Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Fassbinder on the set of Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) with actress Hanna Schygulla in the background.
Born	May 31, 1945(1945-05-31) Bad Wörishofen, Bavaria, Germany
Died	June 10, 1982 (aged 37) Munich, Germany
Occupation	film director, producer, actor and writer
Spouse(s)	Ingrid Caven (1970-1972; div.)

Rainer Werner Maria Fassbinder (May 31, 1945 – June 10, 1982) was a German movie director, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the most important representatives of the New German Cinema.

He maintained a frenetic pace in film-making. In a professional career that lasted less than fifteen years, Fassbinder completed 40 feature length films; two television film series; three short films; four video productions; twenty-four stage plays and four radio plays; and 36 acting roles in his own and others’ films. He also worked as an actor (film and theater), author, cameraman, composer, designer, editor, producer and theater manager.

Underlying Fassbinder's work was a strong provocative current. His phenomenal creative energy when working were in violent contrast with a wild, self-destructive libertinism that earned him a reputation as the enfant terrible of the New German Cinema, as well as being its central figure. He had tortured personal relationships with the actors and technicians around him who formed a surrogate family. However, his pictures demonstrate his deep sensitivity to social outsiders and his hatred of institutionalized violence. He ruthlessly attacked both German bourgeois society and the larger limitations of humanity.

Fassbinder died at the age of 37 from heart failure resulting from a lethal interaction between sleeping pills and cocaine. His death is often considered to mark the end of the New German Cinema.

Early life

Fassbinder was born in Bavaria in the small town of Bad Wörishofen, on May 31, 1945,^[1] three weeks after the Americans entered the town and the unconditional surrender of Germany. The aftermath of World War II deeply marked his childhood and the life of his family.^[2] Fassbinder himself, in compliance with his mother's wishes, later altered the date of his birthday to 1946 in order to enhance his status as a cinematic prodigy. It was towards his death that his real age was revealed confronting his passport.^[3]

Born into a cultured bourgeois family, Fassbinder had an unconventional childhood about which he would later express many grievances in interviews.^[3] At three months, he was left with a paternal uncle and aunt in the country, since his parents feared he would not survive the winter with them. There was no glass in the windows in the family apartment in Munich, nor was there anything that could be used for heating. He was a year old before his mother saw him again.^[3]

Fassbinder’s mother, Liselotte Pempeit (1922-93), came from Danzig (now Gdańsk), from which many ethnic Germans had fled following the occupation of Poland by the Soviet Union. As a result, a number of her relatives came to live with them in Munich. There were so many people living in the Fassbinder’s household that it was difficult for him to tell who his parents were.^{[citation needed]}

From 1946–1951, Fassbinder lived with both of his parents;^[4] he was their only child. His father, Helmut Fassbinder, a doctor with a surgery at his apartment near Munich’s red light district,^[3] saw his career as the means to indulge his passion for writing poetry. The doctor, who had two sons from a previous marriage, did not take much interest in the child, and neither did Liselotte, who helped her husband in his medical practice.^[4] The child was left alone with his mother and his extended family after the dissolution of both his parent’s marriage, when he was six.

Liselotte raised her son as a single parent. To provide for them, she rented out rooms, but tuberculosis kept her away for long periods while she recuperated.^[5] Around the age of eight, he was left in the company of his mother's tenants, but as none looked after him properly, he became more independent and uncontrollable. Fassbinder spent time in the streets, sometimes playing with other boys, sometimes just watching events around him.^[6] He clashed with his mother's younger lover Siggi and even more so with the much older journalist Wolff Eder (c1905-71), who became his stepfather in 1957. Liselotte, who worked as a translator, could not concentrate in his company and Fassbinder was often given money to go to the cinema. Later in life, he would claim that he saw a film nearly every day and sometimes as many as three or four. "The cinema was the family life I never had at home."^[5]

His time at a boarding school was marred by his repeated escape and he left school before any final examinations. At the age of 15, he moved to Cologne to stay with his father,^[7] who had been struck off the medical register, but they argued frequently. He stayed though for a couple of years while attending night school, and earned a living on small jobs and helping his father, who rented shabby apartments to immigrant workers. At this time, Fassbinder wrote short plays, poems and short stories,^[8] frequented gay bars, and had his first boyfriend, a Greek immigrant.^[9]

Theater career

At age eighteen in 1963, Fassbinder returned to Munich. He wanted to go to night school with the idea to eventually study theatrical science. Following his mother's advice, he took acting lessons and, from 1964-1966, attended the Fridl-Leonhard Studio for actors in Munich.^[8] There, he met Hanna Schygulla, who would become one of his most important actors.^[10] During this time, he made his first 8mm films and took on small jobs as actor, assistant director, and sound man.^[8] At this time he also wrote the tragic comic play: Drops on Hot Stones. To gain entry to the Berlin Film School, Fassbinder submitted a film version of his play Parallels. He also entered several 8 mm films including This Night (now lost)^[11] , but he was turned down for admission along side two other who would become famous directors Werner Schroeter and Rosa von Praunheim.^[12]

He returned to Munich, continued with his writing and made two short films in black and white, persuading his lover Christoph Roser, an aspiring actor, to finance them in exchange for leading roles.^[13] The City Tramp (Der Stadtstreicher, 1965) and The Little Chaos (Das Kleine Chaos, 1966). Fassbinder acted in both of these films which also featured Irm Hermann. In the latter, his mother - under the name of Lilo Pempeit - played the first of many parts in her son's films.^[14]

In 1967, Fassbinder joined the Munich action-theater where he was active as an actor, director and script writer. After two months, he became the company's leader. In April 1968 Fassbinder directed the premiere production of his play: Katzelmacher, the story a foreign worker from Greece, who, becomes the object of intense racial, sexual, and political hatred among Bavarian men, while exerting a strangely troubling fascination on the women. A few weeks later, in May 1968, the Action Theater was disbanded after its theater was wrecked by one of its founders, jealous of Fassbinder's growing power within the group.^[15] It promptly reformed as the Anti-Theater (antiteater) under Fassbinder's direction. ^[15] The troupe lived and performed together. The knit group of young actors, included among them Fassbinder, Peer Raben, Harry Baer and Kurt Raab, who along with Hanna Schygulla and Irm Hermann, became the most important members of his cinematic stock company.^[15] Working with the Anti-Theater, Fassbinder would learn writing, directing, acting, and from which he would cull his own repertory group. Even in this period, Fasssbinder productivity was remarkable. In the space of eighteen months he directed twelve plays, of these he wrote four himself and rewrote five others. The style of his stage directing closely resembled that of his early films, a mixture of choreographed movement and static poses, taking its cues not from the traditions of stage theater, but from musicals, cabaret, films and the student protest movement.

Early films and acclaim

Fassbinder used his theatrical work as a springboard for making films; and many of the Anti-Theater actors and crew worked with him throughout his entire career (for instance, he made 20 films each with actresses Hanna Schygulla and Irm Herrmann). He was strongly influenced by Brecht's verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect) and the French New Wave cinema, particularly Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965) and Week End (1967). Fassbinder developed his rapid working methods early. Because he knew his actors and technicians so well, Fassbinder was able to complete as many as four or five films per year on extremely low budgets. This allowed him to compete successfully for the government grants needed to continue making films.

Unlike the other major auteurs of the New German Cinema, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders, who started out making movies, Fassbinder's stage background was evident throughout his work. Additionally, he learned how to handle all phases of production, from writing and acting to direction and theater management. This versatility surfaced in his films too where, in addition to some of the aforementioned responsibilities, Fassbinder served as composer, production designer, cinematographer, producer and editor. He also appeared in 30 projects of other directors.

By 1976, Fassbinder had gained international prominence, prizes at major film festivals, premieres and retrospectives in Paris, New York, Los Angeles and a study of his work by Tony Rayns was published, all helped make him a familiar name among cinephiles and campus audiences throughout the world. He lived in Munich when not traveling, rented a house in Paris (with ex-wife Ingrid Caven^[16]) and could be seen in gay bars in New York, earning him cult hero status, but also a controversial reputation in and out of his films. His films were a fixture in art houses of the time after he became internationally known with Ali: Fear Eats the Soul.

Film career

Starting at age 21, Fassbinder made over 40 films in 15 years, along with numerous plays and TV dramas. These films were largely written or adapted for the screen by Fassbinder himself. He was also art director on most of the early films, editor or co-editor on many of them (often credited as Franz Walsh, though the spelling varies), and he acted in nineteen of his own films as well as for other directors.^[17] He wrote fourteen plays, created new versions of six classical plays, and directed or co-directed twenty-five stage plays. He wrote and directed four radio plays and wrote song lyrics. In addition, he wrote thirty-three screenplays and collaborated with other screenwriters on thirteen more. On top of this, he occasionally performed many other roles such as cinematographer and producer on a small number of them. Working with a regular group of actors and technicians, he was able to complete films ahead of schedule and often under budget and thus compete successfully for government subsidies. He worked fast, typically omitting rehearsals and going with the first take.^[17]

There are three distinct phases to Fassbinder’s career. The first ten or so movies (1969-1971) were an extension of his work in the theater, shot usually with static camera and with deliberately unnaturalistic dialogue.^[18]

The second phase is the one that brought him international attention, with films modeled, to ironic effect, on the melodramas Douglas Sirk made in Hollywood in the 1950s. In these films, Fassbinder explored how deep-rooted prejudices about race, sex, sexual orientation, politics and class are inherent in society, while also tackling his trademark subject of the everyday fascism of family life and friendship.^[18]

The final films, from around 1977 until his death, were more varied, with international actors sometimes used and the stock company disbanded (although the casts of some films were still filled with Fassbinder regulars).^[18] He became increasingly more idiosyncratic in terms of plot, form and subject matter in movies like The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978), The Third Generation (1979) and Querelle (1982). He also articulated his themes in the bourgeois milieu with his trilogy about women in post-fascist Germany: The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978), The Angst of Veronica Voss and Lola.

"I would like to build a house with my films," Fassbinder once remarked. "Some are the cellars, others the walls, still others the windows. But I hope in the end it will be a house."^[19]

Personal life

Fassbinder was entangled in multiple relationships with women, but more often with men. His personal life, always well publicized, met with gossip and scandal. Early in his career, he had a lasting, but fractured relationship with Irm Hermann, a former secretary whom he forced to become an actress.^[20] Hermann, who idolized him, was tormented and tortured by him for over a decade.^[21] This included domestic violence: "He couldn't conceive of my refusing him, and he tried everything. He almost beat me to death on the streets of Bochum ...."^[22] In 1977, Hermann became romantically involved with another man and became pregnant by him. Fassbinder proposed to her and offered to adopt the child; she turned him down.^[23]

Fassbinder's main love interest during his early period as a film director was Günther Kaufmann, a black Bavarian. Kaufmann was not a trained actor and entered cinema when, in 1970, Fassbinder fell madly in love with him. The director tried to buy his love with movie roles and expensive gifts,^[24] but Kaufmann managed to destroy four Lamborghinis in a year. Like Salem, Fassbinder's next male partner, he was married and the father of two children.

Although he claimed to be opposed to matrimony as an institution, Fassbinder married Ingrid Caven, a regular actress in his films, in 1970. Their wedding reception was recycled in the film he was making at that time, The American Soldier.^[25] Their relationship of mutual admiration survived the complete failure of their two-year marriage. "Ours was a love story in spite of the marriage," Ingrid explained in an interview, adding about her former husband's sexuality: "Rainer was a homosexual who also needed a woman. It’s that simple and that complex."^[26] The three most important women of Fassbinder’s life, Irm Hermann, Ingrid Caven and Juliane Lorenz, his last partner, were not disturbed by his homosexuality.^[27]

In 1971, Fassbinder fell in love with El Hedi ben Salem (c1935-82), a Berber from Morocco. Their turbulent relationship ended violently in 1974.^[28] Salem, cast as Ali in Fear Eats the Soul, hanged himself in jail in 1982. Fassbinder, who barely outlived his former lover, dedicated his last film, Querelle, to Salem.

Armin Meier (1943-78), a former butcher who was almost illiterate and who had spent his early years in an orphanage, was Fassbinder's lover from 1974 to 1978.^[29] He also appeared in several Fassbinder films in this period. After Fassbinder broke up with him, Meier committed suicide on Fassbinder’s birthday.^[30] He was found dead in their apartment only days later. Devastated by Armin’s suicide, Fassbinder made In a Year with Thirteen Moons to exorcise his pain.

In the last four years of his life, Fassbinder's companion was Juliane Lorenz (born 1957), the editor of his films during this period. They were about to marry on several occasions, a mock wedding ceremony took place while they were in the United States, but finally never did so.^[31] According to Lorenz, Fassbinder was by now no longer sleeping with men; they were still living together at the time of his death. Braad Thomsen though, has claimed they were drifting apart in his last year.^[32][33]

Controversy

Scandals and controversies ensured that in Germany itself Fassbinder was permanently in the news, making calculatedly provocative remarks in interviews. His work often received mixed reviews from the national critics, many of whom only began to take him seriously after the foreign press had hailed him as a major director.^[34]

There were frequent exposés of his lifestyle in the press, and attacks from all sides from the groups his films offended.^[35] His television series Eight Hours Do Not Make a Day was cut from eight to five episodes after pressure from conservatives.^[35] The playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz sued over Fassbinder's adaptation of his play Jail Bait, alleging that it was obscene. Lesbians and feminists accused Fassbinder of misogyny (in presenting women as complicit in their own oppression) in his 'Women‘s Picture'.^[35][36] The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant has been cited by some feminist and gay critics as both homophobic and sexist.^[35]

Gays complained of misrepresentation in Fox and his Friends.^[35] Conservatives attacked him for his association with the radical left. Marxists said he had sold out his political principles in his depictions of left-intellectual manipulations in Mother Küsters' Trip to Heaven and of a late-blooming terrorist in The Third Generation. Berlin Alexanderplatz was moved to a late night television slot amid widespread complaints that it was unsuitable for children.^[35] The most heated criticism came for his play Garbage, the City, and Death, whose scheduled performance at the Theater am Turm in Frankfurt was cancelled early in 1975 amid charges of anti-semitism. Though published at the time, and quickly withdrawn, the play was not performed until 1985, after Fassbinder's death. In the turmoil, Fassbinder resigned from his directorship of that prestigious theater complex, complaining that the play had been misinterpreted.^[35]

Fassbinder did little to discourage the personalized nature of the attacks on himself and his work. He seemed to provoke them by his aggressively non-conformist lifestyle, symbolized in his black leather jacket, battered hat, dark glasses and perennial scowl.^[35]

Death

By the time he made his last film, Querelle (1982), he was using heavy doses of drugs and alcohol to sustain his unrelenting work schedule. On the night of June 9 -10, 1982, Wolf Gremm, director of the film Kamikaze 1989 (1982), which starred Fassbinder, was staying in his apartment.^[37] At 3:30 a.m, when Juliane Lorenz arrived home, she heard the noise of television in Fassbinder’s room, but she could not hear him snoring. Though not allowed to enter the room uninvited, she went in, and she found him lying on the bed, dead, a cigarette still between his lips.^[37] A thin ribbon of blood trickled from one nostril.^[38] It was ten days after his thirty-seventh birthday.

The cause of death was reported as heart failure resulting from a lethal interaction between sleeping pills and cocaine. The script for a future project, Rosa Luxemburg, the Polish-German revolutionary socialist, was found next to his body.

Filmography

All titles written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder unless stated otherwise. According to Hanna Schygulla, Fassbinder had no part in making of Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?, that was realized off his idea by Michael Fengler, his assistant.^[39]

Documentaries

• Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1977) – German documentary made by Florian Hopf and Maximiliane Mainka. (29 minutes)
• Life Stories: A Conversation with RWF (original title: Lebensläufe: RWF, 1982) – German TV documentary made by Peter W. Jansen as part of a regular series. Contains an in-depth interview given by RWF in his Paris home on 18 March 1978. (48 minutes)
• RWF Last Works (original title: RWF Letzte Arbeiten, 1982) – German TV documentary made by Wolf Gremm during the shooting of Kamikaze 1989 and Querelle.
• Room 666 (original title: Chambre 666, 1982) – Along with a number of his peers, Fassbinder participated in this Wim Wenders documentary project. (50 minutes)
• I Don't Just Want You to Love Me (1992) – German feature-length documentary on Fassbinder's career. (90 minutes)
• The Women of Fassbinder (original title: Frauen über R. W. Fassbinder 1992) – German television documentary made by Thomas Honickel. Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla and (briefly) Rosel Zech are interviewed. (60 minutes)
• The Many Women of Fassbinder (1997)
• Life, Love and Celluloid (1998) – documentary film by Juliane Lorenz (in English) centring around the 1997 Museum of Modern Art retrospective in New York. Gottfried John and Günter Lamprecht are featured. (90 minutes)
• Fassbinder in Hollywood (2002) – documentary made by Robert Fischer (mainly in English) and co-written by Ulli Lommel, who also appears. Michael Ballhaus, Hanna Schygulla and Wim Wenders are interviewed. (57 minutes)
• Fassbinder's Women (2005) – French thematic anthology of film clips. (25 minutes)

Bibliography

• Baer, Harry, Ya Dormiré cuando este Muerto ,Seix Barrall, 1986, ISBN 8432245720
• Braad Thomsen, Christian Fassbinder: Life and Work of a Provocative Genius , University of Minnesota Press, 2004, ISBN 0816643644
• Elsaesser, Thomas, Fassbinder's Germany. History Identity Subject , Amsterdam University Press, 1996. ISBN 90 5356 059 9
• Hayman, Ronald, Fassbinder Film Maker, Simon & Schuster, 1984. ISBN 0671523805
• Katz, Robert, Love is colder than Death : The Life and Time of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Random House, 1987, ASIN: B000OP6C1M
• Lorenz, Juliane (et al., ed) Chaos as Usual: Conversations About Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Applause Books, 1997, ISBN 1557832625

Notes

External links

• http://www.fassbinderfoundation.de
• http://www.rafamorata.com/fassbinder.html
• Rainer Werner Fassbinder at the Internet Movie Database
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• filmportal.de including biography, filmography, photos, texts
• Overview of Fassbinder's cinematic and theatre careers
• Holy Whore: Remembering Rainer Werner Fassbinder
• Fassbinder Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
• Interview with Hanna Schygulla about Fassbinder
• Short film clip with Fassbinder's editor Julianne Lorenz
• Essay on Fassbinder's Films in German
• Rainer Fassbinder's Gravesite
• DVD review of Whity

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