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knives wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:22 am For a second I was terrified the lists were due soon. Imagine my relief I still have time to push off Eight Hours.

Eight Hours is actually perfect Thanksgiving programming, and I'm sorry you missed that chance. One thing I found interesting about it from the Arrow booklet (perhaps this is well known but it was news to me) is that Fassbinder and his team conducted extensive interviews of factory workers like those depicted in the film, and later workshopped the script with them, doing their absolute best to not only represent them authentically, but to make sure the film was saying what these workers most wanted it to say. There's still some of the expected cynicism on display but it's really more about the cumulative effect of minor, everyday efforts to achieve something, and the sense of accomplishment that builds toward the end is not merely derived from having made it through an 8-hour movie

That's very interesting, and a great reading on the film, thanks for sharing!

Early lists are welcome! If I had known before last week that I was getting the week between Xmas and New Year’s off as a paid holiday, I might have set the deadline a few days earlier. But maybe now I’ll find the time to actually participate in the project I cooked up.

Oh, huh, I had it in my head this was supposed to end next Sunday and was despairing of how I'd finish Berlin Alexanderplatz, Eight Hours..., the handful of late-period films I still need to catch, and all the revisits I wanted to get in. Now I might actually get through most of that, especially since I no longer feel the urge to watch Eight Hours... back to back after learning that it was originally presented with at at least a month between episodes.

therewillbeblus wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:12 am Struggling to decide on a no. 20 pick, I went back to see how I felt about Whity last year, and hopefully more people see this weird cocktail, imperfect as it is.

Indeed. I don't think it's successful or even all that good, but it is utterly fascinating, and not only as a chrysalis stage between the early and mature styles. It's probably my favorite "discovery" of the new-to-me films so far, and is sure to get a spot toward the bottom of my list.

I feel similarly, though (while not a "new" discovery) Satan's Brew just beat it for being a very different, but in my opinion more audacious and effective, "fascinating" half-failure. Only three films (including one short) new to me made my list, but nearly half of my list is comprised of films I hadn't seen in about ten years, so might as well be considered 'new' since I believe in necessary re-evaluation periods due to personal development in one's moviewatching career

Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (1972-1973)

Until it was restored and issued on home video, this series was so hard to see I'd basically written it off as a "lost film" as far as I was concerned. So when it surfaced I approached it with a massive sense of occasion.

It's simultaneously a very Fassbinder project and a very un-Fassbinder one. The concerns - Marxist analysis; power dynamics in the workplace and home; women's societal entrapment; the formation, dissolution and reconstitution of relationships - are absolutely where Fassbinder was at the time, where he'd been, and where he was going, but they were presented, for the first and only time, in a framework that was positive rather than negative. It's his only film with a sunny view of human nature, which makes it slightly jarring but absolutely fascinating. It's a crucial film for students of Fassbinder, even if it's not really a crucial film in his development, since he never ventured into this territory again. Personally, I don't even see any particular lessons learned from this series in the long-form TV dramas that followed.

When I came back to the series, I decided to watch it one episode per week, to see if it struck me differently at its originally intended pace. The first time around, I'd gulped the whole thing down over a weekend and it made less of an impression on me than I'd hoped. A quick check established that even that pace was much faster than original audiences would have experienced, as it had trickled out at less than one episode per month (or, to be punctilious, at roughly monthly intervals, but with two months between the first and second episodes). And each episode is feature length, so this aired more as a series of TV movies, so it's kind of a weird format in any form.

The reason I did this was fundamentally to give the series a better chance of resonating with me, but alas it remains a fascinating curio rather than a great work, in my opinion. Let me try to get to the bottom of this:

1) Granny twinkles. The characters are all very static, in the fashion of a soap opera, in that they exhibit a handful of traits that never shift or evolve over the course of the narrative. We don't even gain greater understanding of the characters through shifts in perspective, as our own place in the narrative is static as well. It's a characteristic Fassbinder derives from long-form television, but at eight / five episodes, with a clearly planned beginning, middle and end, this isn't really long-form television in that sense. For the most part, this is a concealed flaw, in that it's a lack rather than a positive misstep, but it surfaces problematically whenever the narrative requires change in a character. Thus Harald is a comedy villain until he suddenly isn't, and Irmgard's arc calls for her to move from the outside to the inside, but her snooty behaviour (the sum total of her character) remains intact throughout, as does Jochen's "oh God, not Irmgard" Pavlovian response and Marion's "aw, she's not that bad" reflex rebuttal, even though the plot situation of the characters changes radically.

Because the series is generally optimistic, there are only a handful of one-dimensional baddies (the conniving boss, the racist co-worker) and a surfeit of bland, amiable good guys. One thing this series firmly establishes for me is that Fassbinder had a really hard time creating compelling positive characters,* so in the factory we get a stodgy mass of smiling, supportive, undifferentiated workmates (and one token racist). This spills over into the domestic arena, though there the actors at least get one trait to work into the ground (e.g. argumentative, lovelorn, curmudgeonly, puckish, evil incarnate). In total, this adds up to a dearth of vivid characters, which truly makes it an outlier for Fassbinder, who can conjure up vivid characters galore even when the film is an utter debacle (hello, Satan's Brew).

2) It's the mise-en-scene, honey. To me, this is one of Fassbinder's more anonymous-looking films. That can't be a function of it being made for television, because just look at all the other visually remarkable TV work he'd done and would do (The Niklashausen Journey, World on a Wire, Nora Helmer, Martha), so it must have been a conscious choice on his part to conform more readily to mainstream norms. This makes sense for a work intended as (and which succeeded as) stealth Marxist propaganda, but it doesn't ring my Fassbinder bell.

Probably the most impressively and elaborately staged and shot scene in the series is the long wedding reception in the penultimate episode, with the script juggling a bunch of micro-narratives and the camera gliding from room to room to grab snatches of them. The scene is nicely orchestrated, but the flatness of the characters means that the plot and character stuff that makes up the scene is rather thin, and its pleasure comes more from the old TV serial trick of seeing Character B interact with Character Y for the first time. It also suffers in comparison to the masterful party scenes that punctuate Reitz's Die Zweite Heimat, which run several times longer and ten times deeper, but remain the more sophisticated descendants of scenes like this (or the opening of Beware of a Holy Whore).

3) Don't you labour theory of value me, young man! in most Fassbinder films, the (largely Marxist) economic and political ideas are expressed by terrible things happening to his protagonists. In Eight Hours Don't Make a Day, nothing terrible happens, but those ideas still have to be expressed, so they're expressed in dialogue, which leads to earnest scenes of, for instance, characters explaining surplus value to one another without knowing that surplus value is what they're explaining. This is a thankless task for the scriptwriter, the actors, and the director. And it's not much fun for the audience either. And these scenes of contrived clunkiness run throughout the entire series. They're a core part of its conception and mission, but Fassbinder never finds an effective and convincing way for his characters to articulate the points he wants to make, whereas in other films he was an expert at articulating those same ideas through plot and action.

So, in total, this is a work I value highly for academic reasons, as it provides a unique insight into Fassbinder's preoccupations and way of working, but it just doesn't resonate that much with me, and I find it much clunkier and more simplistic than the other work he was doing at the time.

Needledrop footnotes: The soundtrack amounts to Fassbinder's Greatest Hits, with his axiomatic song choices - 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes', 'Me & Bobby McGee', the first couple of Leonard Cohen albums - present and correct, alongside some deeper cuts, including (I think) the only appearance of Neil Young in a Fassbinder film. Most interesting to me is 'Candy Says' (apparently playing on a German pub jukebox!), which would later reappear in Berlin Alexanderplatz. By 1972, the Velvet Underground was already appreciated among the cognoscenti, but most of that attention was focused on the debut album. The low-key third album had the lowest profile of their released work and had been their biggest flop, so I'm really curious as to how Fassbinder had been turned on to it.

* Since I wrote that, I've been scratching my head trying to come up with compelling positive characters in Fassbinder's films, and the best I could come up with was Armin Mueller-Stahl's lead in Lola, but he's interesting mostly in the way in which he is allowed to be subtly corrupted.

zedz wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:03 pm It's the mise-en-scene, honey. To me, this is one of Fassbinder's more anonymous-looking films.

To this I will counter: Gottfried John is a beautiful man, and I find many of the shots of him simply posing in front of office windows to have an almost painterly quality. As an example, the first thing a Google search turned up:



I also think this might be Schygulla's most endearing, relatable role. Otherwise, you're generally not wrong about the character dynamics, and I do find the narrative to drag at times, but I really loved the last episode in particular, where they all came together to take a stand to their boss, with surprising and optimistic (but simultaneously world-weary and compromised) results

swo17 wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:59 pm To this I will counter: Gottfried John is a beautiful man.

It's the only Fassbinder film in which his Satanic donkey face is cast as jolie-laide, I'll give you that. It's a shock coming to it after all his other sinister / creepy roles, but it works.

swo17 wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:59 pmI also think this might be Schygulla's most endearing, relatable role.

I noted something equivalent in my write-up. Quite the contrast with Lili Marleen!

zedz wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 9:05 pm

swo17 wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:59 pm To this I will counter: Gottfried John is a beautiful man.

It's the only Fassbinder film in which his Satanic donkey face is cast as jolie-laide, I'll give you that. It's a shock coming to it after all his other sinister / creepy roles, but it works.

OK, I watched a different Fassbinder film tonight, and I will concede that the visual element of all those office scenes in Eight Hours could be greatly improved by the addition of a woman constantly washing windows in the foreground

zedz wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:03 pm In Eight Hours Don't Make a Day, nothing terrible happens, but those ideas still have to be expressed, so they're expressed in dialogue, which leads to earnest scenes of, for instance, characters explaining surplus value to one another without knowing that surplus value is what they're explaining. This is a thankless task for the scriptwriter, the actors, and the director. And it's not much fun for the audience either. And these scenes of contrived clunkiness run throughout the entire series. They're a core part of its conception and mission, but Fassbinder never finds an effective and convincing way for his characters to articulate the points he wants to make, whereas in other films he was an expert at articulating those same ideas through plot and action.

I won't argue that this is as formally mature or bold as Fassbinder's other television works cited, but I don't see this criticism as a negative. There's something very genuine and powerful about how the characters fail to adequately express themselves, as they're caught between their souls' yearning to communicate this value and the limitations of their ability to formalize a concrete explanation for this feeling. Sometimes this comes from the inherent restrictions of language to translate the urge into a succinct idea, but sometimes they think they have defined ideas, but don't even have that. Though unlike other Fassbinders, this doesn't become an impediment, and the resilience of the characters is in humbly pivoting from their constraints into pronounced action. Hence the vague throwaway mantras that are half-realised ideas but still elicit a spiritual, intangible compulsion to act rather than declare a sharp thesis to stand behind and build upon. I haven't seen the film in two years, but this part of my writeup from back then reminded me of what I took away from the film's gentleness and meandering stated "wisdom":

therewillbeblus wrote: Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:53 am Ultimately this is a film that encourages one to take action and follow their conscience in life, rather than fearfully remain static, with the message constantly reinforced that “it’s better to do something than nothing at all,” and even stretching to more extreme polarized lengths in Jochen suggesting early on that “those who do things are always right.” A strange generalist statement that makes a call to arms, but an even greater proclamation that the only way to live is to participate fully and do the next right thing (it’s no coincidence that the most lifeless and unhappy characters are the parents who take no action and resign themselves to inactivity and inflexible perspectives - in the father’s case the loneliness causes repetitive resentments and angry fits).

Those two pullquotes are abstract and meaningless in a sense, but they evoke that equally-broad but meaningful idea of 'doing the next right thing' as a spiritual impulse. For me the enjoyment of the film is in watching these characters fail to actualize what other Fassbinder characters can and do so well in emotional complexity; and underneath and beyond, succeed in actualizing what other Fassbinder characters cannot do which is to demonstrate this void of thick, brewed emotional complexity into being with simple gestures of goodnaturedness and commitment to values- even if the depths of these values often remain in the elisions for us and the characters. It's a film about the value of 'keeping it simple' and exercising humility, which may not be as "interesting" but is no falser to life.

Lola. It’s heartening and at the same time sad in retrospect to see Fassbinder could still be so good near the end. I thought this was a brilliant film. I have two films left to see, but at this point in time, following the mid-70s (excepting the few I haven’t seen like Bolwieser), this and Berlin Alexanderplatz are the two films I find where he’s achieving again a level of excellence in both thought/inspiration and execution.

The first thing that strikes you is the aesthetics of the film – the fade effects between shots that Töteberg notes in the Criterion booklet, the popping pastel colors, that made think especially of a film like All That Heaven Allows. Both feature a preponderance of reds and blues, and both also feature shots like this:



But along with the visual care everything for me works here: extremely well-drawn characters, tremendous performances. The aesthetics in tandem with the ambivalent but nevertheless quasi “happy ending” feels like the director is back to achieving the ideal of a Hollywood film with irony and critical content – although this is a black comedy (Fassbinder gets that comic tone just right this time) as opposed to the earlier melodramas.

As in The Marriage of Maria Braun, with sound references again to Adenauer speeches and a significant soccer/football game, we’re seeing how, as Thomsen says, fascism is alive and well in the new “social market economy” (the rich get richer, the poor a little less poor but still oppressed, as an exchange informs us): hierarchical structures, exploitation, human relationships governed by corrupting business principles (p. 281). Lola wants to join the power elite even as she’s their oppressed possession (near the end, in her discussion with Schuckert’s wife, we sense she has succeeded partially but nevertheless will never quite achieve an equal status), the building commissioner’s idealism runs up against the reality that is also part of the system, and, notwithstanding the political enlightenment he comes to, his emotional needs allow him to be purchased more deeply into it.

It’s a deeply pessimistic film but all the characters are nevertheless likeable and it’s consistently charming despite the acidic narrative. It’s as if Fassbinder is creating a duplicitous form that plays out what’s being depicted in the political content of the film.

Rayon Vert wrote: Mon Nov 22, 2021 12:13 am Berlin Alexanderplatz. (...) However, there is also frequent referencing to social conditions in 1928 Berlin/Germany – i.e. the number of unemployed.

Just a little note about this as I'm refreshing my cursory knowledge of Germany history by doing some re-reading. It's actually the early-to-mid 1920s when the Weimar Republic experiences its tremendous economic problems, culminating in the insane hyperinflation of 1923. By 1925, though, things started picking up again, including employment, so I was wondering if Fassbinder was playing a bit loose with the facts and if the novel is actually set in the same year. But it turns out the novel is indeed set in 1927-28, and there is a "a factual interlude (...) detail(ing) the rise in unemployment at the end of 1927". That converges with reading closely through some Wiki entries that state that the Depression in Germany had already started iby late 1927, even though that was the same year that an unemployment insurance programme was introduced (to be eliminated by Brüning just a few years later):

Prosperity reigned 1923–29, supported by large bank loans from New York. By 1929 GDP per capita was 12 per cent higher than in 1913 and between 1924 and 1929 exports doubled.[74] Net investment reached a high average figure of nearly 12 per cent.[75] However, unemployment was over two millions by the winter of 1928–29.[75] The Great Depression struck Germany hard, starting already in the last months of 1927 .[76]

So Fassbinder wasn't making stuff up here.

Please forget this somewhat inconsequential interruption and carry on...

Just submitted a list. I'm proud of myself that I was able to fit in at least one film from every year 1969-1982, though 1974 was unquestionably his greatest. Or maybe 1980. Also tickled by this juxtaposition:

Love Is Colder Than Death
I Only Want You to Love Me

This was a really rewarding filmography to revisit, as I'd previously only tagged a few of these as highlights and allowed the rest to congeal in faded memory

I keep freaking out that we've hit the deadline when you tryhards submit your lists, since I've been cruising with my last few Fassbinders. But I still have time to work through them. Although I can't figure out my top twenty yet, I think I've seen enough to do a bottom five!

1) Lili Marleen - What a stinker! Without even the curio value of some of his other bad films. It's hard to believe that this was the most expensive German film ever made at the time. The money must have all gone on coke.
2) Querelle - this is at least mildly interesting in that it's so dull and lifeless, given how hard it's trying to shock the bourgeiosie it's snuggling up to.
3) Satan's Brew - this is a bad, bad film, but it's like a traffic accident, and I'm already feeling a vague itch to watch it again, maybe in another hundred years.
4) Theatre in Trance - pretty much a big load of nothing, with damp patches of active annoyance scattered throughout.
5) Despair - A Europudding souffle with all the air let out of it.

After that we get to things like Katzelmacher and those early shorts, which are perfectly fine films I just don't much like.

Agreed on all except Satan's Brew. Well, I actually agree with you to some degree, but found enough merit there in my (very different) reading of its intention that it placed for me. Lili Marleen was the only Fassbinder outside of his earlier forgettable 60s works that I chose not to revisit because I couldn't stomach the idea (I watched Querelle for the first time within the last year, and no need to ever see that mess again)

Fox and His Friends (1975) - This might be Fassbinder's coldest film, in that it's bereft of the weird empathy that even his most alienating and alienated portraits in abjection have traces of. I think that's largely down to the fact that Fox himself is a cocky conman, but one that can't imagine himself being the mark. Because the class system is the biggest con of all, in case you didn't realize.

The way Fassbinder deals with his theme is very efficient, in his established dramaturgical manner in which various characters and situations refract different aspects of the "problem." I particularly like the episode in Morocco, a place that has been coded as representing freedom from societal norms in terms of European gay promiscuity, where El Hedi ben Salem, who presents as more worldly and cultured than either of the German tourists, will still never be allowed to enter their hotel. And the unexpected return of Fox's initial lover midway through the film teases a white knight trope that never eventuates. Instead, Klaus never emerges from the sidelines, and ends up being exploited by the bourgeoisie as well (and he, like Fox, is only too happy to be in that position, never suspecting that the axe will inevitably fall.)

As I say, it's well worked out as social / political allegory, but I don't find it especially engaging as a human drama. The predatory bourgeois wolves that surround Fox are barely differentiated, boiling down to Bitches One through Five, and Fox - and Fassbinder's performance of him - is an unappealing mix of vanity and self-loathing (congratulations, Rainer: you got down to 71 kg, but now it looks like you've got a bobble-head). The trap closing around him is so obvious to us as viewers it makes the character look artificially thick rather than compliant and complicit. There are brief flashes of ambiguity about Eugen's attitude towards Fox, but they're not developed enough to give a much-needed complexity to the relationship or the plot, and when it comes, there's no weight to the appalling betrayal. And after that, Fox's decline is accelerated and theatrical, with barely enough time for self-pity and none for self-reflection.

Maybe the most interesting and boldest thing about the film is the decision to base it entirely in a gay world (with only fleeting, othered depictions of possibly straight characters). Fassbinder being Fassbinder, this gay world is brutal and cruel, but the framing is so complete that it's also kind of irrelevant. It's clearly an allegory for society in general (with class rather than sexual orientation as the meaningful social division under the magnifying glass) rather than a narrow critique of any particular subculture. It's a film that normalizes queerness by pushing everything else off screen.

That final sequence is really on-the-nose

Spoiler

the kids ransacking Fox's corpse and ultimately stealing even his name

but I like it. It has a demonic energy and it opens the hermetic world of the film up just a little to let some fetid air from the outside world mingle with the fetid internal air to which we'd become accustomed.

I think there's also a power to where the final scene takes place- in a decrepit underground subway, whereas the majority of the film has occurred in communal spaces of decorated decadence (even the trashy bar Fox frequents has its charms). Agreed on the fantastical setting of a normative gay world where instead of utopia, classism persists at eroding social connectivity indiscriminately within typically-marginalized groups of binding commonalities. The underworlds are perversely produced as literally above-ground and sociologically standardized, so when we witness death (and robbery of the dead) occur before our eyes, it's fitting that it must be out of the faux-decency proclaimed in the limelight of elitism, where even the most heinous actions are supportively rationalized and dismissed to avoid any sobriety to consequence. A cheeky bridge is also drawn in how the two familiar members of this aristocratic group discuss sleazy aspects of a drug-running plan as they descend the stairs!

therewillbeblus wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2021 9:19 pm I think there's also a power to where the final scene takes place- in a decrepit underground subway, whereas the majority of the film has occurred in communal spaces of decorated decadence (even the trashy bar Fox frequents has its charms). Agreed on the fantastical setting of a normative gay world where instead of utopia, classism persists at eroding social connectivity indiscriminately within typically-marginalized groups of binding commonalities. The underworlds are perversely produced as literally above-ground and sociologically standardized, so when we witness death (and robbery of the dead) occur before our eyes, it's fitting that it must be out of the faux-decency proclaimed in the limelight of elitism, where even the most heinous actions are supportively rationalized and dismissed to avoid any sobriety to consequence. A cheeky bridge is also drawn in how the two familiar members of this aristocratic group discuss sleazy aspects of a drug-running plan as they descend the stairs!

One of those characters is actually Fox's old carnival mate (and former lover) Klaus, who's now been taken on as the business-end of the smuggling operation by "Uncle Max," which presumably makes him another potential proletarian fall-guy who will insulate the privileged if the scheme goes south. (He's an ex-con: who would believe him if he tries to blame a respectable antiques dealer?)

In this scene, Klaus can literally see what fate lies in store for him, but he just steps over it and keeps on walking.

Right, that totally escaped me- love the extra bite to an already layered acidic denouement!

Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
This is a great film, and one of the first great Fassbinders I saw (after the misfires of Despair and Querelle), but I've always found it a little over-praised relative to the other great work he was doing at the same time.

Partly, I think this is because it has a similarly schematic set-up as Fox and His Friends (the protagonists versus transparent representatives of various social attitudes rather than actual characters embodying those attitudes), but the social critique is much better co-ordinated than the later film, with the representatives codified into a nuanced matrix of various species of racism and ageism. There's subtlety to the critique even if there isn't subtlety to the characters Fassbinder uses as vehicles to express it. There's blatant and covert discrimination, childish bullying and 'refined' ostracism, there's the 'overcoming' of racism when it's expedient for the racist. The differences between bourgeois and proletarian varieties of racism are delineated. It might be schematic, but it's thorough.

Where this film triumphs over Fox and His Friends is in the depiction of the central couple, who are complicated and sympathetic. Their love is sincere and touching throughout, which makes it even more painful when Emmi's 'benign' racism compromises that relationship (she might love Ali, but not enough to bother finding out how to make couscous for him, and she objectifies him to enhance her own status in that ghastly scene where he makes him pose for her friends). These are the kind of sequences where Fassbinder goes above and beyond most run-of-the-mill message films and really tackles the least comfortable aspects of race and privilege.

Veronika Voss. Not much to add to what zedz and blus wrote up earlier. Another late winner and aesthetically I found it among the most rewarding of the films. Clinical, unyielding whiteness as death reminded me of the effect of the fade-to-whites in Effi Briest. Lola and Voss sure had Fassbinder stretching stylistically and hitting a new visual peak and it definitely leaves you feeling missing out on what would have followed.

Rayon Vert wrote:Clinical, unyielding whiteness as death…

”Film blanc” already has a foothold as a (stupid) term in film criticism, but it’s always what I think of with this film: blinding, scintillating white light used the way shadows are used in film noir.

This thread has been awfully quiet, so I know you're all hunkering down to get through your stack of viewing. Two weeks or so left to submit your lists. If you can't make a top twenty, make a top ten. If you can't watch/rewatch everything everything you thought you would, just rank what you've seen. We've had a great discussion here—thank you to all who have posted and read—and the list is just the period at the end of the paragraph, so don't stress about it. RWF would have wanted you to have strong opinions, too little sleep, and not much of a plan.

Matt wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 7:24 pm... too little sleep, and not much of a plan.

In that spirit...

This odd factoid came to mind this week, which got a bit weirder when I started delving into it. In a roughly 3-month period covering the late winter/spring season of 1982, three notorious rebels, cultural icons and the preeminent enfants terribles of their respective creative fields died, of a drug overdose/intoxication, in their mid-ish 30s. All three were brown-haired, of manic temperament, shared a significant appreciation of music, and were prone to facial hirsuteness as well as stocky pudginess especially in their later years. All indulged in a variety of vices, and generally lived their lives according to the maxim that the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

Spoiler

Fassbinder Bangs Belushi