many of Fassbinder's films.
Particularly commendable is Fassbinder's ability to quickly seize the opportunities inherent in the burgeoning television industry. West German television stations II and III were just beginning to operate in the mid-1960s, and leftists quickly occupied important positions in them, especially the West German Radio and Television Station (WDR), which later became Fassbinder's main patron. The emergence of such historical moments is very accidental and fortunate.
With the financial support of public radio and television stations to fill their large demand for programs related to social and people's livelihoods— in a wealthy post-war federal republic, where the priority was to get rid of the haze of war and begin to rebuild and reproduce — Fassbinder received not only a steady commission (he produced about 20 TV series or tv movies in the 1970s), but also money to shoot films.
Among his television productions, he is best known for the two-episode science fiction film Between the Worlds (1973), the tense psychodrama Marta (1974), and the landmark 14-episode literary adaptation of Alexanderplatz (1980). Realizing that television could capture new audiences, Fassbinder tempered the confessionalism that permeated his films, seeking to whitewash radical political ideas more acceptable to the masses.
At that juncture of the times, utopian theories of the "opposing public sphere" prevailed; Fassbinder fulfilled his admonition through television: "I don't drop bombs, I only create movies." Fassbinder's sudden death brought to an abrupt end his ambition to pioneer what he called an "amphibious" medium: to shoot both films and multiple television series versions of the same set of materials, thus maximizing the inclusion of audiences from different fields.
No director has such a pronounced personal style as Fassbinder. Of course, the author's role as director is not only Fassbinder's own, but the result of teamwork. Thus, the Fassbinder style also belongs to the director of photography, Michael Bauhaus, who collaborated with Fassbinder on all works from Widdy (1971) to Lily Marlene (1981), and Fassbinder's cinematic perception is also heavily influenced by the overall effect of the actors in the film, who are deeply –and sometimes indelibly – associated with Fassbinder.
Here, photography intersects with personal image styling (including Fassbinder's own male prostitute style, who often wears a leather coat), as well as performance styles. The expressive logic of Fassbinder's films, in conjunction with the high-brightness makeup, costumes and sets of the characters in his films, forms a set of exclusive customizations for different actors and characters, often blurring the boundaries between reality and play, content and style.
Fassbender was part of the post-war New Wave of German cinema whose aim was to challenge unreality in film culture, but to that end he deployed his own sub-program, using references to technique and genre as a means of criticism. In essence, his analysis of the current state of society belongs to the neo-Brechtian, drawing on and extending the anti-naturalistic principle that Brecht developed in his exposure to socio-political conditions.
The same is true for Fassbinder, whose analysis focuses on what Brecht calls the concept of "manners"—banal behavior—and on the reproduction of stylized forms to promote decadent ideologies that perpetuate the functioning of the act. Like Brecht, Fassbinder divides the stylized "elements" of his work—language, body movements, step lighting, cameras, sets, and so on—and places them in a dialogue of mutual criticism with the help of montages and defamiliarization effects.
This style was applied to many of Fassbinder's films, and began to follow the stylistic emulation of multiple models. If we think of Fassbinder's films, the first impression that comes to mind is probably highly stylized color and lighting, but the changes in his work can be reflected in his three literary adaptations, all of which are considered to have formed their own unique styles, and not just carefully shaped colors and lighting.
His Lonely Hearts (1974), based on the works of Theodore Fontana, uses low-saturation black-and-white images, an arrangement based on the aesthetic idea of merging the color mediums of cinema with the monochromatic medium of literary texts. Using anti-white techniques to transition between the gaps in the film, the film's "image book" turns into a blank page or screen, as if to show a zero-degree color and lighting.
In the multi-angle adaptation of Alfred Deblin's novel of the same name, Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), although the picture is colored, color is in a low-key form, emphasized by the low-light strategy of visual space. In the first half of it, a pink cinema logo from the outside flickers incessantly, illuminating the dark interior space, as if ironically applying the color light of the big screen movie to the small screen television works in the home space. This is similar to Brecht's famous use of the cardboard moon as a man-made "romantic" light source.
In Fassbinder's last work, and his adaptation of Genet's queer classic Sailors of Fog Harbor (1982), his use of color is even more poignant.
In Fassbinder's last work, and his adaptation of Jean Genet's queer classic Sailor in The Misty Harbour (1982), his use of color is even more poignant, especially when it acts as a lighting effect, as does the artificial light film logo in Berlin's Alexanderplatz. In both films, stylized color and lighting effects are enhanced and simplified, in line with his unique approach to scene scheduling, especially his insistence on frames and mirrors.
These stylistic qualities instantly radicalize, define, or destroy the visual space of Fassbinder's films, making them unique among many genres and being referenced by other directors as well as himself. They have always maintained an overall bold uniqueness, while each consciously deriving a new style.
Film theory of film directors
Jacques Aumont
An indispensable introduction and advanced reading of film theory for film lovers and practitioners
European heavyweight film critic Jacques Aumont's masterpiece "Film Theory of Film Directors" has been revised!
An indispensable introduction and advanced reading of film theory for film lovers and practitioners.
More than thirty film masters use theory to tell you what he is shooting, how he is shooting, and why he is making movies.
This is not a theoretical anthology, nor is it a collection of director group portraits in the form of a point-and-record, but a theoretical crystallization of the first-hand ideas of film practitioners scattered everywhere.
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