So I tell the wind and white clouds
Take me with you where you're going
I would gladly trade those new lands
Just to be right back at home
Can you do this?
- Don't be silly. - I can do it with two hands.
People are looking at us.
You know,
the only thing I accept is despair.
I'm happier than I've ever been.
I never thought I'd be so happy.
I still can't believe I've met someone like him.
Eugen does everything for me.
I'll be joint owner of his company,
have a flat, a big salary.
What will you spend it on?
A dress and things like that.
- And you? - I might splurge it all.
And you? - I'm going to the cinema.
It's tearing me apart, devouring me, destroying me.
I beg you.! Have mercy.!
I'll give you everything I possess. Everything I am.
I DON'T JUST WANT YOU TO LOVE ME
THE FILMMAKER RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER
NOTHING WAS FOSSILIZED
He's sorely missed.
He left a gigantic void
in the worlds of both stage and film.
You see,
Fassbinder's mere presence was important. DIRECTOR
Even if you didn't like his works -
and I did like them -
the fact that he kept churning out films
changed the whole scene.
Fassbinder wasn't a simple person.
He was complex and full of inner conflict.
Of course, this inner strife EXECUTIVE BAVARIA FILMS
spilled over into his work,
and there were sometimes problems with him.
No directors are really easy.
Or those who are easy,
you wouldn't want to work with for other reasons.
In that regard, Fassbinder was a director
with whom you could work very well,
if you accepted him for what he was.
He was always quite clear about things
and direct in his dealings with people.
That's why it was fun to work with him. DIRECTOR
When he was in the room
you felt that life was more intense.
You felt challenged by him.
You got more from him than from anybody else,
whether you were shooting a film together,
or you were just in his company
at the film festival in Berlin,
or whenever we met in Munich.
He was interested in the politics of film.
He always made people enjoy taking part in things,
even if he pushed them really hard.
I think the enjoyment they got
from being challenged and living intensely
outweighed the suffering.
In my life, two men have influenced me deeply.
One is undoubtedly my father, ACTOR
with whom I had many discussions
on a purely artistic level.
The other influence on me, which seems such a contrast,
was Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Looking back on it, I see now
that I developed a political awareness through him.
My father continued to work in Germany and Austria
in the Nazi period and through the war.
He felt one should not expose oneself politically,
and did not want me to be politically active.
Fassbinder said the opposite.
He wasn't active in party politics
but he was one of the sharpest social critics
I have ever known.
One of the sharpest we've had since the war.
The discussions with him about everyday life
and everything going on around us
put a deep stamp on my political attitude
not only towards our own society,
but also towards everything happening in the whole world.
I've asked myself why he was so fascinating.
With him nothing was hidden.
He was completely open. ACTRESS
Nothing was fossilized.
You'd find yourself asking,
''How can anyone be so open and so honest?''
We aren't used to it.
You'd think there was a lot behind it,
but he was probably no deeper than others.
It's just that he didn't hide his abilities.
You couldn't ignore him.
He was a mixture of shyness
and cheekiness
and provocativeness. ACTRESS
There was -
Well, there was no one else quite like him.
The way he acted a role
was different from everyone else, too.
He had a kind of physical transparency.
Everyone fell for it. Men, women, everyone.
And he knew it.
Rainer was better at manipulating people
than other directors were,
because he was more cunning than the others.
He used the art of seduction -
He was seductive.
ACTRESS
He enjoyed himself.
He was noisy like a little boy.
Sometimes we had to stop work because he was making such a din.
He'd say, ''I'm sorry, but I'm having such fun.''
We thought that he was like a young boy, doing his movie.
I CAN'T SEE HIM ANYWHERE
Everything you do
is compiled from your experiences.
LIFE STORIES
Sure, the experiences I had as a child, as an adolescent,
at school, in my family, wherever,
somehow inform my films.
For example,
even though there aren't any children in my movies,
that doesn't mean my childhood experiences aren't in my films.
Perhaps some would say
that it wasn't a childhood
as childhood is understood in the usual sense.
We lived down there on Sendlinger Street.
Rainer's grandma had forgotten to buy salt.
As she was cooking R.W. FASSBI NDER'S MOTHER
she sent Rainer- he was five at the time -
down to the grocer's,
and told him to buy salt.
Rainer didn't come back.
Grandma guessed where he'd gone
and went to the Asam Church.
He was standing at the front of the altar, looking around.
She signaled to him to come, but he wouldn't.
This went on for a while until suddenly he said,
''You told me I'd find Lord Jesus in church,
but I can't see Him anywhere.''
He once said in an interview
that at school he found out what life was really like,
and he thought he'd never be able to stand it.
He was born in 1 945
and started school in 1 95 1.
Those were the postwar years
and at his primary school
there were 1 00 children in the class.
He sat at the very back
and he had poor eyesight, though we didn't know then.
He was doing something else and not paying attention,
so the teachers gave him a box on the ears.
He ran to the front
through this large classroom full of children,
shouting, ''Help! Help! Police!
You have no right to hit me.''
So then I sent him to the Steiner school.
There were only 2 4 pupils, so he did a bit better.
I came to know my parents very late.
Although I did grow up with them, it was in a home
where many other people lived.
I think that as a small child
I couldn't distinguish
who was who
and who was important and valuable to me.
I was six when my parents got divorced.
I went to live with my mother, and I first had to learn...
to deal primarily with one particular person.
As a child he used to write poems,
but all the Fassbinders wrote poetry,
and I wasn't entirely convinced
that you could make a career of that.
So I bought him soccer boots,
and a Meccano set, and so on,
to distract him from writing poems and stories.
It couldn't be ignored any longer
when he was about 1 8.
He said he wanted to go to night school,
get a job and matriculate.
I asked him why he wanted to matriculate,
and he said he wanted to go to college.
He said he wanted to study theatrical science.
I asked him why.
''To be a director,'' he said.
I knew what Rainer was like with his interests.
If he wasn't interested, he didn't do it.
That's why school was such a nightmare.
I thought about how far he'd go to become a director,
and I said to him,
''Wouldn't it be better to go to drama school?
Isn't that a better way?''
And he said, ''I never thought you'd let me.''
My mother is a whole different story.
I came to see her as my mother rather late.
We had a lot to work out, in one sense.
In another sense,
we tried to develop something like a normal friendship.
Maybe that's why she appears in my movies.
I have always let my friends collaborate with me on films,
because that seems to be a possibility
to achieve a special kind of contact with other people.
You say laws don't interest you,
but you're a democrat. GERMANY I N AUTUMN
- They interest me. - You said they didn't.
But if people like that -
No buts. Laws don't interest you.
You can say that and still be a democrat.
- But if people - - No! Answer me, please.
They're flouting the law, not me.
Every normal murderer does that, too.
The terrorists are murderers.
Yes, sure. They are.
But there aren't special laws for murderers.
Yes, but you can catch them,
and then you have them behind bars.
Then they can't do such damage.
No?
- No. - No?
NO GROUP WITHOUT A LEADER?
Working on a film or in the theater, for example,
the atmosphere that's created, the complications,
getting to know each other or not getting to know each other-
all that may have a lot to do
with how I lived as a small child.
Sure.
I can only say, and I've said it before,
that I prefer that to being fixated
on one or two or three people.
I'm very glad that I had this strange, non-parental home life.
He throws himself down
because if she pulled you down like this,
of course it would hurt you.
A brick fell on it.
He always falls forward like this.
- Half- - Half forward.
A brick fell on it.
Yes, that's good.
The Antiteater group rehearses Anarchy in Bavaria,
a Fassbinder play first performed in Munich in 1 969.
Fassbinder had sought a kind of family in the theater company
which he only partly found.
From the start, it was clear
that he would realize himself through his work in a radical way.
In 1 967, at the age of 22,
Fassbinderjoined the Munich Action Theater,
where he was active as an actor, director, and scriptwriter.
But in May of 1 968, a few weeks after the premier ofhis play Katzelmacher,
the theater was closed and the group disbanded.
Fassbinder carried on working,
and shortly afterwards helped found the Antiteater,
the company with which he also made his first films.
The style ofhis stage directing closely resembled that ofhis early films..
A mixture of choreographed movements and provocative static poses
characterized by a desire to match demands to possibilities,
and to distance himself as much as possible
from the traditions of the state theater.
The performance of Anarchy in Bavaria made visible
how much Fassbinder took his ideas from outside the theater,
from musicals, cabaret, and the cinema,
and significantly, from the street and the student protest movement.
Even in those days, Fassbinder's productivity was astonishing.
In the space of 1 8 months, he directed 1 2 plays.
Of these, he wrote four himself and reworked five others.
His energy, his mixture of playfulness and obsessive work,
demanded a dedication from all ofhis coworkers
which extended far beyond work into their private lives
and frequently provoked opposition.
There was only the desire, widely held among various people at the time...
for a group,
for a new form of cooperation, and cohabitation, and so on.
We tried in our way to put into practice
what others had tried in their own way.
For a long time we pretended to be a group
even when it was clear to us we weren't one.
Perhaps, too, we thought - to return to what you said earlier-
if we say again and again that we're a group, perhaps we'll become one.
But that doesn't work.
Simply saying so doesn't make it reality.
It was our goal from the start
to become a collective -
the kind of collective
with which we began the Action Theater.
We would produce theater,
but above all we would live together.
- A commune? - Yes, a commune.
That was our goal,
but it became increasingly apparent
that it wasn't attainable.
I'd say that I grew up in such a way that I don't need a leader
and don't need to be one either.
I've been around many people...
who were ultimately looking for a father or a mother, and, well -
Initially, I think I went along with that
because I thought it was a transitional phase.
Eventually, I realized it wasn't a transitional phase,
that maybe it was just the role I was supposed to play.
That's regrettable,
but it's a social phenomenon that we couldn't escape,
just like everybody else.
You would have to start out differently.
The education of the individual,
or the education we all received, would need to be different
so that we no longer needed a leader.
We aren't there yet.
Our upbringing is different,
so we can't have a group without a leader.
SETTING AN AVALANCHE IN MOTION
- He's crazy. - Why?
He's just too stupid. THE LITTLE CHAOS
- But you're in on it. - On what?
- Making money. - Sure, obviously.
- That's how you do it. - Like in Hollywood.
Well?
I'd like to see a thriller with a happy ending.
After this early short film, the desire for a happy ending for his stories
would hardly ever be fulfilled.
The happy ending was totally foreign to him.
His first film, Love Is Colder Than Death, approaches melodrama.
It portrays a gang of petty criminals, who, according to Fassbinder,
have been set down where they are andjust don't have any choices.
This is conveyed in the use of static shots and slowed-down pacing.
Both the public and the critics were divided over Fassbinder's film debut.
Particularly because the director arranged his characters
as on a fourth-wall stage,
suggesting not so much the stage as such, but spatial restrictions.
In Fassbinder's films, you rarely find a liberating long shot.
They are characterized by images of internal and external confinement.
The signatures ofhis later work are easily recognizable in this first film.
Already discernable are his persistently pursued leitmotivs.
It's a gangster film,
a highly stylized gangster film.
Not much happens.
There's shooting in it,
but it doesn't have any significance.
You use different means in the theater.
Film is more precise.
It's revealed in how the characters relate.
It's a film
which is opposed to stupid love,
to people who are fond of others
without thinking of the consequences.
In my film, love engenders violence
and vice versa.
The first thing I liked about his plays
was their minimalism.
That's what I'm always striving for, too.
Quite instinctively
he created something with minimal resources.
I forgot about him for a while.
I was living in Munich,
around 1 969 or 1 97 0...
and had an English friend staying over.
He was excited about a film he'd seen.
He hadn't understood it all because it was in Bavarian,
and he wasn't sure of the title either.
He said I should go, so I went.
It was Katzelmacher, and I found it very exciting.
In Katzelmacher, the second of four films Fassbinder made in 1 969,
everything seems to be in a state of total inertia.
Nothing happens,
until the desire for something to happen
finds an outlet and a victim in a guest worker.
Seldom was Fassbinder's direction more radical.
Seldom did the visible rigidity of the film so consciously reflect
the emotional stiffness of the characters.
Let's go to the pub.
Why are your films often so imitative?
We recognize scenes from Straub and Melville,
even Schlöndorff.
Everything in life is imitation.
If I move around, or if other people do,
I can examine that closely
and see it's all a form of imitation.
It's very obvious in the uninterrupted shots.
If I make a lot of cuts and take things out,
I can skip over this element of imitation.
If I use uninterrupted shots, I can't. And I think that's right.
It happens involuntarily.
When actors start moving,
you always get the effect of imitation.
And you use this as a stylistic method?
Yes, I have no other choice.
Besides, I think it's right.
Why do you deny yourself the technical possibilities
the camera offers today?
The technical possibilities which the camera offers
only destroy a clear dramaturgy
and spoil the clarity of a film.
If I zoom in a lot
or do a lot of those extreme close-ups the Italians are so fond of,
or change the focus a lot, pan around
or move about with the camera,
it's not a film anymore.
It's just toying around.
They aren't happy together.
Who?
- Paul and Helga. - Aren't they?
No.
In those days I don't think Rainer and I were capable
of developing aesthetic concepts
the way he claimed.
I think he probably exaggerated a bit. CINEMATOGRAPHER
I remember very well how Katzelmacher started.
It's a film comprised entirely of static shots.
It was like that
because we made a virtue out of necessity.
As everyone knows,
those films were all made on a shoestring,
because we had no money.
We borrowed or rented everything we needed.
Then we got the chance
to borrow a 300 Arri blimp,
free of charge from Bavaria Studios,
and a dolly as well.
It was a Fischer dolly, a monster of a thing,
big, heavy and almost impossible to move.
The camera's swivel head
was equally cumbersome and hard to move.
We made a virtue out of necessity
by simply not moving the camera,
because it was just too difficult.
So we did a series of static shots,
and it became a stylistic principle.
I think that in 1 969 Katzelmacher worked well
partly because of its special form.
There are a huge number of static shots in it.
There are ACTOR AND COLLABORATOR
only a couple of dolly shots,
where Rainer is walking with Hanna or Irm,
or where Hanna's with Irm.
Nothing like this had been done before,
and the way they spoke was also quite new for Germany.
I think that's what lay behind the film's success.
You shouldn't mind what the others say.
They're always talking, but they don't mean it.
They can't manage on their own.
You're sweet. I like you.
You can't talk.
That's the best part for me.
It's amazing that in 1 969,
as an unknown and inexperienced director,
he made three or four films a year.
It'd be impossible now.
He didn't hand in any tax deductions,
or start a company or pay any tax.
At the time
we were all busy setting up our own companies
and waiting on the Film Development Board
and the Interior Ministry and the TV networks.
He skipped all that and started shooting,
even if he had no money.
He'd hire or borrow a camera,
and didn't care if he ran up huge debts.
He knew that one day this avalanche
would start something.
He treated himself the same ruthless way.
FASTER THAN ANYONE ELSE
After about ten years of combat -
it's an odd word, but that's how it was -
I said he's the only man I liked working with.
He was a real pusher, PRODUCER
and because he was such a pusher,
and despite his dreadful behavior,
he's the greatest loss of the postwar years.
Fassbinder was a driving force,
and he shook up the young guard
in a positive sense.
Of course he presented a challenge to all of us.
How could he produce so much, so fast and so well?
We asked ourselves why we weren't capable of it
and what his secret was.
I think his secret was that in a strange, intuitive way
Rainer always knew what he wanted.
He never asked anyone anything,
or questioned or doubted himself.
He simply acted out this intuition that he had.
He was faster than anyone else.
Why was he faster?
Maybe because he didn't shoot extra takes for safety.
He always had the complete continuity in his head.
And because...
he wasn't a perfectionist.
He didn't think he had to squeeze out the last drop.
Although he had an exact idea
of what he wanted,
he also liked to use chance events,
things which just happened to turn out.
He often let himself shoot scenes once only,
particularly towards the end of a film.
Maybe he was impatient to get things over with.
It made everyone around him tense.
We knew we wouldn't get many shots at something,
so we'd better get it right the first time.
A lot of things happened because we gave them a go,
because we wanted to be different.
We wanted to be better, faster,
and thirdly, different from everyone else.
It was a basic concept.
Being faster than Godard mattered.
If Godard made three films, Rainer had to make four.
There was another advantage to this.
The critics couldn't keep up.
He wanted to have a new film out
while the previous one was still being reviewed.
What I learned from him was speed, accuracy,
how to cut in-camera, CINEMATOGRAPHER
how to create pacing in-camera.
Those are all skills which stand me in good stead now.
He taught me some invaluable lessons.
I think I learned most of what I know from him.
His interesting technique, CINEMATOGRAPHER
which I try to use in my own films,
of shooting a scene once only,
has always fascinated me.
If everyone knows
that after a rehearsal we shoot a scene
and we try to do it once only,
the concentration of everyone on the set
is quite different from usual,
when everyone knows they can make mistakes
and they can do up to 20 takes.
Shooting once is entirely different.
The effort needed to get it right the first time
sharpens everyone's concentration.
I think this is one of the most fascinating things
I started to do with him.
I try to carry it on now in the same way,
and in my opinion
it's really hitting the nail on the head.
Rainer never believed
in preparing himself for anything.
Sometimes he'd make a sketch, or he'd have an idea,
but usually he took his inspiration
from the moment and from the situation.
He never went to look at locations beforehand.
He said it'd bore him if he knew what to do.
He needed the tension
and the pressure of knowing he had to make decisions
at that moment, on the day.
You had to be very flexible to go along with that.
His restlessness was contagious.
You don't have time to think
or rather, you didn't have time.
You went from one film to the next.
When one was finished, or being edited,
you started preparing the next one.
It was quite reassuring in a way,
because it was a kind of life insurance.
He'd be 1 0 years older now.
He'd have different ideas about what he wanted to do.
He couldn't have gone on as he did.
The industry wouldn't have let him.
Market forces won't let any director make four films a year.
There'd have been resistance.
As you know, television today
isn't the same as it was.
Someone like Fassbinder
would cut a very alien figure
in the television stations of today.
It's unlikely they'd want to cooperate with him
the way we did then
and the way we wanted to.
I don't think today's market would encourage him
to be as productive as he was in those days.
It might have changed him.
He might have planned his films differently.
He might have done more plays.
He was productive in many ways.
He didn't have to depend on films alone.
There were lots of openings for him
and he would have taken advantage of them.
SHE IS ONE NOW
There were a few plays, but we mainly made films.
I made 31 films with Fassbinder myself,
from 1 969 to 1 977,
until I broke with him.
YEARNI NG FOR SODOM
It was very hard for him.
It was the most beautiful, wildest, most chaotic,
and most creative time of my life.
When I get depressed on account of my illness,
I say, ''Look, you had a great life.
How many were lucky enough to work with Fassbinder,
a world-famous director whose films live on?
You had that good fortune
for 10 or 11 years.
You had some bad luck, but you were fortunate.
You always had work.''
It's not as if I hadn't experienced anything.
I'm dying of AI DS now,
but I've already lived my life.
My personal affairs.
THE STATION MASTER'S WIFE
Hanni, dearest Hanni...
it's your fault.
You've ruined me.
You whore,
you piece of dirt,
Hanni, darling.
You Satan, you two-faced she-devil,
you lousy creature, you lousy,
poor darling.
Good, holy Hanni.
Rainer could inspire a lot of confidence in others.
He took people off the street who weren't actors
and said, ''You can do it.''
He took someone and said, ''You're production manager.''
He almost made Lohmann cameraman overnight.
Through the confidence he gave people
they became capable of performing.
I was always afraid I wasn't doing it right,
and so I tried very hard not to disgrace him
for having given his mother a part,
although she wasn't an actress.
I've never been an actress.
Someone once asked him, ''Is your mother an actress?''
He replied, ''She is one now.''
THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN
Mrs. Braun's office.
Hello, Mr. Oswald.
He wants to speak with you.
I said I'm not here.
I'm sorry, Mr. Oswald. She's out of the office.
And I don't want to have lunch with him either.
And she doesn't want to have lunch with you either.
Oh, my God! I'm sorry.
Fassbinder was a mixture.
Some people know exactly what they want.
He knew what he wanted,
but he'd never have been able to do all he wanted
if he hadn't known
how to extract the most from people,
how to make them responsible for what they were doing,
and how to make them enjoy their work.
I'd only just started to learn English.
Sometimes he'd come out with new words
and I'd say, ''I can't say that. I'm not very good at English.''
He'd say, ''Well, you've got half an hour. Learn it and it'll be great.''
He taught me a new word, goggelmoggel.
I could hardly say it, but he laughed all the time, ''Goggelmoggel,''
and he was laughing because I was saying it right.
Hardy for Hermann.
It's my bath day today.
Any objections?
You can bathe any time you like.
Why didn't you bring your dirty washing along?
I'll be really quick.
Here's your goggelmoggel.
That goggelmoggel is my goggelmoggel.
Only one goggelmoggel is yours.
The other goggelmoggel is Hermann's goggelmoggel.
As it's not a chockywocky
I don't care whose goggelmoggel it is.
He'd already done a similar scene
in Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter.
He said he wanted to talk to Fassbinder alone.
That was usually impossible with Fassbinder, but he came alone.
He was dressed in black with a white tie, looking very chic.
They had a long talk about Bogarde's position.
I think Fassbinder understood very well, and of course he changed the scene.
I'd like to know what goes on in your head.
In which one?
I don't understand.
I suddenly received a strange offer
to play the part of a director,
and I decided to do it
although I'm not an actor
and have no ambitions in this area.
I was just curious to know what happens in a film,
when you're acting and Rainer's directing.
I arrived there one day,
and I'd been trying to learn my lines for a week,
but I was never any good at remembering lines.
It was really awful.
I was very spoiled by everyone there.
They always picked me up and looked after me.
One day they picked me up,
and when I got there and it was time for my part,
I couldn't remember my lines, not one of them.
I wondered what would happen.
Well, Rainer looked at me -
he knew me quite well -
and he came up with something
which reassured me in a technical sense.
He put me on a dolly
and told someone to push me up and down.
I just had to put on a director's face
and say two sentences.
I'm sorry. I wasn't concentrating.
Doesn't matter. We'll do it again.
VERONI KA VOSS
Quiet, please. We're shooting.
Blue Skies, 336, take 1 3.
Wait a tip. Your moment.
Cut.
LIKE HEAVEN, LIKE HELL
In front of the mansion of Hohen-Cremmen-
occupied by the Briest family since Prince Georg Wilhelm-
EFFI BRI EST
pale sunlight fell on the quiet village lane.
On the park side, a wing built on at right angles
threw a broad shadow over a paved path,
and a round garden bed which had a sundial in it,
and canna indica and rhubarb planted around the outside.
Fontane's attitude towards this tale,
on the one hand rejecting a society
which produces such things
while on the other hand accepting it,
is the same attitude we have today.
That's why I made the film.
Effi, you should have become a performer,
a trapeze artist, daughter of the air.
I almost think you'd like it.
Perhaps, Mama, but if I did, whose fault would it be?
From whom do I inherit it?
From you, or do you think Papa?
Now that makes you laugh.
Why haven't you made a lady of me?
- Would you like that? - No.
No.
Not so wild Effi, not so passionate.
It worries me to see you like that.
A STORY OF RENUNCIATION IS NEVER BAD
It's said that Fassbinder made films by his gut feelings,
spontaneously and instinctively.
An examination of the film Effi Briest shows how mistaken this is.
From the first to the last shot,
the director is clearly following a carefully planned aesthetic concept.
The camera persistently avoids the sky.
In the entire film there is only one shot that evokes the feeling of freedom.
Instead, Fassbinder cramps his characters visually.
He confines them in a frame,
or sets them against a structure ofhorizontal and vertical lines
which make the world look like a cage.
In the foreground, Fassbinder plays ironically with symbols-
with the entwining ivy as a symbol of fidelity,
but also with the chains as a symbol of Effi's imprisonment.
Even light and dark have symbolic significance.
The women are dressed in white, the men in black.
The effect of the dark outlines of Hohen-Cremmen are reinforced indoors.
The dark frames of the shots impose visual pressure on the characters.
Effi's marriage is intended as a step up the social ladder.
But the first steps she takes towards her future husband lead downwards.
The pictures both portray and interpret the action.
''I must tell you, sweet Effii '' she said, taking her hands.
''I must tell you. ''
''But Mama, what is it? I'm scared. ''
''I must tell you, Effi.
Baron Innstetten has just asked for your hand. ''
On a realistic level, the mirror indicates Effi's vanity,
but it also reflects a closed society which looks only at itself.
The mirror is yet another device to suggest limitation and confinement,
but it also enables Fassbinder
to show the faces ofboth women from the front,
without moving the camera
or having to cut between shots.
Effi's future lover, Crampas, appears.
Nothing has happened between them yet,
but in response to their exchanged gazes
Effi's baby begins to cry.
Fassbinder divides up the following shot visually.
Effi moves from Crampas's half of the frame
into the half occupied by her child, who then stops crying.
Crampas remains on his side until Effi returns
and is reunited with him in his small sector.
He kisses her on the hand and the baby starts to cry again.
Effi moves towards the camera,
separated from her child by the frame of the door.
Finally, her image is divided in three,
and the shot anticipates her coming dilemma.
Rainer always knew just what he wanted.
He was exciting to work with
because he knew that I had an idea for every scene.
I always thought about how to shoot it.
He knew that and it spurred him on.
Sometimes he'd consult me
and we'd often come up with interesting ideas together,
one example of which is now famous -
the 360° dolly shot.
That was when we were shooting Martha in Rome.
It's when the two protagonists first see each other.
At that moment
something happens between them.
I suggested we make a kind of elliptical dolly shot
by starting at one point,
moving around them, and returning to the original spot,
with things happening in between.
He listened and said, ''Good, but we'll do this.
We'll complete the circle
while they're turning in the opposite sense. ''
We had a lot of fun
coming up with ideas, working things out,
and trying complicated and sophisticated techniques
especially in Chinese Roulette.
That's an example
where we had a fairly simple story
and we used the camera
to try to tell the story on another level.
His speciality was to convey the subtext of a scene
very accurately with the camera.
While the characters said one thing,
he told us something else with the camera,
which actually told us more about them.
He had models.
He stole things, too. All directors do.
You just need to steal well and choose from good directors.
All directors do that.
Scorsese, Coppola, everyone.
Sometimes I was surprised
when I saw the original somewhere.
We discussed things together.
We always had an idea about the lighting.
We wanted Maria Braun to open without any color.
That applied to the set, too, which my wife did.
We started with hardly any color.
It came in slowly, the same as the sound.
Quiet at first, then loud construction work,
then the color and the rest.
It was all carefully thought out beforehand.
He knew where he wanted the cuts. EDITOR AND COLLABORATOR
He thought of a film initially as a story
and a series of images.
He knew the shots he wanted-
long shots, close-ups and so on.
He had very precise ideas about all that.
That doesn't mean he said, ''Do this''or ''Do that'.
You couldjust tell what he wanted.
The way he directed
made you realize how he loved editing.
At our first meeting -
and that was in connection with Berlin Alexanderplatz -
we talked about the directors we admired the most.
We sounded each other out
and we found we had one name in common -
Josef von Sternberg.
We reached an agreement about him.
We never said he'd have done this or that
but his name had been spoken.
We knew both of us respected and revered him
and we were automatically drawn in a certain direction,
so under the sign of Sternberg
I tried to devise a special sort of lighting.
This came from my gut, not from my head.
I wanted a certain style of lighting and contrast.
Rainer never interfered with the lighting.
He'd just make very short remarks.
If you asked whether the light was the way he wanted it,
the most he'd say was that it could be more extreme,
or there could be more or less,
but he didn't have precise ideas,
just catchphrases.
Or he'd say, ''It should look like heaven.''
Or, ''Like hell. ''
I SHOOT IN ALL DIRECTIONS
There was this dark room.
Several bodies were lying piled up against a wall.
I don't know if they were dead or alive.
Above these corpses
was sort of an ancestral portrait gallery.
It had oil paintings...
of the grandfather and the grandmother
and also a cameo of Lilo, the mother.
Rainer took a ladder, clambered up
and looked them all straight in the eye.
There was a camera at the very top
and he climbed right up there,
turned around,
and had the camera lens stuck on his forehead.
My dreams, the few I have, are very real,
but the lens, the camera's eye,
was more than just silly.
I think that our generation
after the war-
Rainer was a bit younger than me -
we all had a great deal of trouble
with the eyes examining us when we were children.
We couldn't trust those eyes.
Mother?
I couldn't call yesterday. THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT
Work. You know how it is.
No. I've been up for a long time.
Really?
You never have any peace. But it's good, isn't it?
Where are you going? Miami?
I'm so happy for you, Mother.
Miami's delightful, quite delightful.
And the people there - just a joy to be with.
Six months? Mother, I'm speechless.
Six months. How I envy you!
Six months in Miami.
That wouldn't do me any harm.
Thank you.
Start the drawing.
The sketch is on the easel.
Yes, Mother. Pardon?
Of course I've been listening, but it's a bad line.
Sorry.
Don't be offended, Mother.
The line was crackling.
I'm not lying. You're hurtful, Mother.
Darling?
She's my sister
and this is my flat and my furniture.
She can behave as she wants
because I like her more than I do your friends.
Don't get so worked up. I didn't mean it.
FOX AND HIS FRIENDS I've just been really touchy recently.
We're both touchy.
We're going through a crisis.
It's no wonder, after all we've been through.
Yes.
I sometimes think I'm overworked.
But now that business has picked up,
we could cut down on work.
It would help our relationship.
Eugen, I -
Yes?
- You see - - No, I don't.
But I do.
You see - We could take a holiday.
We could drive anywhere we like.
That's a good idea.
I love you.
This film is interesting
because it's the first film
to deal with homosexuality
without making it into a problem.
It was important for me
to depict homosexuality in this film
without portraying it as a problem.
The story is quite normal
only the characters happen to be gay.
- Don't you want a drink? - I said no.
Out with it.
Okay. I will.
I want to end it, Eugen.
I want out - for once and for all.
Interesting.
You can sneer, but I don't think it's funny.
I've tried so hard to do everything for you.
I've made every effort
but this isn't my world.
It just isn't.
But you've been so happy- on so many occasions.
Yes, yes, yes! I was happy at first.
You impressed me and I thought I loved you
but you were ashamed of me
and your friends despised me.
Don't worry about them. We're the ones who matter.
Yes, it's up to us.
But it's different now. You've changed.
Sometimes I think you want nothing to do with me.
There are pressures on every relationship -
everyday life, work, routine.
If you think we should break up, we can.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
There are a few things to discuss.
For example, the flat. I'll keep it.
- The flat? - Yes, the flat.
I remember when we played the Theater am Turm in Frankfurt.
We were doing Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.
He gave me the script to Mother Küsters Goes To Heaven
and said he wanted me to be in it.
I went to see him.
He was wearing boots and a big floppy hat.
He was into floppy hats then.
He was there staring at me with his little piggy eyes,
and then I said to him,
''I've read the script to Mother Küsters.
I know you're against right-wingers,
left-wingers, and extremists.
So who do you support?''
There was a pause,
then he took his feet off the table,
opened his eyes wide,
and seemed surprised by the question.
Then he replied,
''I see things burning,
things going wrong, things that stink.
To the right or left, up or down,
I shoot in all directions.'' That's Fassbinder for you.
Your husband thought right but acted wrong.
If he'd been with us,
he'd have had someone
who would have explained matters to him.
With you?
I don't understand.
Yes, Mrs. Küsters, we're communists.
We're members of the German Communist Party.
But my Hermann wasn't a communist.
He said that communists are troublemakers.
They destroy what we've built up.
Yes. That's what they tell people about us.
I'll tell you a story that was in the papers.
Strauss said, ''Must you work with Fassbinder?''
''Yes,'' I said.
''I don't mind if you dine with Brezhnev.''
That's how we talked.
The others accepted it and Marianne Strauss said,
''You're right to work with him
if it's good for sales.''
I said, ''Yes, it is.
Lili Marleen, Fassbinder, and Schygulla are names
which have a market value.
There's no other way to get that much value.''
You're right, Adele.
In business you have to hide your aversions.
Anton, here she comes. Out you go.
ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL
Hello, Mrs. Kurowski. Back from your vacation?
Was the weather nice? - Very nice.
It's high time we took a vacation. Where did you go?
Not far. To Steinsee.
I know it. Nice place.
Come in and tell us all about it.
I have a need to tell the stories that I tell.
I don't tell them just because I get to be with people.
That's one aspect of it, but I also need to tell those stories.
Maybe there are other reasons too.
We'd have to work with a therapist for three years.
We'd definitely come across something or another
that could be the reason for it.
In my story, a man called Anton Saitz - spelled with an ''ai'' -
buys a brothel with money he's embezzled I N A YEAR OF 1 3 MOONS
and subjects the girls to a regime of total discipline
similar to what he'd endured in a concentration camp.
A brothel run like a concentration camp
operates smoothly, prospers, and makes Saitz rich.
He's soon rich enough to buy a house.
Then he pulls it down and builds a new one.
He's on his way here
to the sixteenth floor
where he's in charge of a lot of things.
Thank you. You've upset me enough.
Don't forget. Saitz with an ''ai''.
Sixteenth floor.
He painted portraits of West German society,
and of a large city
during a critical period of change.
On stage
he did the same as he did in films.
During a certain period in the history of Germany,
he was the country's most accurate chronicler.
He wanted to locate The Blue Angel
in the Adenauer era
but there wasn't much to say. SCREENWRITERS
And he didn't help us much.
It was the way he worked.
He allotted specific tasks to the people he trusted.
He'd say, ''I want this. Write me a draft.''
And we wrote a draft.
It changed a few things
because he wanted to put The Blue Angel in the '50s.
The draft that we wrote
changed the story a little
because the original conflicts
couldn't be updated to those days.
So the draft turned out differently
but he was happy with it.
Well? Did I promise too much?
There she is. My private whore.
If you weren't so incorruptible, I'd even buy you a night with her.
When in Capri the blood-red sun sinks in the sea
And the crescent of the pale moon looks down with glee
Then the fishermen push their boats away from shore
They know they soon must work with net and oar
And the stars that smile down on them from the sky
Show the way for the boats that good sailors know to ply
And from boat to boat the good old song resounds
Listen closely
How it sounds
Bella Marie
I'll be back tomorrow, be true to me
Don't forget me
See the light appear
Out upon the sea
Distant and unclear
So far from the pier
What in the world could it be
Do you know what's there
Floating through the air
Hundreds of those fishermen
Whose song rings everywhere
When in Capri the blood-red sun sinks in the sea
EVERYBODY HAS THEIR SONG
I got involved in film music,
you could say, to save money.
Rainer's first film, Love Is Colder Than Death,
was almost finished FI LM COMPOSER
when he suddenly had the idea
that there should be music to go with it.
We didn't have any money,
so we couldn't hire anyone to write the music.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder then said,
''You know music.
You know something about it.
So you can write the music for the film. ''
They're letting me out today.
When they let you out,
you can come to us, if you like.
Can you remember the address?
1 29 Hess Street, Munich.
You'd expect
a difficult story to be set to complex music
but that's exactly the method
Fassbinder didn't use.
The most fascinating thing
about working with him
was that he was very interested
in trying out what we musicians call counterpoint.
With counterpoint
the music says something different from the image.
It even seems in direct opposition to it.
Rainer often used this
even before we started working together.
There are examples in his first short films.
There's a scene with a tramp
sitting alone in a beer garden
with hundreds of empty tables.
He's sitting alone, eating a sandwich,
but the music would suit a gala dinner.
It makes you think of a Viennese opera ball.
He often contrasted the image with the music.
It's easier for the viewer
to understand this contrast
if the music- or the type of music-
used in these scenes is familiar.
In Merchant of Four Seasons, for example,
he used the pop song ''Addio Amore''.
It's used to great effect
although it fulfills different functions.
Sometimes the music complements
the emotions of the main character.
Sometimes it's counter to them.
The tension is shown visually in the film
when the protagonist smashes the record,
destroying the music.
Your yearning
Cannot be stilled
When dreams
Fassbinder had certain musical leitmotivs
at different times in his life.
They were usually current pop songs
but they had greater significance for him
than the way some people casually listen to the Beatles
or to Elvis.
Some songs played a very important role for him.
In front of the barracks
Just outside the gate
There once stood a lantern
And if it's still there today
We'll meet there once again
Under the lantern
The song ''Lili Marleen''
was clearly going to play a major role.
Exactly what we'd do with it
wasn't so clear.
We just knew
that the song would perform different functions...
in different scenes.
Before we started shooting, we made various dubs
which would be used in different scenes.
You?
You must be mad.
You're in danger.
Henkel, the tall one, is quite brutal.
In front of the barracks
Just outside the gate
There once stood a lantern
And if it's still there today
We'll meet there once again
Under the lantern
We'll be together
As once Lili Marleen
Clearest of all were his ideas about -
about the scenes
or, let's say, the places in the film
where the music was to be used.
He knew early on
where the music was to begin and to end.
He never shot films with music
but he had it in mind
when he was shooting a lot of the scenes.
Everybody has their song. IN A YEAR OF 13 MOONS
I'd say there is music which expresses what I am.
I've found out that it's the music of Gustav Mahler.
I think he best expresses what I think I am.
I ONLY HAD THIS ALLOTTED TI ME
''If you don't say no, and I'm sure you won't,
you'll have at 20 what others have only at 40.
You'll leave your mother far behind. ''
At 20, he arrived at a place others reach only at 40..
the end of a life completed far too early.
Death was a leitmotiv in his work.
But only today is it startlingly clear how perceptively,
and perhaps even in a self-fulfilling way,
the filmmaker anticipated the circumstances ofhis own demise.
You'll bite the dust. Incognito.
- Kick the bucket. - Good-bye. Good night.
Don't start stinking too soon, will you?
We want to eat after work.
Can't you stay a while?
Just another 30 minutes?
- You'd hate to die alone. - Old woman!
This is to remember me by.
Just twenty minutes more?
It's quite shocking
that in July 1969, when he was 23,
he went to see a doctor.
I produce films properly-
that is, I pay insurance and organize staff medicals.
The doctor said to Rainer,
''You can't carry on like this.
You must drink less, and sleep and exercise more.
You've got a weak heart.
Your whole body is starting to pack it in.''
Rainer laughed it off. He didn't give a damn.
But then, 1 0 years later in 1 97 9 -
and that was about the time the doctor had given him -
it happened.
In those 1 0 years he had pushed himself
more than you'd think possible.
It's simply a fact. Everybody knew it.
- The sky- - Wipe the saliva away.
- Where? - On my forehead.
- What are you laughing at? - It tastes good.
It's all over now.
Thank you.
I have to go to work.
Christ almighty. Corpse!
Come here.
- It was very nice. - What was, you idiot?
Everything.
He always said,
''When you and Ingrid are old, you'll be a little shaky
but you'll still see each other.
I'll be long gone by then.''
He was convinced that he would die young.
I don't know
whether he died young because he pushed himself
or pushed himself because time was running out.
I don't know the answer to that.
THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS
You're going to die, Hans.
You're going to die.
That was one for everyone here.
And one for my mother.
For my sister Heide.
For my brother-in-law Kurt.
For my sister Anna.
And for my daughter.
And...
this one is for the love of my life.
One for the police.
One for my high school.
One for the Legion.
Harry.
You're the only human being
but you're a bastard, too.
We're all bastards.
Hans!
He's dead.
You could reproach us
for not having noticed what was going on
in the frenzy of production.
I don't know. I never understood it.
This restlessness.
He's dead.
There's nothing we can do.
FOX AND HIS FRI ENDS Come on. Quickly.
I don't want anything to do with it.
You can't help him anyway.
There was a sequence in the script
where Veronika was trying to write a note
asking for help.
She writes ''Help'' on a piece of paper.
In the house opposite
there lives a child with Down's syndrome.
The child is watching
and sees a woman who's writing ''Help''.
The woman tries to hold the note up
but falls back.
It was two shots.
I thought they fitted in at the end
and was very keen on them,
but Rainer said,
''She wouldn't call for help. It's the end.''
VERONIKA VOSS
I think there were a few crucial moments
in Rainer's private life
which had a direct influence on his films
and which are very valuable
because he tried to beat his loneliness by working as he did.
Naturally he wasn't always successful.
We therefore commit the body of Franz Walsch
to the consecrated ground.
For dust thou art, GODS OF THE PLAGUE
and unto dust shalt thou return.
May the Day ofJudgment prove not a day of fear.
Pray, all of you who mourn for his poor soul,
that he may pass through purgatory to purification.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ
who returns to the Father all those who stray
and cleanses us of all unrighteousness.
Amen.