low resolution photography by davin risk

workbench

Canon AE-1

I watched Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf) last night. I hadn’t seen any Fassbinder films before and I know now from watching the second disc that this film marked a turning point for him from making stark emotionless films. Fear Eats the Soul is stark in some ways but also lucious, warm, and saturated and is filled with emotion, tenderness, and the social complexity of simple personal choices.

The film is somewhat based upon Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows which Fassbinder credited as changing his entire outlook on filmmaking. Sirk’s film is the same film that inspired Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven.

I’ll have to see more Fassbinder I guess. I’m not sure if I’m as interested in his more stark films prior to 1974 but I’ll have to see. Any recommendations?

i’m a huge fassbinder fan. hard to believe how vast his filmography was, considering how early he died.

i’d definitely recommend the following:

- The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)
- In a Year of 13 Moons (1978)
- The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972)
- Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (1970) (INSANE!!!)
- The City Tramp (1966)

So how does the pre ‘74 stuff compare? Is it overtly unemotional and strict?

Are all of those in colour? I really loved his use of colour.

to me, all of the pre-74 stuff is very emotionally-charged. it’s not like fassbinder was aping godard. he did not make films for the sake of intellectual exercise. i think he was an obsessive personality with an amazingly strict work ethic who found great marvel in loveless societies. sure, you can call his work stark, but it sure as hell isn’t emotionally threadbare. robert ryman and jack bush are stark, but i find that most of their paintings brim with sensitivity.

all of the films i listed are in colour, except ‘the city tramp,’ which is a ten-minute short i saw in school and would wager is near impossible to find.

also, i should again mention that ‘why does herr r. run amok?’ is a brutal and insane film.

This ones a great one ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz ‘ and here’s a url for it:
http://www.goethe.de/uk/mon/archiv/efassbinder/alexanderplatz.htm

let me add “Welt am Draht”( (roughly “World on a wire”) - which was something he did for tv (like “Berlin Alexanderplatz”). I found it quite interesting to see, how well was able to do entertainment - this is a real thriller, although the themes from his other movies, the isolationist and irreal feelings about the world and the people surrounding, are already present.

And if he had a good lawyer, he definetely would have sued the wachowsky-brothers for their lame rip-off with the matrix:)