Rainer Werner Fassbinder is an ideal German genius, about whom critics and film critics are comfortable writing abstruse narcissistic nonsense. The problem is that in Russian people usually write about him who do not distinguish Einstürzende Neubauten from Ash Ra Tempel, have never held Ulrike Meinhof's Konkret magazine in their hands, and are familiar with German life from a couple of gay clubs in Berlin on a business trip. They write for people who do not distinguish Fassbinder from Fassbender.
The only serious work on it took place with the publication of that very almanac of articles in St. Petersburg.
It was at least versatile.
And so everyone goes in circles: "he raised the minorities" (blah-blah-blah), "he united the Germans" (hell with two), "he humiliated the Germans" (all by yourself) and so on.
All this can forever discourage the very desire to get to know the author.
Moreover, it is so huge and multifaceted that everyone can find for themselves something of their own, beloved.
And forget everything else forever.
Fassbinder's problem is that nothing better has ever happened in Germany.
Or maybe it's a German problem.
All the directors, about whom we wrote here before Fassbinder, came to the profession from literature, from the visual arts, etc., and only the RVF came from the theater.
Just what kind of theater it was ...
He was a typical self-taught - he left the gymnasium, but at the age of 16 he was already fond of philosophy, psychoanalysis and even, as they would say now, social science. That is, he was a highly cultured teenager. He was very attracted by the theater - he began to write plays, which, however, did not survive (like much of his legacy, including some films). He took private acting lessons for two years, tried to enter public education in Munich, but failed the exam. Then he tried to pass to the German Academy of Film and Television in Berlin, which had just opened. And again, failure. Twice.
Somehow, this guy did not coincide with the state guidelines regarding art just 16 years after the war. As it did not coincide with all other installations of the new country, the editor from the Konkret magazine Ulrika Meinhof was just about that time. This generational, obviously, is strictly for the brightest and most talented, of whom there will be fewer and fewer in Germany since then, until everything turns into one dull fake Gretutunberg - Louise Neubauer-Reemstma with her great-grandfather - SS Obersturmbannführer. And those who did not fit in, for many years were stuffed gloomy and first, and also hung in prison. So they cleared the clearing completely:
Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit.
The RWF began its homosexual life quite early and nevertheless gathered around itself primarily women and actively manipulated them.
He generally adored when several people fought for his attention and love at the same time - regardless of gender or, as they would now say, gender.
He behaved like a sect leader and gathered around him a sect of actors.
The first member of his sect was the actress Irm Herman, who starred in the ten-minute "City Tramp" (1966) with Christoph Roser, another victim of Rainer's love web.
And Roser just out of love gave all his personal money to the production of his first two short films (the second - "Little Chaos").
Thanks to his personal sect, Rainer built his own way of life - anti-bourgeois, unconventional, where he is the master and everyone else is slaves.
Possibly slaves of love.
So, for admission to the German Academy of Film and Television in Berlin, he presented one script and one film. At the same time, there was already excitement around the script, but in the cinema he held a camera in his hands for the first time. However, most likely, the reason for the refusal of admission was his political ignorance. In those years, the demand for artists to be radical left and oppose the federal establishment already reigned. And he somehow missed this moment of the growth of triumphant leftism in the federal universities, which to this day have turned Germany into a country of artistic impotence. And with all this, it was he who invented a new cinematic language in German cinema, which, many years after the war, remained traditionally Goebbels's.
In short, they took a man named Holger Mines instead. Who knows? No one. This is the horror of "professorial leftism" - negative selection.
But he was engaged in theater in Munich. A troupe in the style of the New York Action Theater - in the tradition of political protest. It is not for nothing that the first RAF members were fans of the Munich Action Theater. Not only ideologically, the Munich troupe fit into the tradition of Action Theater, but also with its internal structure. Trying to actively engage the audience, who could drink beer and wine during the performance, and then enter into dialogue with the actors, they imitated a great model. This fresh, anarchic way of acting was completely new to Fassbinder and ultimately interested Fassbinder much more than the political superstructure that Action Theater had declared with Antigone about the Vietnam War.
But he was personally apolitical so much that in the collectivist theater he began to pull the blanket over himself and claim to be the central figure. People like Ursula Stratz, Peer Raben, Kurt Raab have already played there. The RVF brought Irm German and Hannah Shigulla with them. And Ursula Stratz's husband Horst Sönlein considered this theater his own, and he did not like how Fassbinder exploited his wife's sexuality on stage, and attempts to lead the theater. As a result, the theater was smashed to pieces, and these actors gathered around Fassbinder, who will go with him further through life as a kind of family, clan and sect. At this time, the nucleus of the clan was the sexual triangle - Fassbinder, Roser and Irm Herman. After the destruction of Action Theater, Fassbinder and his new troupe organized the Antitheater.
And Horst Sönlein, together with Andreas Baader, set fire to department stores in large German cities in 1968 in protest against the consumption system and at the same time against the Vietnam War.
This was the beginning of the RAF.
And Fassbinder's star began to rise confidently over Germany.
With the actors of "Antitheatre" he made his first full-length films, which, of course, of course, were made under the influence of the new wave of French cinema - Godard, as well as the Americans John Huston, Raoul Walsh and Howard Hawks.
Who inspired John Carpenter, Quentin Tarantino, and Cronenberg, which I hope you have already read about in our column.
"Love is colder than death" in 1969 could have become "In the Last Breath" by Godard, if Godard had not already filmed it.
Katzelmacher (1969) - an appeal to the topic of labor migrants. “How much does he pay for the room? 50 marks. It is ingenious to bring guest workers here so that they increase the GDP, and then so that all their money remains with us. " Rainer would have known how all this would turn out in 2015, when a stream of antiarbeiters would pour into Germany for full social security ... Probably, he would have been called a Nazi and thrown out of the profession, despite his merits. But Katzelmacher won two Bundesfilmpreis awards for best film, 400,000 marks and, personally, Rainer for directing 250,000 marks. This is a lot of money. An hour of work for a construction worker then cost eight marks.
In the same 1969, he also shot Gods of the Plague.
And in 1970 he made seven feature films.
Seven.
I don't know how he did it.
And nobody knows.
It is clear that he has already lived and worked strictly under substances, because a normal person cannot do that.
At the same time, he staged nine performances at the Antitheater at this time.
One of them was American Soldier, which he later makes as a movie.
American Soldier (1970) is Fassbinder's eighth film.
A clean film noir about a German soldier hired by the police who fought on the American side in Vietnam.
And here are some pieces from Godard - for example, the scene of the execution of a prostitute.
Which, however, Fassbinder doesn't get killed in this scene: the cartridges are blank.
This is part of a gangster trilogy ("Love is colder than death", "The Plague Gods").
But, apart from noir, something more suddenly cuts through - for example, the monologue of Margaret Von Trott, who plays the maid in All Turks are called Ali.
Von Trott is a prominent German director, by the way.
Earlier in the same year, "Why did Mr. R. fall into amok?"
(1970).
A film about a sad man from an architecture bureau who watches TV after work and then beats his neighbor to death.
The police find him hanged.
It is clear why the film was taken to the Berlin Festival: it just marked Fassbinder's turn to analyze what is happening with German society.
And this analysis is extremely unpleasant.
He will then continue this theme in an even harsher, I would even say - satirical key in the film, which looks like a continuation of the previous one - "Satanic Potion" (1976).
There is madness - literally everything.
And types.
And no way out.
And the verdict of the German mentality.
Together with directors such as Schlöndorff (with whom RWF played in the TV show Baal), Von Trott, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders (25 people in total), Fassbinder signs a manifesto that gives rise to the term "new German cinema".
The directors demanded that a new cinema be built and that it should be given money and not required commercial success.
The state responded by starting to finance cinema from the money of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
It is now clear why Fassbinder was able to make so many films.
In any case, he did not have to think about commerce.
And then this principle, embodied in Wim Wenders, finally killed the public's interest in national and then in European cinema.
Rio das Mortes (1970) opens with Morning Song from the American psychedelic group Pearls Before Swine.
This is a rare comedy in the work of the RVF, although it is not very clear what exactly the comedy is there.
Although ... "Beware, holy whore!"
was also a comedy.
In almost every film, Hannah Shigulla is employed by him, whom he still made the world star of the screen. And, of course, the actors of "Antiteatre", which completely collapsed by 1971, as it turned out that it was not even registered anywhere and owed 300,000 marks. Rainer took over the debts and put his own mother to deal with the papers and run the new company "Tango-Film", in which he immediately launched the picture "The Merchant of the Four Seasons". The story of a greengrocer who returned to Munich after serving in the French Foreign Legion. It takes place in the 50s. Everything is like people have - life is like life, but somehow gradually the hero simply loses his desire to live. The music, as always, was written by Peer Raben, a native of Action Theater, who first produced Fassbinder's films, even made his own film, and then became a composer in all of his films.But he was not alone - for example, he worked with Wong Karwai and Barbet Schroeder.
In 1971 he released a natural western, apparently homage to John Houston with Hawkes, Whitey, the story of a black servant in the South.
The film, however, is all broken up by German theater inserts - only the songs performed by Hannah Shigulla are worth something.
The film received the highest award from Deutscher Filmpreis.
Peer Raben wrote a completely cowboy song I Kill Them (Vol. I) for the credits.
And then it became clear that Fassbinder had not left the theater anywhere.
Each of his paintings reflects, first of all, the theater.
Starting with the aloofness of actors according to Brecht, ending with stage theatrical decisions.
In some films, the camera is completely static, as if capturing a theatrical scene for the TV show Theater at the Microphone.
Now do you understand that you see this in Aki Kaurismaki's films?
"Bitter tears of Petra von Kant" ("Case history dedicated to the one who became here Marlene") (1972). A full-blown lesbian drama in no blues with an acting duet of two German beauties who at some point convinced the world that German women can be beautiful (Hanna Schigulla and Margit Karstensen). Here you can hear songs by The Walkers Brothers, which in the 60s were not inferior to The Beatles in sales in Britain, but are absolutely unknown in Russia, despite the fact that Scott Walker came out of there, the man from whom David Bowie stole almost everything, starting with voices and ending with the last discs, however, with a delay of five years.
A propos Bowie.
David met with Fassbinder in Berlin in the 70s - they discussed the production of Brecht's Threepenny Opera.
But it didn't work out.
But Bowie has a tenacious memory - he later played in the play "Baal" in London the same role that Fassbinder played in the production of this play by Schlöndorf.
In 1972, he also released two television films, Freedom in Bremen (based on his play) and Deer Crossing, about the relationship between a 19-year-old worker and a 14-year-old girl.
The author of the original play, Franz-Xaver Kroetz, disagreed with Fassbinder's interpretation, calling it "pornography."
Well, he is no stranger to all sorts of accusations.
For the play "Trash, City and Death", which he staged in Mülheim, he was branded an anti-Semite, because in the figure of the protagonist - a real estate speculator - a certain Ignaz Bubitz recognized himself and considered the play a political order.
There are many things in the world, Rabbi Horatio ...
The picture "The World on a Wire" (1973) is very interesting to watch today - if only because it is the very first cyberpunk in cinema, when Gibson had not even invented such a word.
Well, the heroes are discussing "the best film in the world" - "Solaris" by Tarkovsky.
Fear Eats the Soul (1974) is his cheapest film to make, filmed in 15 days.
The story of a cute white aunt and her lover - a young Moroccan.
Martha (1974) is a film about violence in a traditional family.
Probably, today Radfem women would be happy with him if they were not so poorly educated.
The main role is Carstensen.
From the funny in the text: "The black color of this kitten reminded me of the black market in Russia, so I named it Ruble."
Sometimes you just wonder where Fassbinder gets his lyrics from - they are so different.
On "Effie Brist Fontana" (1974), in which he put his whole soul and shot, unlike other films, as many as 58 shooting days, he had a fight with Hannah Shigulla and called her only for the role in "The Marriage of Maria Brown" (1979) - this is the first part of a trilogy about the German "economic miracle", for which people paid with their humanity. The film is Fassbinder's biggest success. The rest of the trilogy is Lola (1981) and Veronica Foss's Tosca (1982). As for "Lola" - here the director painted the most pessimistic portrait of society, in which profit is still the only measure of action, and independent thinking and a critical mind are not in demand. The prostitute Lola is a symbolic figure of this society in which the market economy triumphs over everything.
In the meantime, the RWF trolls German society with its favorite gay theme, filmed with knowledge of the matter and from the inside - "Fist Right of Freedom" (1975) and "Year of Thirteen Moons" (1978).
He was great in this when it was not yet fashionable and when gay bureaucrats did not impose their totalitarian attitudes on the entire society.
An artist is only an artist when he works against the current.
Fassbinder was a brilliant film and theater director, he was an actor, producer and screenwriter.
His films provoked post-war West German society, be it homoerotic themes, problems of the Nazi past, or the aftermath of a so-called "economic miracle".
Fassbinder spent money from Maria Brown on a deeply personal project, The Third Generation (1979). He needed to somehow put an end to the endless internal dispute with Horst Sönlein and his friends from the Rote Armee Fraktion. And he makes a very evil film about how the "normal" part of German society is saturated with fascism, and the "revolutionary intelligentsia" - with terrorism. A very relevant picture, as Lenin would say.
However, Fassbinder also made a compromise with this world.
He's accustomed to fame and fortune as quickly as he is to power on set.
He needed not only millions to make films, but cocaine and a luxurious life with private jets.
His motto was "Live fast and take everything!"
It seems that Rainer Werner Fassbinder did not understand everything.
He was looking for real life in the cinema, but found the wrong one - in drug intoxication and early death, at the age of 37.
But he still managed to shoot Lily Marlene in 1981 with a question to all Germans: "Was it possible to succeed under the Nazis and not know anything about the Nazis?"
He also logically says that Nazism is a completely logical state of the Germans, and not some kind of "obsession".
He would have been convinced of this by looking at modern ecofascism deployed in Merkel's Germany.
But he did not live.
Too much heroin, cocaine and vodka.
He left for the amazingly filmed Kerel, based on Jean Genet's gay story.
Even if you're sick of the endless gay propaganda, it's a must see.
The artist's work is fantastic.
Operator - too.
And there is Fellinian greatness in all of this.
On that, we parted with the dictator from the cinema, who never agreed with this world.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.