Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Wikipedia

Rainer Werner Fassbinder ( / ˈe ʁ a ɪ̯ n ɐ ˈe in ɛ ɐ̯ n ɐ ˈe f a s ˌ b ɪ n d ɐ/ ^{[ first ]} ) is a German director born on May 31, 1945 in Bad Wörishofen (Bavaria) ^{[ 2 ]} and dead the June 10, 1982 in Munich, Bavaria.

He is one of the representatives of the new German cinema of the years 1960-1970. He was also actor, author and theater director.

Fassbinder’s main subject was the evaluability of feelings. His films dealt with the Nazi past, the German economic miracle or the terror of the red armed fraction.

Son of a doctor, Hellmuth Fassbinder (1918-2010) and a translator, Liselotte (“Lilo”) Pempeit (1922–1993), he is the only child, to the chagrin of his parents, who divorce in 1951: the Young Rainer is then six years old. His mother remarried in 1959 with journalist Wolff Eder.

Benefiting from a liberal, even libertarian education ^{[ 3 ]} , he is very young and independently interested in the cinema, devouring film on film. However, he does not accomplish his wish to make a film school (he is not admitted to the Berlin film school), and leaves a Steiner school without obtaining the baccalaureate. He lives from various trades. He is, for example, journalist at Southgerman newspaper .

In 1965 he made a first short film ( This Night ) which seems to have been lost. In 1966, he produced The homeless man , a tribute to Eric Rohmer’s film, Lion sign ^{[ 4 ]} ; Then he ended up collaborating with experimental theater troops. After trying to write radio pieces in the great German tradition ( radio play ), he made himself known, during the 1967-1968 theatrical season, in Munich for his staging which reread classic texts in a nonconformist manner or valued protest works ^{[ 5 ]} . However, he has a first unsuccessful experience. On the example of the Berliner Ensemble by Bertolt Brecht whose theories influence him all his career (distancing, epic writing, education of the masses), he founded his own troop, the Antiteater , for which he wrote the majority of his plays from 1968 to 1971. Hanna Schygulla, is already working with him. He plays in The fiancé, the actress and the mackerel by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet in 1968, to which he pays homage in her first feature film in 1969 ^{[ 5 ]} .

Fassbinder draws his inspiration from realistic literature: Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant or Theodor Fontane whose masterpiece he later adapts Effi Briest ^{[ 3 ]} .

Influenced by the melodramas of Douglas Sirk-author whom he met in 1971 and from which he borrows the rhetoric of excess, flamboyance and the brilliance of colors-, he also claims a parentage with the new French wave: Jean-Pierre Melville for the plastic mastery of its production and the archetype of the gangster film, Éric Rohmer for his literary dimension and his painting of feelings in modern societies or Claude Chabrol for his art of atmosphere, his irony and his representation to The etching of provincial life ^{[ 6 ]} . To a lesser extent, Fassbinder’s work bears the imprint of Jean-Luc Godard for his critical rereading of classical genres, his art of quotation, its sociological, political or militant content and its taste for experimentation (false fitting , dialogues in offset, camera movements or identical plans repeated from one character to another, etc.) ^{[ 3 ] , [ 6 ]} . The filmmaker is also close to the film Noir or the police films of the great Hollywood directors such as John Huston, Raoul Walsh and Howard Hawks ^{[ 6 ] , [ 3 ]} .

By including these various influences in a singular artistic approach, Fassbinder undertakes his first cinematographic project with his troop. Thus were born, in 1969, Love is colder than death ( Love is colder than death ) And The goat ( Cat ) . He does not distinguish theatrical techniques from those of the seventh art; In fact, between 1969 and 1971, he gave birth to numerous plays while producing alternative films in record time. The life and work of the troop is one, which partly explains the fertility of Fassbinder which, in the space of thirteen years, has made forty films. Desiring not to know the same fate as Orson Welles whose career was compromised by Hollywood, Fassbinder is a complete author and master of his work, on the commercial, financial and artistic level ^{[ 5 ]} . Producer and screenwriter of his films, he reduces the budget and the mode of production (until Maria Braun wedding ) then writes and turns quickly ^{[ 5 ]} . He passes without distinction from theater to the cinema, via television, which brings him the necessary income to finance and make his films ^{[ 7 ]} .

Although married from 1970 to 1972 in Ingrid Caven, for whom he wrote several songs ( Everything made of leather , Friday in the hotel , Nietzsche , Stink the streets ), it is bisexual. He turns his successive lovers, Günther Kauffmann (Nono, the tenant of the bar The fair , In Quarrel Recall, Ehimed him that Healds (al early days All the others are called Ali ) and Armin Meier, in many of his films. He pays tribute to Meier – who committed suicide in 1978 – in The year of the thirteen moons and to El Hedi ben Salem – died in prison in 1976 of a myocardial infarction – in Quarrel, which puts in image the erotic delusions of Jean Genet, exhibited in his novel Brest quarrel . From 1978 to 1982, he lived with Juliane Lorenz, who has since become president of the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation. Fassbinder also involves his mother, Lilo Pempeit, at seventeen of his films, by entrusting him with small roles.

From 1972, his films evolved: they became more professional, personal and extensive. He is now acclaimed by criticism at each Berlin festival, but remains ignored by successive juries to his penultimate film, Veronika’s secret ( The longing of the Veronika Voss ), which received the golden bear in 1982.

In the 1970s, he created mythical female characters that were among the most fascinating post-war cinema and whose eponymous films have gone to posterity: Maria Braun , Effi Briest And Lale Andersen , all three embodied by Hanna Schygulla, but also Lola , played by Barbara Sukowa, or Petra von Kant , embodied by Margit Carstensen. Through these portraits of women, Fassbinder paints a vast and uncompromising picture of German society, dark hours of Nazism in the “economic miracle” ^{[ 3 ]} . He evokes indeed, intolerance, the racism displayed or repressed, the lost illusions, the baseness, the vilenie and the compromises of a country in a hurry to bury a tragic past to indulge in the joys of economic liberalism ^{[ 3 ]} .

He writes and stages plays ( Preparadise Sorry Now , etc.) until 1976, the year he caused scandal with his play Garbage, city and death , in which one of the characters is called the “rich Jew”: he is then accused of anti -Semitism and the publisher Suhrkamp decides to withdraw the work from the sale and to put it in the pestle (Daniel Schmid adapted the Cinema play under the title The shadow of angels, But the film has also been deprogrammed ^{[ 8 ]} ).

A 1977, fassbinder lance Despair , an adaptation of the novel by Vladimir Nabokov of which Dirk Bogarde is the show. Despair is the first Fassbinder film shot in English and is also the first of which he is not the screenwriter. Indeed, it is the playwright Tom Stoppard which signs the adaptation of the novel. Fassbinder chain with The year of the thirteen moons , film that focuses on the evil of living a transgender woman.

It was the following year that Fassbinder presents what will become his most famous film, Maria Braun’s marriage in which Hanna Schygulla embodies an upstart who will make a fortune in post-war Germany.

In 1979, the West German television commanded Fassbinder an adaptation of the great novel by Alfred Döblin Berlin Alexanderplatz . Fassbinder runs a series made up of an introduction of 81 minutes and 12 episodes of an hour and an epilogue ^{[ 9 ]} .

Fassbinder works tirelessly, at a frantic pace. Him and Hanna Schygulla collaborated one last time in 1980 with Lili Marleen , a film taking place during the rise of Nazism and in which Schygulla plays a young singer. Fassbinder then turns Lola, a German woman , a proofreading of the film The Blue Angel by Joseph von Sternberg transposed in the context of the 1950s and whose stars are Barbara Sukowa and Armin Mueller-Stahl, then Veronika’s secret , film shot in black and white and whose main theme, that of an actress on the decline, refers to that of Boulevard du twilight . It is thanks to this film, the main role of which is played by Rosel Zech, that Fassbinder finally obtains the gold bear from the Berlin Film Festival.

Fassbinder dies in Munich the June 10, 1982 of a break in aneurysm at only thirty-seven, while working on the editing of his latest film, Quarrel , adapted from a novel by Jean Genet (1946), and that he is preparing two films: Cocaine , scheduled for 1983 and adapted from Pitigrilli’s novel, with Romy Schneider at the head of the actress on May 29, 1982 then that of Fassbinder twelve days later will prevent the project from arriving in the long term) and another On Rosa Luxemburg, finally produced in 1987 by Margarethe von Trotta. Some say that his death is consecutive to a mixture of cocaine and benzodiazepine and that he may commit suicide ^{[ ten ]} .

He is buried in the Bogenhausen cemetery, in Munich.

As a director [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Movie theater [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Television [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Actor [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

Apart from his own films:

He also appears in his films and other achievements, for example:

Bibliography [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

• Fassbinder by himself , edition established and presented by Robert Fischer, G3J publisher, 2010, (ISBN  978-2-9527983-3-4 )
• Collective, Fass , Paris, Rivages Cinéma, 1986, 2006
• Robert Katz, Love is colder than death. A life to rainer Werner Fassbinder , Paris, Renaissance Presses, 1988
• Yann Lardeau, Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Paris, ed. From the star/Cahiers du cinema, 1990
• Thomas Elsaesser, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. A German filmmaker , Center Pompidou, 2005
• Terrorism, myths and representations. The Raf de Fassbinder at Prada-Meinhof T-shirts , essay by Thomas Elsaser with the DVD of the film Germany in autumn (1977-1978), film Collince the Alexander Klugel, Rainer Werrine fieldrinder, Facker’s dustros, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., Éd. A thousand eyes , 2005
• Scotland Levranc, Attacks on the way, in the evening, in the snow , Marseille / Montreal, Le Quartanier, 2005 (Fassbinder fictitious biography)
• Fassbinder the explosive , directed by Denitza Bantcheva, Cinémaction, Corlet ed. Diffusion, Arte Éditions, 2005
• Axelle Riped « Fassbinder: Back to the German filmmaker », The film library , 2005 ( read online , consulted the 7 mars 2012 )

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