Rainer Werner Fassbinder Books

This colossal biography seems to have written with an accurate blend of sadness, desperation, outrage, amazement, blood and tears. Four months after the painful departure of Fassbinder, -L'enfant terrible of the German Cinema, the loyal expositor and protagonist of a lacerated nation for different demons, who always tried to show the dark side of his personages; from Berlin Alexanderplatz to Mria Braun, from Lolita to Petra von Kant, from Ali to Mama Kuster, all his characters are loaded of the original sin, disturbed and anguished for the weight of the conscious, a merciless world that is far to understand and so many times even distinguish between the Germany of Schiller and Beethoven respect the Nazi Germany.

A very complete motives exposition a long the febrile existence of this disturbed genius, who lived faster tan the speed of life, deputing thirty six films in just only seventeen years of artistic activity.

Go for this biography, a painful gaze inside the life and times of this monumental creator.

this book is nothing like the movie except for some
of the pictures.i first read this on a lake in canada
while wating for my pizza to be delivered.it has everything
a fassbinder fan loves..the truth about cats and dogs
etc....but this is worth every penny the publisher wants..
it kicks major butt!...

Do you love "Berlin Alexanderplatz" as much as my husband and I do? Are you a Fassbinder fanatic who appreciates all of his special photographic details? If so, you will adore this book. It's huge, beautifully made, and full of amazing stills from the film. The essays are also fascinating. This is a bargain!!! It's a must for all Fassbinder fans, students, and scholars.

I'm about 100 pages into it but Ill review it anyway. It is what it is. a very brief biography and a collection of brief synopses on all 44 films and the plays and videos and TV stuff. It can't decide if its film criticism or biography and unfortunately fails at both. Bummer, I had high hopes.

Fassbinder lived life, as the French say, ventre a terre -- with his belly to the ground. And what a belly it was. By the end, that enormous gut was the repository of more lusts and appetites than can be found in all the circles of Dante's hell. Fassbinder was, if not the 20th century's greatest filmmaker, certainly the 20th century's greatest film FIGURE. Unlike most directors, you can't whittle down his body of work to one or two masterpieces -- all his films must be seen, and a working knowledge of his corrupt and abrupt life is necessary.

Christian Thomsen's biography is no masterpiece, but it is the most complete Portrait of the Artist as a Young Monster yet written, and for that reason alone commands attention. Of course Thomsen can't explain how one man was able, in the course of 15 years, to write and direct 41 films, one of them 15 hours long. But who can? Such a driven personality can only be cautiously approached, never apprehended. Thomsen can't be blamed for what, after all, amounts to little more than a very understandable mystification.

Much less forgivable is his slipshod commentary on the films themselves. Fox and His Friends, in particular, is given annoyingly short shrift. This movie, Fassbinder's most far-seeing and revolutionary, is sort of a gay Double Indemnity, with what I believe to be the cinema's first instance of an homme fatale -- it is a truly fascinating update of 40's film noirs, brilliant in its hyperrealistic and poker-faced depiction of Germany's gay underground. But Thomsen passes right over all this, preferring instead to attack the editing, which isn't "tight" enough for his tastes. This is very lazy criticism and not even close to being accurate. I fear Thomsen is influenced by some of Fassbinder's own disdainful comments on the film, even though the director was clearly indulging in a little Hitchcockian false modesty. The point is, Thomsen knew Fassbinder personally, and may still be a little too gobsmacked by his subject to write the unbiased and considered biography he deserves.

Again -- quibbles. Here, for the first time, we learn just how fast Fassbinder could write a feature-length script ( four days ), what he needed to do it ( cocaine ), and which of his projects he held nearest and dearest to his grossly enlarged heart ( Effi Briest, Berlin Alexanderplatz ). Nor does Thomsen quail before the awesome task of explicating each and every one of Fassbinder's many films -- they're all here, every last one of them, even those not available in the U.S. The definitive biography is still to come, but in the interim, this is more than enough to tide over any but the most insatiable Fassbinder freaks.

"Life and Work" is one of the most indepth and personal accounts of the personality behind some of the most intriguing, mysterious, and at times, revolting films of twentieth century cinema.
Christian Braad Thomsen writes with the authenticity of someone who experieneced Fassbinder first hand. If you are even remotely interested in the works of R.W. Fassbinder, start from his sixties era films and work up to his last in 1982. This book will be the perfect companion.

If you are curious about Fassbinder's film - this book offers a fine outline - with comments about Fassbinder's life interspersed - by someone who knew him and talked to him on several occasions. You can sense that Fassbinder had a great impact on Christian Braad Thomsen - his biography is done in a loving fashion.

Chaos as Usual contains interviews from almost everyone in the Fassbinder pantheon. Unfortunately, they consist mostly of gossip and depictions of a disturbed individual. There is almost no insight into Fassbinder's art or creativity, nor much into his inner life, I feel. Stories of his debauched life and emotional terrorism are well-known, so much so that they provide a critical cliche. "Oh, Fassbinder, the cruel artist who manipulated his actors so." This merely diverts from the power that his films have. What use is this collection of chatter?

I must admit, however, that certain interviews provide some detail about his early involvement in Munich's theatre scene, but that's about the sum total. I can only recommend this for completists or masochists.

"Conversations" is less a critical analysis of Fassbinder's work and more a testimony to the sex, drugs, and scandalous mystique that surrounded him.

Witnesses include Hanna Schygulla, Michael Ballhaus, Juliane Lorenz and dozens more who were part of the Fassbinder inner circle.

Not a dull moment on this journey into the joy and terror of Fassbinder.