When Rainer Werner Fassbinder died at age 37 in 1982,
he left us 44 films and TV series.
What counts is the body of work you bequeath, he believed.
It must say something about the era it was made in, or it's worthless.
His films touch on the greatest fears and taboos of Germans.
No other German director was as productive,
controversial and obsessive as Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
My goal is to make films that are perfect,
that are indistinguishable from French, Italian or American films,
but that remain personal reflections of their maker
and cannot be mistaken for anyone else's work.
I knew I'd make films. I knew it...
from the age of 12.
For me it was just a matter of time.
I did various things,
a little acting, a little writing.
Ravioli!
I spent two years in drama school.
Filmmaking was what I knew least about, so I liked it best.
That's the backstory.
I'm used to a big camera. I haven't mastered this small one yet.
Voila!
He'd die laughing to see me now.
- Lucy! - I'll empty the water.
- What water? - That water.
You're lying. Come closer.
What did you want? Stand up for yourself. Look at me.
I remember we had to perform these exercises at school.
ACTRESS
What school?
It was a private school where I ended up by chance.
I didn't know I wanted to become an actress.
Then I noticed this boy.
Somehow he was both touching and intimidating at the same time.
Both vulnerable and...
predatory, rapacious.
He was this mixture...
Everything he did, he did unlike anyone else.
I met Fassbinder through a friend
who was at drama school with him.
She said to me,
ACTRESS
"There's an actor coming over, Rainer Werner Fassbinder...
to do a kind of reading.
Want to come?"
I remember he smoked 100 cigarettes
and read from a novel. I was electrified.
Whatever hurts me feels good.
How many people came?
Maybe three.
And what was so electrifying?
The focus, the intensity, with which he read...
It electrified me. It was completely new to me.
A few weeks later, Christoph Roser called me at the office where I worked
and said, "You see,
Rainer would like to... He's shooting a short film...
We have no money, we're very sorry..." But would I act in it?
I thought I'd pass out. I was completely rattled. And...
Why?
I was so excited. It was all new. I felt out of my depth.
But we shot it,
and from that moment on I was under his spell.
- Really? - Yes!
The way he talked to me,
told me to do this, do that, and demonstrating...
He showed me how to deliver each of my lines.
And it was more intimate than anything I'd done.
It was amazing.
No one had ever spoken to me like that before.
Not as he did. It was absolutely unique.
Then he moved into my apartment.
I was with him day and night.
It was exhausting. We never went to bed before 4am.
We never slept more than three or four hours.
We were always on the move.
We saw all the American B movies. Four a day.
Then we'd go to a bar.
We'd drink Coke. Fassbinder drank no alcohol then.
- Only tea or Coke. - Really?
Yes. For years. It wasn't until '74 and the Theater am Turm
that he used alcohol or drugs.
In '67 I met a fellow student from drama school
who said she was playing Antigone at the Action-Theater,
and that I should come and see it.
As it turned out,
I was standing at the bar after the performance,
and the director, Peer Raben, joined me.
He said he was looking for actors with a Bavarian accent, and...
we decided we'd see how well we worked together.
He had someone drop off a note in my mailbox.
I don't know if it was his handwriting. I hadn't seen much of his writing.
All it said was,
"Do you want to play Antigone? The premiere is in two days."
It went really fast.
You had to play both Antigone and in the chorus.
In the chorus you just copied what the others did.
And then in your moment as Antigone,
you weren't told much more than, "Do what you want...
And you can do very little, too. That also works."
Who was directing?
Peer Raben.
Yes, he was really...
the most important one there.
He was... Later he did lots of music,
but at times he was also Fassbinder's lover.
I was overcome with ecstasy in the moment -
the ecstasy of acting, I mean -
as soon as the spotlight fell upon me,
and I suddenly realized, "Right!
That's just the feeling I've been looking for!"
From then on I was part of it.
They moved, suddenly called themselves Antiteater.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR/ACTOR
They had a play, The Beggar's Opera.
There was a drummer in it who would beat his drum
and say a few lines. That was my in.
I'd never heard of Fassbinder.
The first time I saw him
he was bent over laughing at my performance.
Because I spoke extremely slowly
and looked like, the revolution incarnate...
moustache, sideburns, leather coat. Like from the Gestapo.
He'd just sit there bent over laughing with Hanna.
It never occurred to me that they were laughing about me.
In the meantime, for my parents' sake,
I was continuing my studies.
They would've worried.
With Fassbinder of all people!
- Why? - He was the bogeyman.
Really?
He was the bogeyman of the middle class.
I used to write short theatre and film reviews for a Hamburg paper.
ACTOR/DIRECTOR
And I was sitting there
in what was half theatre, half bar...
He hung out there. I thought, who is that?
He looked like some guy who'd just dropped by...
But then he became, in fact,
the central figure of the Action-Theater.
He can do anything. He'd be excellent as von Schmettwitz.
He's only directing.
The major is forceful.
He imposes his decisions.
You have to play the way he wants, not as you would.
You could feel that he had begun
to dominate the Action-Theater troupe.
At one point I realized he was the engine behind the whole thing.
The way he directed...
I'd always thought that Willi, Peer Raben, was the boss.
And he was at first, but Rainer more or less took over.
That's how society is. Those in charge don't have the money
so that everyone can be on the payroll.
So almost everyone also has to have a day job.
Only a few of us are always available, so we're the ones who are involved.
Why do you call it Antiteater?
Is it experimental, or anti-theatre?
It's more than just anti-theatre.
- Anti what? - Oh, anti-state.
Anti...
Anti-violence, war...
It was this grand longing
to change this capitalist, fascist, warmongering world.
LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH
He wanted to make films. That was clear.
And...
It's about chance encounters.
He met Ulli Lommel.
And then they got money
from an heiress to the Bosch fortune, 10,000 marks.
I was very convincing
when asking people for money
because I was so convinced about him.
I knew... I always said, "He's a genius.
He's a genius. You have to give him money."
- You knew that? - I was certain of it, that he's a genius.
Darling!
- Can I help you? - Do you have steel frames?
- Steel frames? - I don't...
- Do they suit me? - I don't know. Maybe.
They're nice, yes.
- Can I finally get help? - Yes sir?
- Just tell me if you have steel frames. - I don't know.
Wait your turn!
- She only... - Fine.
I'm looking for a pair of round glasses,
like the cop in Psycho has.
The one who finds Janet Leigh's car.
- You know? - What lousy service!
- I'm only human. - Steel frames.
- Steel frames! - Yes.
If you don't have those, what do you have, doll?
Our selection is limited. We're a department store.
Thanks a lot.
I let him do whatever he wanted.
Because of course I realized
how far ahead of us he was creatively.
It hadn't escaped my notice that...
he had something.
There was never any hesitation in him.
Often I didn't understand what he wanted.
His stagings were so foreign to me.
Even when it was about nasty little backstabbers,
he'd want to give it something
that went above and beyond that.
Maybe he'd have wanted to make love stories
if he'd experienced that kind of thing himself.
But there must have been a lot of gaps to fill,
the absences of the central figures in his life,
his mother, his father and everyone...
His mother?
The way I saw his mother?
I found Lilo...
Of course it didn't escape me
that we resembled each other a bit.
You can see it in this book he made for her.
And I saw it here.
So there must have been something to it.
And this book of his poems
was also an act of tenderness for his mother
that was probably not possible to express directly.
Because first off she was aloof,
and second always sick and away in a sanatorium.
Then she took a husband who was never close to him.
They constantly gave him money to go to the cinema.
And so the cineaste was born.
The 19th Berlin International Film Festival
presents the German feature film Colder than Death.
Eventually the film was finished.
We sent a rough cut without any sound to the Berlinale,
and it was invited to the 1969 Berlin competition.
This simply confirmed for us everything
we'd hoped and expected.
The deft camerawork captures black and white contrasts
while exploring every shade of gray
from deepest dark to blinding, dissolving white.
- Mr Fassbinder, good luck with your film. - Thanks.
It'll be quick, simple and unconventional.
- Bye, Mr Fassbinder. - Thanks.
Boo!
Shit!
I have the honor of introducing the film's star and its director...
Ulli Lommel and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Did you like it?
Where's the director?
We wanted the film to make millions.
We thought it would be an international success.
We were convinced it would be a huge hit.
That's the only way you can survive a production like that.
Of course he was bitter.
Sure he was angry and bitter.
But he wasn't going to give up on his potential and slink off,
his tail between his legs, saying, "I quit." It was just taking off.
Harry! If I'd known, I'd have taken the afternoon off.
Know what I was thinking on the way over?
Someone who'd never do what we're doing is Rainer.
He'd say, "Here, stick it!"
Hey there!
I'm not doing an interview with a director! No way!
He used to say, "No one takes care of me, either."
Which wasn't true. Everyone did.
I wanted to make Baal. I was in pre-production
and looking for someone for the lead.
Anyway, Rainer screened the answer print
DIRECTOR
of Love is Colder Than Death...
at a now-defunct cinema on Thierschstrasse.
I saw the film there.
And it was clear that his screen-presence was so strong...
I didn't need to do a screen test or anything.
We quickly agreed.
The condition was I'd hire as many of his people as possible.
He said, "If we rehearse for two weeks," as I'd suggested,
"then film for three, I'm gone five weeks.
What will my troupe do?
They need to eat. I have to feed them somehow."
So I cast a lot of them in roles I hadn't yet filled.
He also wanted his people to come and see all the rushes,
the first cut, the second cut...
They all had to come, both cast and crew.
He wanted them to learn from it.
To him it was like a big workshop.
Was he difficult when his people were around?
His worst tantrum was...
when he saw that taxes had been deducted from his wages.
He ripped it all up, threw it away,
and told me, "I can't work like this.
Everything gets paid gross, not net!"
And that's how he produced his next three or four films,
like the previous ones.
He didn't keep a single receipt or anything.
In fact that saved him.
A few years later, when people realized it,
the taxmen had no evidence against him.
Colleagues like Schlondorff...
who'd prepared Baal, and then started shooting three days later...
When he saw it he was blown away.
Because five weeks after his last film screened...
at the Berlinale, there was already another.
I always said, and still do,
if you have to make films, then you make them.
Where in Greece are you from?
- What town? - Piraeus.
- Aren't there any jobs there? - Jobs, yes, but no money.
It's a political statement, too.
This Greek who comes here from Greece
and steals our women, in a manner of speaking,
and fucks better than us...
We are depicted as dumb, awkward, backward Bavarians,
who gang up and give the Greek a beating.
What?
I see it as a protest against the stupid reactions at the Berlinale,
where the critics went on about
how static it was, the shots were so slow.
So I made Katzelmacher even more static and slow.
Besides which, it was right for the material.
With Rainer Werner, it had to be unique.
And in that respect I think Rainer Werner
belonged to a German and European art tradition...
You have to create something that's never before been done.
Aesthetically, too.
Dietrich Lohmann told me
how a reel of Katzelmacher had been incorrectly exposed.
God!
And Rainer Werner said,
"That's wonderful, a first. Incorrectly exposed.
Everyone will think it's intentional."
We won the German Film Award for Katzelmacher
and gained a certain popularity.
At a certain point Fassbinder was even very visible in the press.
Back in the early days...
HEAD OF WRD TV (65-79)
both in public and in private,
Fassbinder was a kind of anti-hero.
He played the part... He always behaved like a rock star...
a sullen, temperamental rock star
with a certain tangible aggression,
in a leather jacket and all,
playing the big shot.
So he came to see us at WDR.
It can't have been easy for him to meet with us TV people,
whose money he wanted and needed
in order to make his films.
But he came and we talked.
I asked if he'd like a drink. He said, "I wouldn't mind a whiskey."
Then he spent, I don't know, an hour with me.
And in that hour
he smoked at least 20 cigarettes
and drank half a bottle of whiskey.
From every side, particularly WDR TV and its subsidiaries,
there was always money coming in.
Films cost money, after all.
And...
that's how so many films got made.
This frenzy of production...
we experienced it as something that became more and more focused on him.
Do you think that the qualities of the author, director,
and all-round man, Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
Munich's poster boy of the subculture,
will lead to a Fassbinder inflation?
Absolutely. No doubt about it.
GODS OF THE PLAGUE
THE AMERICAN SOLDIER
THE NIKLASHAUSEN JOURNEY
WHY DOES HERR R. RUN AMOK?
BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE
There's an energy,
a necessity -
it has to come out -
and the strength to articulate them.
And he'd mastered the instruments
to do so. And it was obvious
he'd go his own way.
It wouldn't work with a 30-man crew.
It worked because
the actors also had other jobs to do.
Kurt Raab was a brilliant actor, and also the production designer.
Mr Baer was an amateur actor, who'd do anything for a part,
and also worked as assistant director or production manager.
Everyone had two or three functions,
and as a result they could work very quickly and efficiently.
The sense of community was very present.
At Stollbergstrasse we really tried
to live as a commune.
It was fascinating, the discussions...
What we would do and how was discussed beforehand.
We had a big flat.
First a small one with Peer Raben and Stratz and me.
- In one small flat? - Yes, for a while.
Then we lived near the Nymphenburger canal,
just Peer Raben, him, me,
and Stratz sometimes stayed. It was a bigger place.
I often visited the villa, of course, and the apartment in Lehel, but...
I was...
It was good I didn't live there.
We would have killed each other.
I wouldn't have had the emotional strength
to live 24 hours a day with an entire troupe
and to participate in working out group conflicts,
plus do my own work, and make all that the centre of my work.
I love him.
More than ever!
I can't exist without him in my head.
I first met him on the production of The Coffeehouse,
ACTRESS
a play adapted from Goldoni.
It was based on that, although the dialogue,
as far as I can remember,
was strongly based on his own intuition.
It was a really important experience for us,
seeing that it was possible
to work with actors who were not group members,
to create something special, specific and original.
He gave me the leading role in everything we did...
and I slowly found my way.
That all sounds so harmonious.
Yes... No, no.
Well, it was more like... More like...
a sort of education.
For example, he...
It was really mean of him, cruel.
At night, after our performances, after we'd appeared on stage,
he'd take a piece of paper and fold it several times,
write our names, and each of us had to mark the other actors
on their performance that evening.
And we'd all enter our marks.
Then we'd unfold the sheet
and see who had won.
Most of the time I won.
It was so awkward. They were all...
so afraid of him.
They'd try to mark the way he wanted.
THE AMERICAN SOLDIER
Oh, it's...
Isn't this The American Soldier?
The role of Ricky, the German-American Vietnam vet,
was written by Fassbinder for Gunther Kaufmann.
He met him doing Baal,
and wanted him, but Gunther kept a distance.
Gunther was married, and...
Fassbinder was hot for him, for this black man.
What's he doing there?
There I am.
I didn't realize I was naked so often.
It was never shown...
The scene isn't in the film.
It isn't in it?
I quit the film because I couldn't stand being naked so much,
and filmed from below, you know.
He interrupted filming...
because he couldn't use the scenes with us in them.
He chose then to announce
he was marrying Ingrid Caven.
We should never have married.
We got on better before and after
than during our marriage.
A strange mechanism took over,
one I wouldn't have expected with us:
It was this weird possessiveness
that strangely took over.
After our divorce...
it disappeared again.
They came here after the wedding, he and Ingrid.
Both came here that day.
With Kaufmann, too.
They were already...
Ingrid, at least, was sloshed.
She suddenly said,
"Just so you know, we have great sex together!"
I wanted to sink into the ground
because OK, you can do sexual things.
But you don't talk about them.
He had a real relationship with Ingrid.
And he had one with Kaufmann, too. He wanted to have both.
Then Kaufmann went back to his wife.
He was married, after all.
When Rainer found out,
he fired him.
You cow! You're as lousy as some third-rate ham actor.
Katrin, you take the role!
I knew nothing about homosexuality.
I didn't realize he was homosexual.
And anyway he was bi.
That is, he was...
I mean, he was a real man.
I didn't think, "He's weird, homosexual."
He invited me to Paris.
Of course he tried to get it on in our hotel double bed.
I turned away, I didn't know how to respond.
It was alien to me.
The next day he rewarded me with a trip to the sauna.
A gay sauna, of course.
I had no idea what was up.
I found myself surrounded by five or six French and Arab men,
each latched on to one of my orifices. So I fled,
and landed in the arms of an older man.
That was my first time.
But it was the only disagreement I had with him about that.
What happened? He'd taken you there to...
He watched, amusing himself royally. I could hear him laughing.
That's when we filmed the group's swansong.
What was it called?
Beware of a Holy Whore.
Each of us wondered if we were the holy whore.
He gave everyone someone else's voice.
But he left me mine.
For example, he gave Magdalena Montezuma
- Irm's voice. - Not just her voice.
- The role, too. - The role, too.
He had himself played by someone else, too,
while he played the production manager.
You exploit me, then leave me high and dry.
You terrorize me, you bastards! You're killing me!
I hate you! Korbinian!
I want ten Cuba Libres! Ten, do you hear?
I kept abreast of things by phone,
the goings-on in Sorrento or wherever it was.
The pattern was always the same: humiliation, praise, praise, humiliation.
Create dependency, exclude, then accept back into the group.
An endless cycle of emotional power struggles.
Of course he knew perfectly well,
these power struggles simply reflected
what takes place everywhere in society.
Which is why he never had moral scruples
about really laying into you.
He said, "I'm only doing what constantly happens in society."
If someone was on the floor whimpering,
he'd say, "You coward, why are you whimpering?
Why don't you get up and defend yourself?"
You know, make a fist and fight.
The film sets were often battlefields.
I wasn't involved because I didn't belong to the clique.
I was never dependent on him.
Of course, as part of his group...
you were dependent on whether he would think of you when casting his next film,
whether he had a decent part for you.
So you clung to these hopes and to his every word.
Anyway, directing is about playing God.
Everyone does what you tell them to.
And so...
it's easy for them to become your creatures.
Fassbinder was a man with many people in his thrall.
It's not an expression people use anymore.
"Enthralled."
Here you have a better chance of having fun at work.
Try to understand.
That's true, but we're still dependent on you.
And dependency leads to the same fear we'd fled from.
Why are you dependent?
I think it's an example of the group psychology you often see.
Selfish alpha animals
who attract packs around them.
Maybe such people do exist, the born followers.
Loyal vassals?
Yes?
I guess you could say I was at my...
apogee as an actor.
I needed someone to tell me, "Screw Fassbinder!
Why be at his beck and call as assistant director?"
But there was no such person to give me a shake
and say, "I'm kicking you upstairs."
And for me it was...
I...
I liked working with Fassbinder.
It's not like I was being forced to do anything.
And there was always something to do, that's another thing.
If you can find a lawyer, I think you'd better hire one.
Fassbinder went on making films while losing money.
Cash flow problems led to debts he was slow to shake off.
"Taxes? Why should we pay taxes?
You pigs build tanks so you can...
Forget it!"
He didn't think about the taxmen.
But later they came after him.
He's threatened with prison.
He owes over 200,000 marks.
To bring order to company finances,
Fassbinder's mother, Lilo Eder,
steps in as production accountant.
She dedicated herself to him.
Her husband had passed away,
so Rainer became the one.
TABLE TENNIS FIVE DAYS IN THE LIFE OF A CHILD
It takes place at Schwedenheim boarding school.
The mother tries to make the school seem appealing to him and the girls...
You can tell that Franz is Fassbinder's alter ego?
Certainly. Immediately.
It's obvious that he is Franz.
"Franz is carrying two suitcases. Mother: It's nice here, isn't it?
Trees, lots of green.
Franz: Why not move in here yourself?
Mother:
Why are you always so mean, Franz? You know my life isn't easy.
Franz: Sure. No one's life is easy.
Mother: But things are much better than they were."
He was always on the lookout for stories.
He would always, or often...
carry a little notepad
and make notes so he'd remember things.
That's why he always kept to one side.
Judging from what I read here, it was to observe events better.
"Helga:
So I said he should tell me, 'I love you.'
Waltraud:
Well? Did he say it?
Helga: No.
I think that's mean.
I don't.
This way I can go on thinking he loves me.
Right. Love."
Very realistic in terms of life there.
- Yes? - Yes.
Though I don't know about the bit with his mother.
I didn't know her, so I can't judge their relationship.
"The mother brings out the letter. Franz reads it.
Franz: Given this situation,
we can no longer keep your son at our school.
Mother: Do an apprenticeship, become a respectable youth.
I always hoped you'd turn out to be respectable."
In your opinion, did he turn out respectable?
The way he did his thing, practiced his profession,
yes, he turned out respectable, like his mother wanted.
THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT
MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS
JAILBAIT
EIGHT HOURS DON'T MAKE A DAY
MOTHER KUSTERS' TRIP TO HEAVEN
I ONLY WANT YOU TO LOVE ME
I don't like to speak badly of him,
even though he was no angel.
Yet he was an angel, too.
For most of us, most of those involved with him, he made life...
much more interesting than it had been.
"You're probably in bed with a girl right now.
Or is it a man again?
You're stroking her smooth skin and hips...
her thighs, belly, breasts... You kiss her hair, eyes, the...
Shit. Stop. I can't stand it.
When you didn't come, didn't smile,
didn't speak of love...
When I had to give up thinking of you as something real,
I said to myself,
'l have to die to make him love me."'
What can you say?
A powerful text. Wonderful.
To me it's great poetry.
Great writing.
Any idea who it was meant for?
AGONY
Yes, I can imagine who.
It dates back to then, I think.
Just imagine, his big black hands on my white skin.
And those lips!
You know, Negroes all have thick, warm lips.
Don't faint, darling!
Stop staring, you cow! Bring the newspapers!
What I didn't know then, and Willi didn't tell me,
was that it was all an analysis of Rainer's love life.
I didn't know that.
What do you mean, Rainer's love life?
Because he was Petra. Rainer was.
I didn't know that.
We said we'd be honest with each other.
But you can't take it.
You want to be lied to.
Yes.
Lie to me.
Please lie to me.
Fine. It's not true.
I spent the night walking alone,
thinking about us.
Really?
That's not true?
Of course not.
I did sleep with a guy.
But it doesn't matter does it?
No, no.
Of course not.
But...
I don't understand.
Really.
I don't understand.
Why?
Don't cry, Petra.
Look, I like you. I love you, but...
But it's obvious.
I need a man from time to time.
That's how I am.
There were no explanations and no rehearsals.
He wanted the people who interact to be individuals.
I think Rainer always wanted
to let people be as different as possible...
so as to somehow...
characterize and maybe even denounce them.
I liked that, I thought it was great.
Drawing characters so clearly that they're also being denounced.
I simply took in what Margit was saying.
And then I reacted to it.
That's easy for me,
reacting to what other people say.
In those nine days of shooting,
he made a total wreck of me.
Time after time he managed to reduce me to tears.
The poor makeup artist had to keep redoing my makeup
because the tears were streaming.
He reduced me to a mental state
of complete depression for those nine days.
- Though it wasn't necessary. - How did he make you cry?
By divulging intimate details in front of 50 people.
It was a game he liked to play. Not just with me.
One time he threw me by telling me to learn a text by heart...
It was this long. And that was right before the shoot.
I was supposed to learn it in minutes,
memorize it, you know.
Impossible.
You're in such a state after that,
one you could never portray.
You're suffering horribly.
I am so screwed.
Dear God, what did I do to deserve this?
Whatever did I do?
Karin?
These women...
There's this wonderful quote from James Cagney.
He once said to an actor,
"Learn your lines,
find your mark,
look people in the eyes,
tell the truth
and don't bump into the furniture."
That's really...
And that was always my approach as an actor.
Are you in or not?
- Sure. - Well then.
I never thought about
what the character's backstory is,
what he ate for breakfast...
To me, all that Stanislavsky crap is...
Also, I don't like working with amateur actors.
Because...
Because I'm trying...
to develop a form of acting together with the actors
that you cannot develop with amateurs.
And it involves a development from one film to the next.
Besides the fact that I like working with actors only as long
as a director is inspired by the actors and vice versa.
Due to the influence and intrusion
of actors from outside
and so-called stars,
he distanced himself from me, of course.
That is, I was a burden from the past...
you might say.
WORLD ON A WIRE
The group around Rainer, and Rainer himself...
The whole thing was like a machine.
Like with road construction. It advances slowly but surely.
And...
while one film was being shot,
the next was in development.
It would go into pre-production, usually under Kurt Raab.
And since something had been developed,
it was then ready to shoot.
So you'd jump from one project to the next.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER
Meanwhile, you'd keep working on it
so the material would mature and you'd be ready to start.
That's how it was when we said,
"Now we'll write World on a Wire."
We did it like this:
One Friday evening around 6pm we flew to Paris,
because at the time it was Rainer's favorite city.
Saturday and Sunday we worked on the script,
and on Monday caught the first flight back to Bochum.
If everything has gone according to plan,
he's in a straitjacket by now.
We'd actually intended
to write a simple, taut thriller.
We thought we could do it.
And we wanted to have fun, too.
Back then we always managed, while working, to have fun.
Really.
We were young, we were both 27.
And...
we thought, we can do this. And we could.
It was a huge adventure for me, being with this madman...
whom others saw as a firebrand.
It was fascinating
and gave you access to a world you would never otherwise enter.
The guy was so charming
and yet such a stinker...
a tyrant, a manipulator.
Terrible.
But amazing, too.
Do your stories inhabit you long before you film them?
Usually, yes. Most of the stories
are there for a couple of years.
Two years before Ali: Fear Eats the Soul,
Fassbinder has Margarethe von Trotta tell the following story...
Happiness isn't always funny.
There was once a cleaning woman.
Her name was Emmi, she was 60 or 65.
One day,
on her way home, it started pouring.
So she goes into a bar,
a bar for immigrant workers.
She sits down and drinks a Coke.
Suddenly a man asks her
to dance with him.
He's really tall, has very broad shoulders.
And she finds him handsome
and dances with him.
Then he sits down with her
and talks to her.
He says he has nowhere to stay,
and Emmi offers to let him stay with her.
He goes to her place and sleeps with her.
And a few days later
he says they should get married.
Why cry?
Because I am so happy and also full of fear.
Not fear. Fear not good.
Fear eat the soul.
Fear eats the soul.
That's beautiful.
With Fear Eats the Soul,
I'd been close to the Moroccan lead for two years.
And a lot of what's in the film is the reaction
of other people to us.
I've got married.
Come in.
This is my husband.
El Hedi ben Salem m'Barek Mohammed Mustafa.
I call him Ali.
- Mom! - But...
Come, Eugen. We're not staying...
in this pigsty!
He was Rainer's partner at the time.
You know, boyfriend, lover, whatever.
And...
he had to be there, bored stiff of course.
He had a sense of honor, a very strong sense of honor,
and he insisted on working, on participating,
not just sitting there in the corner as Rainer's lover.
Rainer had to go along.
- Do you fancy him? - He looks solid.
At least he's well dressed.
Judging by his nose and hands, he must be well hung.
Marry him if you want, be my guest!
The story has a sad ending.
When Rainer Werner couldn't take El Hedi anymore,
someone arranged for him to be...
sent by the authorities to Paris, to France.
He eventually ended up in prison and died there.
Actually,
it's pretty macabre, right?
Here was this once calm guy,
who couldn't get along with people in the West.
Who knows what would have become of him if he'd stayed back home?
In 1974, Fassbinder comes to Frankfurt's Theater am Turm
to save it from impending closure.
Though hired as its director,
he has no interest in managing budgets, PR,
or the dogma of collective decision-making.
He and his troupe hijack the stage.
REPRESENTATION A CAPITALIST CON?
I think he staged only one play.
I learned during rehearsals
and then performances
that Rainer was far more sensitive than I.
Jean is actually the one who torments Miss Julie.
But he played him as this really sensitive individual.
He played it so subtly.
Incomparable!
I can imagine that
in a theatre which depends on municipal and state funding,
you can grasp a great deal about political processes at work in a city.
And I am sure you can develop from this...
you can develop themes that are both true for Frankfurt
and also relevant in any political discussion.
To him it was important
that he write the play Garbage, the City and Death.
I don't know how long he spent on it.
It's wonderfully written and structured.
A weird take on city life
that suggests the involvement of Jewish speculators
in the tearing down of old buildings in Frankfurt.
Someone assumed
that the Frankfurt real estate shark in the play had to be Ignatz Bubis.
The very word "Jew" was taboo.
So there was this sudden outcry
from every classroom
all the way to... the editorial offices of Die Zeit.
He'd thought it all through, of course.
He didn't suspect it would blow up like that,
that the reaction would be so extreme,
and the play even banned.
It was a real political scandal.
And it gave him a reason to leave.
He wouldn't have written a play if he imagined
it would never be staged in Germany.
But what he always did consider
was a theme's relevance.
And the theme was relevant.
To me it simply somehow confirmed the fact
that once you create something,
it is then treated
in a way you can no longer influence.
All the same,
the accusations naturally made me quite sad, since...
as you said, I think that in everything I've done
I've made it fairly plain
that such an accusation
simply doesn't apply to me.
FEAR OF FEAR
SATAN'S BREW
CHINESE ROULETTE
THE STATIONMASTER'S WIFE
WOMEN IN NEW YORK
GERMANY IN AUTUMN
October 1977.
After RAF members fail to forcibly secure the release of their three leaders,
the latter allegedly commit suicide in their cells.
Fear of more terrorist activity
leads to incommunicado confinement, and persecution of RAF sympathizers.
Germany is close to a state of emergency:
One of the FRG's worst ever crises.
We all felt we had to react.
Because our generation
and the image of our generation were at stake.
But while we were still talking,
Rainer was swiftly filming his own contribution in his apartment.
I don't know. They had a gun and shot themselves.
Nobody knows how the weapons got inside.
An international commission has to investigate
whether it was suicide or not.
It...
shocked all of us deeply when we saw it.
We said, "You can't put that in our film.
At best it's a Fassbinder film, but not one of our collective's films."
You might even literally say
that the high intentions of the film are fouled up
by his sitting around completely naked,
being provocative like that.
But Alexander Kluge recognised at once
that it was the most important contribution to the matter.
When the pilot was shot in Mogadishu or Aden,
you said that for every person shot in Aden,
you want a terrorist shot in Stammheim Prison.
- Yes. In public. - In public?
- Yes. - Is that democratic?
No, it's not democratic. But neither was...
hijacking that plane and announcing,
"We'll shoot them one after another."
What if you'd been on board? Or me?
How would you have felt? You have to consider that.
- An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? - No, not that.
But in a situation like that, democracy won't get you anywhere.
His segment has lost none of its power as a defining document.
The scene of him naked, and the one with him and his mother.
That really is the conversation
that, for generations, was missing in post-war Germany.
Here we have it in its essence.
It was Germany, 1945. The war was over.
There were lots of people from the German East
who had fled the Russians to the so-called West
where the Americans and English and so on were.
Suddenly there were all these relatives
who would normally have had no reason to stay with us
who were there.
My father, a doctor, had his surgery there, too.
On top of that, because we had a very large flat,
my father rented out some of the rooms.
So there was quite a number of adults who were there regularly.
THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN
I relied more on what I could...
what I could remember in terms of emotions.
My mother pulling on stockings, the way she...
I don't know, combed her hair. Things like that.
I used them far more than any photographic material.
I approached the story in very personal terms.
So often women would come up, would run up,
and still do,
to hug me and say,
"Thank you for Maria Braun."
The film was incredibly important for women.
Because for them it was a film where the woman
finally understood she had to step out of the shadows
and that she could control her own life.
But where that led was something they completely blanked out.
They only saw the positive in it,
whereas his take was actually very negative.
- You know each other? - Extremely well.
I didn't notice it all this time.
Because I'm a master of disguise.
A stooge of capitalism by day, an agent of the working masses by night.
The Mata Hari of the economic miracle.
It was a result of being able to divide oneself
into a crass materialist and...
an equally crass idealist.
It was the continuation of German history.
In spite of idealism, there'd been Hitler.
And afterwards, people weren't overwhelmed by grief,
but acted as if nothing had happened,
and grew drunk on the new materialist boom.
The whole thing ended in a sort of...
unreality.
What Maria Braun had saved herself for,
a real life, so to speak, simply did not exist.
The unreal, the transient, had taken its place.
When her husband arrived back and started eating sardines
instead of giving her a kiss,
the disenchantment was complete.
A football game counted more than their reunion.
As did Germany winning again.
And that they were both victims here.
Which is why it all had to explode.
1979. A triumphant Berlinale premiere.
The leading actress and team win two Silver Bears.
The director gets nothing, but "Maria Braun" is a world success:
It's seen as the figurehead of New German Cinema
and runs for 54 weeks at New York's Lincoln Center.
It's no coincidence...
that Wim and I are the only ones right now who are masters of our craft.
That's not arrogant, don't misunderstand me.
But you need that if you want to deal with very personal material.
If you don't have that mastery and get personal,
then you're on a losing foot, you're vulnerable and dilettantish
and subject to the public's rejection in terms of external factors.
My goal is to make films that are perfect,
that are indistinguishable from French, Italian or American films,
but that remain personal reflections of their maker.
I felt an amazing sense of accomplishment.
I'd grasped what it means to edit a film and be one with a director.
EDITOR
To really let go. It was like a dance.
Then he said, "Listen,
sweetheart"
I thought, uh-oh!
And he said, "Hanna looks to... one, two, three...
right, left, cut, cut, cut!"
I didn't make notes, I just listened, in a daze.
I thought, I'm in deep shit!
I muddled my way for two nights, then showed it to him.
About one scene he said, "I said the shot from that angle,
not this one." Fine.
I was being pushed so hard.
I had no time to think, and no one gave me a break by saying,
"Do you follow?"
Or "Need a hand?" That didn't happen.
Armin!
Fassbinder meets butcher boy Armin Meier at his favorite bar.
He becomes his lover and acts in his film.
He's the first person Fassbinder is to set up home with.
I thought, those two, it can only end badly.
And it did. Intellectually, too, of course.
It's my flat!
OK, OK, OK.
Now get out.
Get out, I said!
They split up.
He did it intentionally, out of despair,
because he couldn't cope with the complex question of Armin,
and because he... wanted to work.
In the end Armin realized Rainer didn't love him anymore,
that he wanted to fob him off with a different flat
or the one he was in... and money, whatever.
Armin was found dead in the flat.
The cause is noted in the so-called post-mortem examination report.
Poppers, cocaine, heroin, you name it.
Maybe it was an act of despair, I've no idea.
But he died of an overdose from the whole mixture.
And afterwards, Rainer...
He never went back to the flat, not once.
For him it was traumatic. And he felt guilty.
And he was seen as guilty
by those in the group, which had long since fallen apart.
But there was still "He killed him" and so on.
In the meantime the funeral was held.
The press asked, "ls Fassbinder here?" Of course he wasn't.
For weeks, months, I'd had no news from him.
Then I heard he'd made a film in Frankfurt,
In a Year of 13 Moons.
For but an instant give me back the present!
Concept Script Production Design Editing Camera Directing
Though a man be silenced by pain,
a god gave me the power to say... how much I...
I can't tell you how it was. It was so...
It was so complete. You could feel
how he must have pulled himself together to transpose so much pain in that way.
He earned enough money
that I could stop hustling.
He wanted to provide for me.
I just gave him a start, bought the flat.
But these last years I've lived off him. He wants to make me happy. I know it.
Believe me, Zora, I really tried, but in the end
he admitted he didn't have what it takes.
Still, I helped him secure his chance of survival.
Officially I was his assistant. He wanted to edit.
And that's what we did.
I said, "You edit, I assist." I totally played along.
He splices the black leader at the front, click, click, clock,
removes the first clap, puts it back on the rack.
Then he says, "Like that." And he's gone.
Germany's most expensive TV series of its day, Berlin Alexanderplatz.
This story of fascism's rise has fascinated Fassbinder
since the age of 19.
He has less than a year to film over 14 hours of film
featuring 50 lead roles.
I remember that Horst Wendlandt,
a well-known producer back then...
Sadly he's no longer alive.
He said to me,
"It's impossible!
It's an enormous production.
There's no chance he'll survive it.
You have to sign on another director as backup."
- It was like that? - Yes.
- Why? - Well, because of all of his, you know,
use of drugs and alcohol, and so on...
He was seen as not being up to such an undertaking.
Not up to it physically.
I can only answer...
by saying that right up to the first day of shooting,
he tried everything to get out of directing. And from the first...
- Really? - Yes!
He suggested me, but Xaver Schwarzenberger said,
"I'll only do it with you."
Then he wanted Lowitsch to play the lead.
Complete chaos.
- On Berlin Alexanderplatz? - Yes.
But from day one of shooting he was on top of everything. Amazing!
They were filming a scene with Sukowa, her first ever big scene.
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR/PRODUCER
I was standing around and had to...
- Which episode is this? - No idea.
It must be one of the first scenes.
- When she's brought in. - That's it.
I was standing around and he said to me,
"Now I'll show you how to direct. What it's about."
He sat under the table,
gently laid a hand on her thigh,
very gently, and looked up at her from below.
Franz,
leave politics alone.
I'm not in politics.
And she did the scene fantastically.
Berlin Alexanderplatz,
a series for television
based on the novel by Alfred Doblin.
He more or less dictated it.
He went through the novel,
and then dictated the script, page by page into a Dictaphone.
Then it was typed up.
Eight hundred...
and forty-three.
At least I think so.
Street in front of Fabisch & Co.
Franz, colon:
He has to buy a tie clip to go with it,
and when he's bought one, it doesn't work, he can't clip his tie.
It's a swindle, it embitters people
and pushes Germany deeper into the misery it's already in.
It's a swindle, it embitters people
and pushes Germany deeper into the calamity it's already in.
Thanks.
I'm certain that a precise description of the Weimar Republic,
like Alexanderplatz,
has something to say about our republic,
a republic that I think
is moving to the right like the Weimar Republic did.
And if the next elections go the way I hope they won't,
then I really don't know what'll happen.
There'll still be entertainment.
Not for me in Germany. I'll leave.
- And go where? - To America.
We both wanted that:
To go to New York and find a flat. That was the plan.
FASSBINDER'S PARTNER
But then came the next plan and the next...
VERONIKA VOSS
In Veronika Voss, Fassbinder eyes the draining film industry itself.
He ends the story of a drug addicted star with the death of its heroine.
At the 1982 Berlinale
the film brings its director the coveted Golden Bear.
I once had a film in Berlin I expected a prize for.
Effi Briest. I was surprised when I didn't win.
Nothing surprises me anymore.
He kept getting better,
and kept getting more recognition.
But he realized that wasn't it, either.
And so he struck the pose of the...
exhausted ruler or emperor...
in a state of profound melancholy.
He said, "The worst thing about success is
people aren't really the way they are when they're with me."
It was a combination of many things. There was disillusionment,
combined, no doubt, with lots of stimulants.
Because he'd totally burned himself out.
Maybe it's comparable to pop groups,
who have to go out on stage to sing and rock.
They aren't drinking chamomile tea backstage.
They have to get cranked up.
And if you make five films and every day need new ideas,
you're going to reach for these means.
Plus he had all these yes-men and bootlickers around him...
I really hated that, I saw them for what they were,
what they wanted from him,
and how they ingratiated themselves with him.
Men are crazy about women addicts.
- Need a shot for your comeback? - Naturally.
I thought so.
And how do you intend to pay for it?
With my salary.
Like a man giving a woman a bouquet of roses...
I knew where he'd be
and took him the roses.
I took his hand, kissed it and gave him the roses.
But... I knew he was beyond reach then.
That there was nothing left to...
It was too late.
- Really? - Yes.
Why is that?
Without knowing how deeply into drugs he was,
since he was always very focused when shooting...
There are... I knew there was something
that had got out of hand long ago.
Then let's keep going.
Adio...
Adio amore!
He's someone who led a kamikaze life.
That is, the life of someone who doesn't care about anything.
He just wants to live in the now.
That's what counts. That's why it's called Kamikaze.
He was finished. Wiped out.
There's always a reason if someone takes this or that...
and uses drugs...
There's always a deeper reason.
There was so much pressure...
It took him so long to get the money for Querelle.
And the pressure to have another hit
was incredibly strong.
His only way of coping was... You do a line, feel good...
He has this big glass of whiskey.
It's all in my documentary.
The day goes by and you barely survive.
But by night time...
I always say, if you floor the gas pedal
while pressing the brake, you destroy the transmission.
He wanted out, to get off the roller-coaster.
- And do what? - Just take a break.
He said one time,
"I'm gonna live another life."
It was an interesting sentence.
Very interesting. I asked, "What'll it be like?"
His "I'm gonna live another life..."
And he said, "Well, we'll live a different life."
I saw that Rainer's life was drawing to an end.
It was so hot...
Two Mandrax, two Valium,
that fucking cut cocaine,
and that fucking, that incredibly and unspeakably irresponsible Mick...
All that led to his end. Physically he was healthy.
We turn here, right?
I stayed far away...
Clemensstrasse and the apartment.
I was close by at times but I never went in.
I just couldn't.
Goodness!
There was a door here.
I can't believe it.
Rainer would be bent over laughing.
Sorry, but all this baby stuff!
It's so sweet!
He had a deep longing for a child, a deep longing for...
a family.
But the family naturally wasn't a Mom-Dad-one-baby family.
It was...
Rainer's real wish was for us to live with a man he loved.
I asked him, "Where do I fit in?"
And he said,
"Well, you're the one I love."
We'd agreed we'd each make our own documentary about our films,
not let some TV people do them.
So I went to interview him.
- Sorry? - Fassbinder.
I went to Munich to interview him
the day before his death. He was sitting there...
- The day before? - Yes.
It still exists. We just need to find it.
He was wearing a red shirt, his hat, sunglasses.
He was sitting there, so completely exhausted.
And the next day... He died that night.
Thirty-two years ago,
I left the flat at night to go to the cutting room at Bavaria Studio,
and I came back at 4am... just before 5.
- Where did you find him? - On his bed.
He was lying on his bed.
The TV was hissing.
He had a burned-out cigarette in his hand.
And he was lying there. His head was resting easy,
facing this way, with a smile.
"...found Mr Fassbinder lying lifeless..." Right.
For half an hour she tried to shake him awake.
My God! How awful!
Didn't she say she came to get me?
Wolf wouldn't wake up. I shook him 'til he woke up.
He came over
and lifted him up, and then he said, "He's dead."
What can I say? I knew my whole life was going to change.
Life in... West Germany was going to change.
One of its leading public figures
who had documented German history with "Maria Braun"
and created international understanding for Germany...
His death was the end of a great friendship
and the end of an era.
- You realized that? - Immediately, yes.
And the shock it unleashed, the waves of shock, continued for years.
I think I had to lead the life I led to lead...
I had to lead the life I led to be able to make my films.
I really believed you would stand at my grave and weep over me.
That was childish, too.
I had to accept
that I am alone, was alone, will be alone.
You will not come
to heal, to redeem.
No one will.
Somehow each of us had...
you know, a private relationship with him.
Because he was so existentially linked to each of us
that it had a direct effect on your life.
So all of us had our burden to bear.
And had to come to terms with it.
Me, too.
That's why I left Munich
for West Berlin.
Because I...
It started over whether he should be buried
with other notables in Bogenhausen Cemetery.
The outcry over whether that queer bastard, you know...
should be allowed a grave there.
Think anyone would hire us?
"You? You never did anything for us."
They came crawling while he was still alive.
Begging us to help them gain access to him.
No sooner was he buried than...
What would you say to Fassbinder now if you could?
Thank you...
For such a wondrous time
Thank you for the joy you gave
If he could hear me now,
he'd find it really strange.
Maybe it's exactly the proof of love he always wanted to hear.
If I'd said something like that to him...
It's exactly what you learn every time you lose someone...
That you shouldn't put off things for later
because maybe it'll be too late to say it.
So, all the nice things you can say...
Say them!
Yes.
You're nice, I like you.
You can't say a thing.