Ever since I first saw my first Rainer Werner Fassbinder movies in college, I have considered him my favorite film director. One of the reasons I studied German language and culture was to understand his movies and the place they exist in. Regardless of many outrageous and horrifying stories about his interactions with cast, crew, and/or loved ones, Fassbinder’s sheer productivity and vivacity is highly inspirational. As Ian Penman wrote in his recent book Thousands of Mirrors, “Perhaps I really should have taken someone else as a role model: someone in it for the long haul, not a tyrannical child.” (162) Fassbinder appeals to that impatient, ecstatic, idealistic part of humanity that is a facet of youth, but in our contemporary tumultuous time, his films continue to tell the truth about macro political structures and micro interpersonal power dynamics.
I have written about the director and his films very little as of yet, which is why I am focusing on a handful of them for this month’s writing. His early career emerged with a number of gangster films with a very low budget, Brechtian sensibility. Almost all of his cinema has something to do with the working class and the highs and lows they go through while stuck in an existence they have little control over. Just as ubiquitous are the queer characters in RWF’s films. Some movies are explicitly about gay and lesbian characters, like The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Fox and his Friends (1975), and Quarelle (1982), but queer sensibilities still permeate the films that are about supposedly heterosexual people. On top of this, there is a remarkable trajectory of how Fassbinder portrays women, from the static, potentially misogynistic sex worker caricatures of his early films, to the engrossing, sensitive, and complex portrayals of women in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland trilogy--Hanna Schygulla in The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978), Barbara Sukowa as Lola (1981), and Rosel Zech as Veronika Voss (1982). The endless, interweaving themes and qualities of Fassbinder’s films could be studied over a lifetime.
I encourage you to become a paying subscriber to The Left-Hand Path in order to aid the continuation of my writing practice. About half of my posts that are over six months old are now paywalled, so the $6 monthly subscription allows for access to all of these archives, as well as the ability to comment on posts. In the second half of 2024 I plan on adding some additional podcast-like material to the substack in addition to the usual critical film writing. These will include special guests brought in to discuss monthly themes including even more Fassbinder, more silent cinema homages, boutique disc label releases, and maybe even some erotic ghost stories.
Penman, Ian. Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors. London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2023