Hey, can you do that?
- Don't be silly. - I can do it with two hands as well.
Be careful, people are already staring at us.
You know,
the only thing I accept is despair.
I've never been happier in all my life.
I never thought I could ever be so happy.
I still can't believe that I've met someone like that.
And the things Eugen does for me.
One day I'll be co-owner of a company with my own flat and a good salary.
What are you going to do with your share?
I'll buy a dress and things like that.
- And you? - Well, maybe I'll buy something for my boy.
- And you? - Me?
I'm going to the cinema.
I beg you, please understand. Show mercy.
I'll give you everything I possess, even myself...
I DON'T JUST WANT YOU TO LOVE ME
Film-maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder
1. "Nothing was set in stone"
First, I just have to say that we miss him.
Miss him a lot. He left this huge void
in theatre as well as in film. But you know that.
Peter Zadek - Director
The presence of Fassbinder was so important,
even if you didn't like his work.
I did enjoy it and went to see it.
But the fact that he did all these things continuously
changed the whole climate.
Fassbinder was not easy to deal with.
He was a complicated and often conflicted human being,
Günter Rohrbach Managing Director, Bavaria Film
whose work was obviously affected by this inner conflict,
and therefore people occasionally had problems with him.
But there is no such thing as an ordinary director. Or if such a director did indeed exist,
maybe you wouldn't want to work with him in the first place.
So based on that, Fassbinder was a director who was fun to work with,
if you understood him the way he was.
He always strived for directness
and that included how he interacted with other human beings.
And therefore working with him was always a lot of fun.
Volker Schlöndorff - Director
If you were in a room with him, you could feel that life itself was a little bit more intense.
You felt challenged by him,
but at the same time he was willing to support you more than any other person.
I'm talking about being on a film set,
but it was the same during private meetings, like at the Berlin Film Festival,
with Germany in Autumn, or when I saw him later again in Munich.
Because he was interested in the film-making process,
he always made it fun for you to participate in a project.
No matter how much he tormented his staff,
I believe the fun they had of being challenged and of living so intensely
outweighed all the pain.
There are two men who have influenced me deeply.
One was, of course, my father,
Karlheinz Böhm - Actor
with whom I had many discussions on a strictly artistic level.
And the other was a seemingly sharp contrast to that, Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
who was responsible, in retrospect,
for my having developed a political consciousness at all.
My father, who during the war and the Nazi regime,
continued working in Germany and Austria, taught me to stay out of politics,
probably based on his belief that one has to keep a low profile at all times.
Fassbinder told me exactly the opposite, even though he never joined a political party either.
But he was one of the fiercest political voices and social critics I've ever known
and probably of the whole post-war era.
The many discussions I had with him
about our daily lives and the things we experienced every day,
affected my political thinking, not only in terms of our own society,
but also in terms of global events,
in a very profound way.
I was just thinking, "What was so fascinating about this man?"
There was nothing hidden.
Ingrid Caven - Actor
Everything was out in the open. Nothing was set in stone.
And so you were thinking, "How is this possible?
"How can somebody be so open and honest? This is unbelievable."
And since you're not used to this, you're thinking there must be more than meets the eye.
And probably that's not really the case,
except that he's not covering anything up like everybody else.
You could not ignore him.
First of all, he was this mixture of shy and insolent
Hanna Schygulla - Actor
and provocative.
That was...
He was one of a kind.
And his acting was also quite unusual.
He had this physical transparency, which was very rare.
And everybody fell for it, men, women, everybody.
And he was perfectly aware of this.
The way he manipulated people was just more interesting than the way other directors did,
because, on top of that, his was so much more sophisticated.
Basically, he was seductive.
Andréa Ferréol - Actor
He was exactly like a child next to the camera, laughing, enjoying it, making noise like a boy.
It was funny. Sometimes we had to stop, because he was so loud.
He said, "I'm sorry. I'm just enjoying it so much!"
And we thought, Dirk Bogarde and I, he was like a young boy doing his film.
2. "I can't see him anywhere"
Everything you do
is a compilation of personal experiences.
CURRICULUM VITAE (1977) by Peter W. Jansen
Of course, my childhood experiences,
at school or at home or wherever,
are somehow incorporated into my films.
The fact that children don't appear in my films doesn't mean
that my childhood experiences aren't incorporated into my films.
Maybe someone
would regard this fact as evidence that my childhood
was not a so-called normal childhood.
We lived over there in Sendlinger Strasse,
and Rainer's grandmother had forgotten to buy salt,
Lilo Eder - R.W. Fassbinder's mother
and because she was cooking, she sent out Rainer,
who was maybe five years old at the time, down here to the shop,
and said, "Please get me some salt, Rainer." And Rainer didn't return.
His grandmother had an idea where he was, so she went to the Asam Church,
and he was standing as close as he could get to the altar, looking around.
She waved at him to come to her, but he shook his head "no".
This went on for a while and then all of a sudden he said out loud,
"You said God is in this church, but I can't see him anywhere."
I've read an interview, where he said
he found out about the realities of life by the time he started school.
And he thought then, "I can't take this." And that's how it was.
He was born in '45,
started school in '51, and due to post-war circumstances
there were 100 students in his first grade class at the elementary school.
He sat in the back row with eye problems, which we were not aware of then,
and so he did not pay much attention at all.
Then one day his teacher gave him a slap in the face,
and he went... Because of the number of students it had to be a huge room...
He ran right up to the front and yelled, "Help, help, police!
"You have no right to hit me."
So I sent him to a different school, the Steiner School,
and there were only 24 children in his class, so there were fewer problems.
I got to know my parents rather late.
I did grow up with them,
but we were a big family
and I think that as a young child I didn't have the chance
to distinguish the roles they each played
and what they actually meant to me.
My parents got divorced when I was six years old. I got to live with my mother and had to learn
that from now on I had only one contact person instead of the many I had before.
He started writing poems at a very young age.
But the entire Fassbinder family liked writing poems,
so I wasn't convinced
that this could become a career for him.
So I bought him football boots and Märklin construction kits
and things like that to distract him from writing poems and stories.
By the time he was 18 there was no denying it.
He came to me and told me
that he wanted to attend evening classes and get a job
so that he could graduate from high school. And I said, "Why do you need to graduate?"
And he said because he wanted to go to college. "To study what?" "Drama."
"Why drama?" "I want to become a director."
And by then I knew Rainer well enough...
Things he didn't have any interest in, he simply wouldn't do,
and therefore school had always been a big struggle for him. And I thought, "Oh, my God!
"What is he going to put himself through to become a director?"
So I said, "Why don't you take acting classes instead? Isn't that a better solution?"
He said, "I never thought you'd allow that."
The thing with my mother is tricky.
Due to the fact that I didn't see her as my mother until later,
we have a lot of catching up to do.
On the one hand. On the other hand,
we tried to develop a normal friendship.
Maybe that's why she appears in my films.
I've always allowed my friends
to participate in my films,
because I see it as an opportunity
to develop a special relationship
with other human beings.
- In this situation... - You don't care, but call yourself a democrat.
GERMANY IN AUTUMN (1977/78)
- I do care about the law, but... - Just now you said you don't.
But if people who have such a...
No buts! It's allowed to say I don't care about the law.
It doesn't matter in which situation. But you are a democrat.
- But if people... - No!
Please answer my question!
- They are the ones who disobey the law, not me. - But so does an ordinary murderer.
- Then those terrorists are murderers. - Okay. Sure. I don't mind.
But there are no special laws for murderers.
Yeah, but those you can catch and put behind bars.
- And they're not able to cause such a disaster. - No?
- No. - No?
3. No group without a leader?
The way I work on a film or on a play,
the vibes that develop, the complications,
the chance of getting to know people or not,
all that has a great deal to do with
how I was raised as a small child. For sure.
I can only repeat myself, and I've said it several times now,
that I like it better that way than having this fixation on one, two or three people.
I'm really glad
that I experienced this strange type of non-existent parents' home.
You know, he kind of throws himself around...
Because...
If she pulls so hard that you fall down here, then it will hurt for sure...
END OF A COMMUNE (1969/70) by Joachim von Mengershausen
This brick fell on it.
Yikes.
He always falls this way, you know, forward...
- Halfway... - Half forward.
Halfway...
- This brick fell on it. - Yikes!
That's it. Yes, that's good.
antiteater rehearses Anarchy in Bavaria,
a Fassbinder play that started its run at the Munich Werkraumtheater in June of 1969.
Already at that time Fassbinder must have viewed the group
as a possible surrogate family, a role it could only partly fulfil.
From the beginning, it was clear that he used his work as a path to personal self-fulfilment.
By 1967, at the age of 22,
Fassbinder had joined the Munich Action-Theater
as an actor, director and author.
In May of '68, only weeks after the debut performance of Fassbinder's play Katzelmacher,
the theatre was closed and the group broke up.
However, Fassbinder continued working and helped a little later on
with the formation of antiteater, whose cast he also used in his first film projects.
The style of his stage productions was similar to the style of his early films.
A mix of choreographed movements and provokingly long moments of idleness,
affected by the attempt to create harmony between pretence and opportunity,
while always insisting on distancing himself from the traditional Staatstheater.
The play Anarchy in Bavaria demonstrated very clearly
that Fassbinder's style was influenced by many outside factors,
including musicals, variety shows, but also cinema,
and, last but not least, by the street, more precisely the student movement.
Even back then his productivity was incredible.
In only a year and a half, Fassbinder had directed 12 stage productions,
had written four plays himself and had been working on five new adaptations.
His energy, his mix of enthusiasm and work mania,
required from all of his collaborators a dedication that went beyond the work itself.
It affected their private lives and so his collaborators often showed signs of resistance.
At that time, many people had this common longing
to band together and form this new way of working together, living together and all that.
We tried to do this our way,
while others tried to do it their way.
We pretended for quite a long time,
that we were a group, even though we had realised we were not.
Maybe because we thought, and that's what you've said earlier,
if we repeat often enough that we're a group, maybe we'll actually become one.
That doesn't work.
You can't create a situation just by asserting that it exists.
From the beginning, it was our goal
when we started the Action-Theater to be a collective
in which we not only produce plays, but also live together.
- Yes, a commune... - A commune, yes, right.
That was our goal.
But it became increasingly clear that we couldn't pull it off after all.
I would say that I grew up in a way
that doesn't require a leader, nor do I have the need to be one. But I've met a lot of people
who in the end were always looking for a mother or a father.
I played along in the beginning, because I thought
it might be a phase.
But I realised at one point that it was not a phase,
but apparently the role I had to play.
That's unfortunate,
but it's a social phenomenon
that we couldn't ignore, just like everyone else.
You would have to start somewhere else.
You would have to change the upbringing and the educational system,
and how each individual is treated within that system,
and maybe then you wouldn't need a leader or "Führer'" if you will.
But we're not there yet. Education doesn't work that way, therefore, no group without a leader.
4. To trigger an avalanche
- He's crazy. - Why?
He is really an idiot.
THE LITTLE CHAOS (1966)
- Do you want to join us, sweetheart? - Doing what?
- Earning money. - Of course. For sure.
- That's how you do it. - Just like Hollywood.
I'd like to see a thriller with a happy ending for a change.
Fassbinder abandoned his wish to end his stories on a positive note after this early short film.
He was not interested at all in happy endings.
His first feature film, Love Is Colder than Death,
is already closer to a melodrama and tells the story of small crooks
who "were shown just the way they are" and "without any chance of succeeding".
This is reinforced by the static camera work and the slow pace of the storytelling.
Audiences and critics alike gave this debut mixed reviews,
especially since the director filmed his characters as if they were on a proscenium stage.
However, it wasn't about staginess, but generating a feeling of limited space.
In all of his works, Fassbinder very rarely uses a liberating long shot.
Instead, he's interested in images of inner and outer limitedness.
This first feature film clearly shows signs of his future style,
as well as his favourite themes, which he addressed throughout his career.
It is a stylised gangster film, in which not much is happening.
Even though shots are fired, that's not important in itself. It all happens on one level.
On stage you obviously have to work with different means. A film is much more refined.
FILM NEWS (1969)
Everything is said through the relationships of the different characters.
It's a film against dull love, if you will.
It's about the fact that people love other people without thinking about the consequences.
In my film, love always leads to violence and the other way around.
The first thing I liked about his plays was the minimalism.
I'm always striving for that myself.
And back then he instinctively did as little as possible.
Then I forgot about him somehow.
But then I was living in Munich in '69 or '70.
One day my English friend, who was staying with me at the time, came home and said
there was this film. He didn't understand half of it, because it was in Bavarian,
and he couldn't remember the title, Katzel something.
But I should go see it. So I went to see Katzelmacher and was very impressed.
In Katzelmacher, the second of four films Fassbinder shot in 1969,
everything seems to come to a complete stop.
Nothing happens until the desire for something to happen
finds its long sought-after subject and victim in a foreign guest worker.
Fassbinder has rarely used his stage experiences more to the point.
Rarely did he show the connection between social and mental paralysis more clearly.
Let's go inside the restaurant.
You seem to use imitation a lot.
There are references to Straub, Melville, even Schlöndorff. Why?
Berlin International Film Festival 1969
Because everything is based on imitation, even in life.
When I or other people move, if I pay attention and look closely,
then I can see that all of it is based on imitation.
And here the long takes make it very clear. If I were to cut a lot out
or shorten it,
then I could skip over this element of imitation.
If I use long takes, it becomes very obvious, and that's how it's meant to be.
It develops automatically. You don't have to stage it. If actors move...
The long takes always show this idea of imitation.
So you use imitation as a stylistic device?
Correct. Because I have no choice, but I also think that's how it should be.
Why do you reject the technical advantages a modern camera offers you?
Because I think that the technical advantages of modern cameras
destroy the clear suspense build-up
and affect the clarity and purity of a film.
If I use a lot of zoom
and Italian shots, these huge close-ups,
if I play with split-focus shots and different angles or walk with the camera,
then for me it's not a film any more, but, I don't know, a little game.
- They're not enjoying each other any more. - Who?
- Paul and Helga. - Really?
No.
At that time, neither of us was able to develop the aesthetic concepts
that he described afterwards.
I think Rainer boasted a little bit about that.
Dietrich Lohmann - Cinematographer
I remember very well how the film Katzelmacher came about,
which basically consists only of single shots, still shots.
It came about because we made a virtue out of necessity.
Everybody knows those were cheap films, because we didn't have any money.
So we borrowed and rented all the equipment.
Bavaria let us borrow
a 330 blimp, an ARRI blimp,
and a Fisher dolly too.
That was a monstrosity, huge, heavy and almost impossible to move.
And the swivel head was also an unmovable monstrosity.
So we made a virtue out of necessity
and just decided not to move the camera, because it was too heavy, awkward and so on.
So we did only still shots and that became a cinematic style.
The success of Katzelmacher in 1969
has a lot to do with the style of the film. There are a lot of still shots in it.
Harry Baer - Actor and Collaborator
The only dolly shots are when Irm... No, when Rainer
walks with Hanna or with Irm or Hanna walks with Irm.
This style had never been used before
and the way they talked was probably also new for Germany.
I think that is what made the film such a success.
Don't mind the others.
They're always talking and don't mean anything.
They need an audience, that's all.
You're nice. I like you.
You don't have anything to talk about.
That's the best part for me.
The amazing thing was that in 1969, as a totally unknown and inexperienced filmmaker,
he shot three or four films in only one year. You couldn't do that today.
He didn't fill out his tax return, didn't have a licence, didn't pay income tax.
We all set up our businesses,
worked with the institute for public film funding, the government
and the auditors of the TV networks. He defied them all.
He just started shooting and didn't care if he could pay his staff,
as long as he could rent or borrow a camera.
He was always up to his ears in debt. He didn't care.
But he knew that one day this avalanche would come crashing down on him.
And he did the same to his body.
5. Faster than everybody else
After 10 years of combat with him, it's a silly expression, but that's what it was,
I said he was the only man I wanted to work with. He was a "pusher".
Luggi Waldleitner - Producer
And because he was such a "pusher"
and despite all his terrible behaviour, he is the biggest loss of the post-war era.
Fassbinder was the driving force
and he motivated the young colleagues a great deal.
This was, of course, a challenge for everyone in the business.
How can he do so much and be so fast and yet so good at the same time?
And you wonder about your own incompetence. What's going on? What's his secret?
I think his secret was...
Somehow Rainer always knew intuitively what he wanted
and he never asked anybody any questions. He didn't question himself either.
Instead, he unquestioningly followed his intuition.
He was simply faster. That was a key difference. So why was he faster?
Maybe because he didn't worry about each take turning out a certain way.
He stuck... He always thought about the cut while shooting.
And because he was not a perfectionist.
He never came to the set with a fixed idea in his head.
Even though he had a clear picture in his head of what he wanted,
he enjoyed working with whatever presented itself during a shoot
and accepted the outcome. And because of that attitude, he sometimes shot it in one take,
especially when the film was almost finished. Maybe he was impatient to get it finished.
Which on the other hand created this tension on the set, because everybody knew
that you didn't have too many chances, so you'd better be focused on the task at hand.
Many things happened because we said, "Let's just do this.
"Let's do this differently and not like everybody else."
We wanted to be not only better and faster, but also different from everybody else.
That was a basic concept.
For example, it was very important for Fassbinder to be faster than Godard.
If Godard did three films a year, Rainer needed to make four.
He stressed that he didn't want to give critics a chance.
While they discussed his latest film, he had moved on to the next project.
That was his basic concept. And that's why he was so fast.
I learned from him speed, precision,
Michael Ballhaus - Cinematographer
the ability to think of the edit and the rhythm of a scene.
And those things are still helping me today.
There are many things I couldn't do without and I feel I've learned most of them from him.
Xaver Schwarzenberger - Cinematographer
But there is one interesting aspect I always try to copy in my work.
The method, ideally, of shooting a scene only once
has always fascinated me and still does.
If everybody knows, maybe after rehearsals or specific instructions,
that now it's time to shoot the scene and, if possible, only the once,
then the focus of all the people involved is totally different
from normal circumstances, when everybody knows mistakes are okay
because we can have three, four, five, six, seven, ten or twenty takes.
This was and is a totally different experience.
The attempt to do it once and be done with it
helps make everybody totally focused.
I think that was one of the really fascinating things
that I started doing because of him or with him.
I still try to work this way today
and in my view that describes his style very well.
Rainer never felt the need to prepare very much.
Sometimes he drew little matchstick men and then he had an idea about a scene,
but most of the time he wanted to get inspired by the moment and the situation.
So he never scouted out locations beforehand. He'd say, "That's boring
"because then I already know what I want to do and that's not interesting."
He needed the tension and the pressure to arrive on the day of the shooting
with all the people involved and then make the necessary decisions.
And you had to be very flexible in order to deal with that.
This restlessness is very contagious.
Meaning, you can't think straight or don't have the time to think at all.
You go from one film to the next without a break, or if the film is done
and the boss is in the cutting room, you have to prepare the next project.
Of course, that was convenient as well,
because it was sort of a life insurance policy.
Today he would be 10 years older.
I am sure he would see things differently, as to what to do and how to do it.
He probably wouldn't be able to produce like this any more. The film industry would block it.
The market doesn't allow a director to come out with four films a year.
He would have encountered some resistance there.
And, as you know, the way television is doing business changed as well.
Today someone like Fassbinder would be a pretty strange character for TV executives,
and I don't think they would enjoy working with him
the way we did back then.
So I think the market would make it much harder for him
to be as productive as he was then.
Maybe it would have played out differently.
Maybe he would have planned his films differently, done more theatre or writing.
He was a very creative soul in many ways, who didn't depend on just making films.
There were many opportunities around him and he took advantage of them.
6. "Now she is one"
We were almost exclusively making films, except for a few plays.
I did 31 films with Fassbinder, from 1969 until 1977,
when I decided to leave him.
Kurt Raab in YEARNING FOR SODOM (1989) by Hans Hirschmüller
That was very hard for him. It was the most wonderful,
wildest, most chaotic, but certainly most creative time of my life.
And so I think, when my depression takes over,
"See what a wonderful life you have had. Who else had the opportunity
"to work with the world-famous Fassbinder, whose wonderful films are still being watched,
"for ten, eleven long years?
"You were always lucky.
"Occasionally not so lucky, but you always had work."
So I think, overall, I've had a good life,
even if I have to die of AIDS, I've lived my life to the fullest.
My personal belongings.
THE STATIONMASTER'S WIFE (1976/77)
Hanni, dearest Hanni...
It's all your fault!
You have ruined my life!
You whore,
you cow.
Hanni, darling.
You devil! You sanctimonious whore!
You wicked woman, you wicked...
Poor, dearest, good, holy Hanni.
I am convinced, that Rainer was someone who could instil a lot of confidence in anyone.
Not only did he use actors off the street, telling them, "You can do this!"
he would also take someone aside and say, "As of tomorrow, you're my production manager."
Reminds me of Lohmann, where he said, "Tomorrow you're my cameraman."
And because of his confidence in them, they were able to pull it off.
I was always afraid that I would mess it up.
So I tried very hard not to embarrass him,
since he did cast his mother, even though she wasn't an actress.
I was never an actress.
One day someone asked him, "Is your mother an actress?"
And he answered, "Now she is!"
THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (1978)
Agency Braun, Ehmke.
Hello, Mr Oswald.
He wants to talk to you.
I already told you, I'm not here.
I'm sorry, Mr Oswald. Mrs Braun is not here at the moment.
I don't want to have lunch with him.
And she doesn't want to have lunch with you.
Oh, God! I am so sorry. Hello? Mr Oswald?
With Fassbinder it was always this mixture
of on the one hand knowing exactly what he wanted,
and on the other hand him never being able
to do all the things he wanted to without understanding
how to challenge his people to take charge for things they were solely responsible for.
And as a result he made the people involved enjoy their job.
My English was very poor at that time, I had just started speaking English.
Sometimes he'd arrive on the set with new words and I'd say,
"I can't say that, I'm not used to English."
He'd say, "Yes, yes, you have half an hour. Go learn, come back and it will be great. "
He introduced a new word, 'gogel-mogel". I had a hard time with it, but he just laughed.
"Gogel-mogel". He laughed because I was saying it right.
- Ardy is here, Hermann. - Because today I'm taking a bath.
You don't mind, do you?
Fine by me. Anytime.
DESPAIR (1977)
Why didn't you bring your dirty laundry?
- Since you're already here. - I'll hurry up.
Here, your gogel-mogel, Hermann.
This gogel-mogel is my gogel-mogel.
Only one gogel-mogel is your gogel-mogel. The other gogel-mogel belongs to Hermann.
Since it's not a chocky-wocky,
I don't care whose gogel-mogel it is.
I remember a story.
Dirk Bogarde was very unpleased, because he had already done
this kind of scene in The Night Porter with Liliana Cavani.
So he told me he would ask him for a meeting, but alone.
Which was for Fassbinder almost impossible, but he came alone.
All dressed in black, with a white tie, very chic.
And they talked a long time about Bogarde's reasoning and Fassbinder understood all too well.
And of course he changed the scene.
I'd like to know what's going on in your head.
- Which one? - I don't understand.
A strange proposal arrived, asking if I was interested in playing this director.
I thought that since I'm not an actor
and have no ambitions in this direction, I'd accept only because I wanted to know
how it would feel to be in a film directed by Rainer.
So I arrived on location.
I had tried for a whole week
to memorise those short lines. I can't remember two sentences, I never could.
It was a real pain.
The production pampered me a lot.
They drove me around and fulfilled my every wish, but then drove me to the set,
and I was supposed to do my thing.
But I had forgotten my line, every single word.
So I wondered what would happen next.
And Rainer looked at me, since he knew me quite well,
and immediately found something
to make me feel at home professionally. Namely, he put me on a dolly.
He told someone to drive me back and forth. I didn't need to do anything any more.
I just had to put on my director's face and say my two sentences,
which I eventually did remember.
- I'm sorry, I'm not focused. - Don't worry, we'll do it again.
Let's do it again.
VERONIKA VOSS (1981)
Quiet, guys. We're ready to shoot.
"Blue Sky", 336, the thirteenth.
And action.
Drink one moment. You'll get a tip.
Thank you. Cut.
7. Like heaven or hell
Hohen-Cremmen, country seat of the von Briests since the time of Georg Wilhelm.
EFFI BRIEST (1972-74)
Basking in sunshine, the house looks onto the noon silence of the village street.
On the side facing the gardens,
a wing built at right angles casts its shadow first on a white and green flagstone path,
then out over a large roundel of flowers with a sundial at its centre
and a border of canna lilies and rhubarb round the edge.
The attitude Fontane has towards the story, where on the one hand he rejects the society
FILM NEWS (1974)
which produces all those things, but on the other totally comes to terms with it,
is exactly the same attitude we see in our own society today, and that's why I made this film.
Effi, you should have become a circus rider.
Always on the trapeze, daughter of the air.
I almost believe you would like that.
Maybe, Mama.
But if that's true, who is to blame? Who passed it on to me? It must be you.
Or do you think Papa did? Even you have to chuckle at the thought.
But then why don't you raise me to become a lady?
- Would you like me to? - No!
No!
Not so fierce, Effi, not so passionate.
It always worries me to see you like that.
A story that contains austerity is never bad.
It is said that Fassbinder liked making his films based on gut feeling,
spontaneously and on instinct.
This misconception should by now have been corrected with Effi Briest.
From the first to the last image, the production pursues
a well thought-out and deliberately developed aesthetic.
The camera persistently avoids any glance at the endless sky.
Throughout the whole film, there is only one shot that evokes a feeling of freedom.
Instead, Fassbinder is looking over and over again for optical boundaries,
confining his characters visually
and placing them time and again in front of horizontal and vertical lines,
which in the background construct the illusion of a world behind bars.
In the foreground, Fassbinder playfully arranges ironic symbols, with the ivy representing loyalty,
and the chains as a sign of Effi's imprisonment.
Even light and dark have a symbolic meaning.
White is the colour of women, while black is assigned to men.
The boundaries of the shadows we saw in the first shot of Hohen-Cremmen
are continued inside the house.
The dark edges of the images apply visual pressure on the characters.
Effi's marriage is supposed to be a social rise,
but her first steps towards her future husband are leading downstairs.
The visual images tell and interpret the story.
"Because I have to tell you, sweet Effi," and she took both hands of her child. "I have to say..."
"But, Mama, what is going on, I am worried to death."
"I have to tell you, Effi, that Baron Innstetten has asked for your hand in marriage."
On a more realistic level, the mirror symbolises Effi's vanity.
At the same time it reflects the image of a closed society which only values itself.
Once again Fassbinder creates additional visual restrictions.
In addition, the mirror allows him to show both women's faces simultaneously,
without moving the camera or cutting back and forth between two shots.
Next, we see Effi's future lover, Crampas. Nothing has happened yet,
but in response to the intense eye contact Effi's child begins to cry.
Fassbinder divides the next shot visually.
Effi leaves Crampas' sector
and walks into the other half of the picture, to help her child, who calms down.
Crampas remains outside, until Effi returns to him,
once again visually united with him in the other half of the picture.
In response to the kiss on the hand the child starts crying again.
Effi walks towards the camera, separated from her child by the door frame.
At the end she appears visually divided in three parts and this image signals her future dilemma.
Rainer always knew exactly what he wanted.
Our teamwork was so exciting, because he knew
that I had my own idea about every scene we shot.
I always thought, "How can we shoot this?"
He knew that and it egged him on.
Sometimes he asked for my opinion
and from there we developed some very interesting things.
For instance, the by now famous 360-degree tracking shot.
That was in Rome for the film Martha.
That is the scene where the two protagonists meet for the first time,
and there is this moment where they know something has happened.
I had suggested doing
an elliptical tracking shot where you start at one point and go around them while they meet.
And when the camera returns to the original spot, things have changed.
He listened to me and said it sounds good, but we'll do it another way.
We'll do a full circle and go round twice. And they turn the opposite way.
We had a lot of fun sometimes coming up with or contriving something special
or doing something very complex and ingenious.
We always had a lot of fun doing that.
Especially during Chinese Roulette, which was a rather simple story.
There we tried to capture another level of the story with the camera,
since it was a multilayered story.
It was a speciality of his, to tell the subtext of a scene
with the help of the camera.
While the characters were having a conversation on screen,
he told you something else with the camera,
which in the end explained the characters better than the dialogue.
We know he had role models. And he copied ideas just like any other director.
If you copy the right things from great directors... That's what everybody does.
Scorsese, Coppola, they all do that.
Sometimes I was surprised, when I found a quotation in a film.
No, we did talk about it... We always had a concept about lighting as well.
At the beginning of Maria Braun we didn't want to use many colours.
So the production design, which my wife was responsible for,
planned this very carefully and avoided the use of colour.
And little by little we added colour and sound. First it was also pretty quiet,
then you heard the construction noise and saw some colours. All that was planned very carefully.
While writing, he was already thinking about editing. He developed the film in his head,
Juliane Lorenz - Editor and Collaborator
not only the story, but also how the story was put together and how the images would work,
when to use a long shot or a close-up.
He had a clear vision about that.
But that didn't translate into, "You have to do it this or that way."
You could easily tell... Because he staged it in such a way
that you immediately saw his love of editing.
At our first meeting, which was during Alexanderplatz,
we started talking about the directors we admired most,
who was his favourite and mine. Just to get a feel for each other.
And there was one we both mentioned, Josef von Sternberg.
And via this person we developed a basic understanding.
We never mentioned him explicitly, like, "He would have done it this way or that."
But the name was out there and we knew we both admired him.
And automatically we went in a certain direction.
Sternberg became the guideline...
for me to develop a light...
Well, not really a concept,
since it wasn't in my head, but in my gut.
To give a direction on how to use lighting, or to seek a contrast.
Rainer never interfered with lighting issues.
He only... Well, let's say, reacted with keywords.
If I asked him, "Do you like it", or "What do you think about my suggestion?"
He would say, "Could be worse."
Or, "Could be, more or less." But never an exact notion, like do this or that,
just some keywords. Or, "It should look like heaven or hell."
8. "I shoot in every direction"
There was a dark room and in front of a wall
some bodies were lying around.
I don't know if they were dead or alive. And then there was...
Above those bodies there was a gallery of ancestral portraits,
just like
oil paintings from back then.
And you could see his grandfather, grandmother,
all the way up to the medallion of Lilo, his mother, and above...
Rainer put up a ladder, got on it
and looked everybody in the eye and on top there was a camera.
He climbed all the way up, turned around
and had this camera eye
on his forehead.
My dreams are usually hands-on, if I dream at all...
No, the camera eye is not a dumb thing at all,
because, I think, our post-war generation,
Rainer was a little bit younger than me, but still,
we had a hard time
with those eyes that looked upon us as children.
We couldn't trust those eyes.
Mama?
I didn't make it yesterday, Mama.
THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (1972)
Too much work, you know.
No, I'm up for a while.
Really?
One doesn't want to let it go. And that's a good thing, isn't it?
Where are you going? To Miami?
I'm so happy for you, Mother.
Miami is a wonderful place.
Simply wonderful. And the people there.
Terrific company. Just terrific.
Six months?
Mother, I'm speechless.
Six months! I envy you. Six months, Miami.
Yeah, I could use that, too.
Thank you.
Why don't you start with the drawing? The sketch is sitting on the easel.
Yes, Mama. What?
Yes, sure, Mama, I was listening, but something is wrong with the line. Sorry.
Don't be offended, Mother. There really was a clicking noise.
I'm not lying.
You're insulting me.
Darling,
that's my sister, you understand? My sister.
And this is my apartment with my furniture.
And therefore my sister can do whatever she wants.
Because I like my sister's back much better than the faces of all your friends.
Don't get so upset, Franz!
FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (1974)
I didn't mean it that way.
I'm sorry I've been a bit cranky lately.
We've both been cranky.
We seem to be going through a rough patch.
No wonder with all the stress we've had the last six months.
Yes, sometimes I have the feeling that I'm overworked, too.
But now, since the business is doing well again,
we could cut back.
That would help our relationship.
- You know, Eugen, I... - Yes?
- I have this idea, you know? - No, I don't know.
But I...
You know, we should go on vacation.
Just go somewhere we like.
Yes, that's a good idea.
I love you.
The irony with this film is that it's the first film...
FILM NEWS (1975)
It's the first time in cinema,
that homosexuality is not considered a problem.
And that was important to me. Meaning that the homosexuality,
which is constantly present in the film, is not the issue at all.
Instead, you have a very normal story with homosexuals as the main characters.
Are you sure you don't want anything to drink?
- No, I said no, and when I say no, I mean it. - Come on, tell me.
Okay, I'll tell you.
I am done, Eugen. I want to call it off.
- I want to break up with you. It's all over. - I see.
Interesting.
Yeah, scoff all you want.
For me this is not funny at all.
I've always tried hard to please you and I've made an extra effort.
But this is not my world.
It just isn't.
But you felt comfortable?
Again and again.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
In the beginning it was a lot of fun. And you impressed me.
I thought I loved you, but you were ashamed of me.
- But... - Yes, you were. And your friends despised me.
Let them think what they want. All that matters is us.
Yes, we do matter.
But that's different as well. You've changed.
Sometimes I think you're not interested in me at all.
Every relationship runs into the same problems.
Everyday life, work, habits.
But if you really think we should break up...
Go ahead.
Do what you want, if it makes you happy.
But there are a few things we need to discuss. For example, the apartment. I'll keep it.
- The apartment. - Yes, the apartment.
I remember one thing like yesterday, at the Theater am Turm in Frankfurt.
We did Uncle Vanya by Chekhov and he gave me
the script for Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven and said he wanted to film it with me.
I read it and went to his room, where he sat with his boots and slouch hat,
that was in his slouch hat phase,
and he squinted with his piggy eyes at me,
and I said to him, "You know, I've just read Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven.
"I know you're against the Right and the Left, against extremism, and this and that,
"but who are you for?"
First there was silence. Then he dropped his boots off the table and opened his eyes wide
and I think he was stunned by the question, but then he answered, "You know,
"I just notice burning questions when things go wrong or if something stinks.
"No matter if it's on the right, left, top or bottom, I shoot in every direction." That was Fassbinder.
Well...
your husband had the right idea, but did the wrong thing.
If he had joined us,
he would have found people who could explain everything to him.
Joined you?
I don't understand.
Yes, Mrs Küsters, we're communists.
We belong to the German Communist Party.
But my Hermann has never been a communist.
He was against them. He said they were troublemakers and would destroy everything.
They'll destroy what we have built.
Yes,
that's what people are told about us.
I have to mention a story that was widely written about.
Strauss had said, "Does it have to be Fassbinder?"
And I answered, "Why not? I don't mind if you have lunch with Brezhnev."
Yes, that's how we talked back then. But the others accepted it and Marianne Strauss told me,
"You are absolutely right to work with him.
"If you can sell your product as a result."
I said, "The song Lili Marleen, the director Fassbinder and Schygulla.
"That has market value.
"There's nothing else that will produce such market value."
You're right, Adele.
When it comes to business, you can't be choosy.
Anton, here she is. Let's do it.
ALl: FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1973)
How do you do, Mrs Kurowski? Back from your vacation?
How was the weather?
- Yes, it was really nice. - We could use one as well. Where did you go?
- Not far. To Steinsee. - To Steinsee.
Yes, I've been there. Nice place. Please come in and tell us about it.
I feel the urge to tell the stories that I'm telling.
I don't just tell these stories,
because I'd like to spend time with certain people,
even though I do enjoy it. I also really want to tell these stories.
Maybe there are other reasons.
We'd need to hire a psychoanalyst for the next three years
and I'm sure we'd find one or two things
that could explain it.
My story is about a man. His name is Anton Saitz with "ai",
IN A YEAR OF 13 MOONS (1978)
who uses his stolen fortune to become a partner and later the owner of a brothel,
and then establishes there the rules and measures for law and order
that he feared and learned about while in a concentration camp.
A whorehouse run like a concentration camp.
It works horribly well, the brothel flourishes and Saitz gets richer and richer.
In the end he makes enough money
to buy his first house, an old one, so he demolishes it and builds a new one,
and is on his path to get straight here,
to the 16th floor of this house,
where he rules over many people and things.
Thank you. You insulted my soul well enough.
Don't forget. Saitz with "ai".
Sixteenth floor.
I think, since he gave this portrayal of the German society,
especially of this big city in upheaval...
Karlheinz Braun - Verlag der Autoren, publishers
In his plays, he did the same thing he did in his films...
So for a certain period of West Germany's history,
he was its most exact chronicler.
He wanted to have Small Town Tyrant adapted for the '60s, the period of Adenauer.
There is not much to tell, because he wasn't a great communicator.
Peter Märthesheimer - Pea Fröhlich Scriptwriters
One of his best skills was to deal with people based on a division of labour,
if he trusted them enough.
So he said, "I'd like to do this, please write a first draft."
So we wrote a draft...
Which changed later on, because he wanted an adaptation of Tyrant for the '50s.
The draft we presented had to change some elements of the story,
because the conflicts of this period couldn't be adapted easily.
So it was a somewhat different outline, but he was okay with it.
Well, did I promise too much?
That's her, my private whore.
If you weren't incorruptible, old man, I would buy you a night with her.
9. "Every human being has his song"
I started out writing film scores for financial reasons.
Here is why the first film Love Is Colder than Death was basically done.
Peer Raben - Composer
At one point, he thought you need to have underlying music for this story.
But we knew we didn't have enough money to hire someone to write a score.
And Rainer Werner Fassbinder said, "Well, you know music, somehow...
"You know about music,
"so you'll write the score."
They decided to let me go today.
I don't know what your plans are, if you're allowed to go. But if you like, you can come to us.
Can you remember the address?
Munich, Hessstrasse 129.
The analogy, difficult story/complicated music, seems obvious.
But this is exactly the method, with regard to music, that Fassbinder didn't use at all.
The most interesting thing for me while working with him
was that he was incredibly open
and always interested in trying out what we composers call counterpoint.
That means, basically, that the music says something else than the image,
maybe even appears to say something totally opposite to the image.
And he did that very often.
Actually, even before we started working together.
You can see it in his first short films. I'd like to remind you of that homeless person
who is sitting alone in this beer garden surrounded by hundreds of empty tables.
There's nobody there and he's eating some bread or something,
and you hear the music of a huge dinner party.
You immediately think Vienna opera ball or something like that.
It's a great antagonism between image and music.
And he used that very often.
Now it's easiest for the audience to understand this
if you use music that is well-known.
Or if the audience knows at least the nature of the piece.
For example, in The Merchant of Four Seasons
there is this pop song Addio, amore, I think it's called,
which has the same effect, even though the music goes back and forth.
Sometimes it describes the emotions of the actor really well
and at times it is the counterpoint.
And this tension is shown visually in this film
when the actor in the end breaks the record to pieces, basically killing the music.
Fassbinder himself had,
at different times in his life, his own leitmotif.
Most of the time these were songs that were popular at the time.
But for him it was more than just superficially listening to The Beatles
or Elvis, like most people do.
Some of those songs really had a profound effect on him.
We knew from the onset, that the song Lili Marleen
would play a leading part in the film.
What would happen to the song in the course of the film
was overall not as clear to us.
But that the song would have different functions in different scenes,
we realised early on,
because we had to produce playbacks before the shooting began,
and we needed to have an idea what kind of song the scene would require.
You?
Have you lost your mind?
It's not safe here for you.
The tall one over there, Henkel, is a real brute.
What now?
He was very clear about
which scenes...
Or better,
in which situations in the film we needed music.
From the onset he knew where it should start and end,
even though he never really shot a film with music,
he very often thought about the music, while he was shooting the film.
Every human being somehow has his or her own song...
I discovered the music that expresses best who I am,
and that is the music of Gustav Mahler, as I've learnt over time.
This music describes best what I believe I represent...
10. I only had that much time
And if you don't say no, which I cannot believe my smart Effi would do,
then you will be as a 20-year-old at a point where others are at 40.
You will easily overtake your mum.
To be as a 20-year-old where others are at 40...
And in the end a full life cut short much too soon.
Death was a leitmotif in Fassbinder's works.
But in a frightening way we realise only today
how clairvoyant, maybe even with a sense of foreboding,
the filmmaker again and again somehow foretold the circumstance of his own death.
You will die. Incognito.
- Go belly up. - Goodbye. Good night.
Try to postpone the decay scent. We'll lumber until noon and then would like to have lunch.
Could you stay a while longer?
If you could stay 30 more minutes.
30 minutes? Peg out right away.
Let's go.
You wouldn't want to die alone either!
Old hag. Here's a souvenir.
Only 20 minutes.
The terrifying thing was that in July of '69, I believe he was 23 years old,
we went to the doctor for insurance purposes,
since I made films according to the rules, with insurance and check-ups.
And the doctor told him, "You can't keep living like this.
"You need to drink less, you need more sleep,
"you need to exercise, your heart is weak,
"and your whole body shows signs of deterioration."
Of course, Werner shrugged it off and didn't care,
but indeed 10 years later in '79,
the timeframe the doctor had mentioned, "otherwise you'll be very sick in 10 years",
was clearly visible. He'd exhausted himself in those 10 years even more than before.
And that's a fact. Everybody knew it.
- The sky... - Wipe away the saliva.
- Where? - The forehead.
- Why are you laughing? - It tastes good.
You can't undo it.
- Thank you. - Anything else? I have to go, for Christ's sake.
- Corpses. - You.
Come here.
- It was beautiful. - What? You silly nitwit.
Everything.
He always said, "You and Caven, when you're old, you two will still...
"Maybe you will be a little bit shaky,
"but you will still meet each other, while I will be long gone."
He was always convinced he would die young.
Whether he... How that played out... Did he die young because
he exhausted himself or did he exhaust himself because he knew he didn't have much time?
I can't answer that.
THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS (1971)
You're going to die, Hans.
You're going to die.
So, that was one for each of you.
And now one for my mother.
For my sister, Heide,
my-brother-in law, Kurt,
my sister, Anna,
and one for my daughter.
And
this one
is for the love of my life.
This one is for the police,
for the high school,
and this one is for the legion.
Harry, you're the only human being.
- But you're a swine, too. - Of course, aren't we all?
Hans!
He's dead.
People could accuse us or me of the following,
why did we not notice anything, since we produced at this intoxicating pace?
I don't know. I just didn't get it,
because there was this restlessness...
He's dead.
Nothing we can do.
FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (1974)
Come on, hurry.
I don't want to have anything to do with it.
And nobody can help him now.
Help
It was about...
There was another sequence in the script where Veronika tried
to cry "help", I mean, write "help".
She wrote "help" on a piece of paper. And in the house across the street
one could see a child with Down's syndrome behind a window,
who just stared and saw the woman, who had written "help".
She tries to raise her hand and...
Then it drops. There were two shots.
Maybe it was because of the rhythm or that it was at the end. And I liked it a lot.
And Rainer said, "No, she doesn't call for help.
"This is the end."
I think there were some important moments in Rainer's private life,
that had a profound effect on his films,
which were so good because of them.
And he probably chose this type of work to fight his loneliness.
This, of course, didn't always work.
Therefore we hand you over, Franz Walsch, to the holy earth,
GODS OF THE PLAGUE (1969)
because you are dust
and you shall become dust again.
May the day of judgment be merciful on you.
Therefore, mourners, pray for his poor soul,
so that it will go to heaven in purgatory.
Through Christ, our Lord,
who returns those who have gone astray, to the right path to the father,
and who will clean us from all sin. Amen.