Fassbinder
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the Gods of the German New Wave in
the 1970s. He started in theatre, making aggressive, antiestablishment
productions with a very tight budget and an even tighter cast. The
company gradually started making movies (again on a shoestring) which
generally did poorly at box office in Germany and abroad but which
attracted a great deal of critical acclaim. Initially they were all in
gritty black and white, but whatever money the films made were plowed
back into buying better equipment and film stock while Fassbinder bullied
and begged his cast and crew into working for virtually nothing. There
are true gems from this period, like _Ali (fear eats the soul)_ and many,
many others. Eventually he made a movie called _The Marriage of Maria
Braun_ which was a smash all over the world. Like many of his earlier
films, Maria Braun dealt with the harsh realities of post-war Germany
In the first seen Maria gets married to a German Army office, Hermann
Braun, who fails to return home at the end of the war. Despite apparent
widowhood, the destruction of her house, and the loss of everything she
owns, Maria Braun gets a job, goes into business, and materially
flourishes. On the other hand she pays for success with her heart,
becoming a cold, hard, distant woman - an obvious allegory for Germany in
the '50s. When Hermann arrives back many years later - from Canada - her
dreams of rekindling romance are thwarted by the enormous void between
them. So, while Hermann waits in the next room listening to a soccer
game on the radio, Maria nanchalantly turns on the gas, runs her bath,
then lights a cigarette. As the house burns to the ground the radio
celebrates the victory of Germany in the world cup.
In Maria Braun, as in his early work and the work he made afterwards,
Fassbinder examined cruelty, heartlessness, blind ambition,
racism, even love, surgically and remorselessly. He alternated between
vivid, high colour cinematography (e.g., Lola, which is told as much in
lighting technique as in dialogue) and stark, blinding black and white
minicam expeditions. He was much reviled in Germany for his
preoccupation with the seedy and negative, but was much admired around
the world for his ability to portray evil and pain with an unmatched
skill. His final major project was a 12 (?) hr epic for German TV called
Berlin Alexanderplatz (from a novel of the same name that is sometimes
called the German equivalent of Ulysses). The excerpt from this film
that was released internationally in cinemas contains the "white lily"
line that Laurie Anderson uses in her song of that name.
Fassbinder's life was every bit as painful and ugly as his films.
(he acts in many of his own movies, often as a thug or bully). He was
involved in several convoluted homosexual love triangles, he was
manipulative, he was dishonest, he was melancholic, he was a genius, he
eventually killed himself, and I'm glad that Laurie has made his name
known to a few who would otherwise never have heard of him.
blackbur@mcmail.cis.mcmaster.ca (James Blackburn)
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HomePage of the Brave: Laurie Anderson by
JimDavies
(jim@jimdavies.org)