German filmmaker RW Fassbinder Warts & All

On Tuesday at 8pm, we’re showing MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS (1972, Germany - 1h 29m run time, no adverts) at The Garden Cinema - buy tickets here.

My apologies for neglecting to post to you my dear film club newsletter subscribers - I’ve been busy writing a short film and a feature film of mine own.

‘Merchant of Four Seasons’ writer-director RW Fassbinder made at least forty feature films, twenty-four plays, and two TV mini-series in seventeen years. His stories dived head first into terrorism, racism, class exploitation, hypocrises by progressives and conservatives alike, and queer sexuality. His prolific work ethic was fuelled by cocaine, outright abuse of those around him (more on this below), a well-off family, and generous West German state subsidies. Some of my favourite films ever were made by Fassbinder including:

ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974) (BFI Player)

I’ve posted clips and screengrabs from this film on the Instagram. A romance film about the relationship of an Arab immigrant in his 30s and a 60-year-old German widow. A perfect film. 

THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (1972) (BFI Player)

Darkly prescient of Fassbinder’s last days, this all-female film is also from his post-Sirk binge period (made in the same year as ‘Merchant…’). A dark and twisted romance set entirely in the home of the narcisstic fashion designer Petra von Kant, with memorable resplendent imagery. Excellent stuff.

DESPAIR: A JOURNEY INTO THE LIGHT (1978) (YouTube)

Based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov, and adapted for the screen by Tom Stoppard, this film filled with irony and farce was Fassbinder’s first of three English language films telling the story of a Russian Jewish immigrant who plots to escape his troubles, in early Nazi Germany, by taking his doppelganger’s life in more than one sense. Ouuf, 10/10, no notes.

I like films that fester in the extremes - heightened emotions, artificial but intentional style by heavy-handed auters that teeter and maybe even dip their toes into Camp. I’m rarely into the subdued or delicate. That’s why I got into Fassbinder as soon as I came across ‘Fear Eats The Soul’ on the BFI Player probably this time last year.

Part of learning about his films and his approach involved coming across stories of physical and emotional abuse. He usually worked with the same people, who were his friends or his lovers - all his victims. Take Irm Hermann who played Anna Epp, Hans’s wife in ‘Merchant of Four Seasons’. She thought that “[Fassbinder] took a lot out on [her] that was meant for his mother. People said I looked like her, and she played a very large and not especially nice role in his life”. He violently beat her on the streets of Bochum in one instance. In another, he slipped LSD into her meal leading to her hospitalisation. In his films, as his life, violence is common. His films, in their post-Nazi German context, probed the ‘everyday fascism’ of romance, family, and friendship - he lived it all too well.

Fassbinder died at 37 from a cocaine and barbiturates overdose leaving behind a handful of perfect films, many okay ones, a few I couldn’t get through or have yet to watch, and a complicated legacy to say the least.

His life and the lives of those around him have been the subject of at least eleven documentaries and one 2020 film, and the recently published ‘Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors’ by Ian Penman which won the RSL Ondaatje Prize for Literature. Though I am incredibly intrigued, I’m yet to get into much of this canon around him and the films, except for his romantic relationship with, El-Hedi Ben Salem, an Amazigh Morrocan immigrant, who played Ali in ‘Fear Eats the Soul’. Salem was a migrant labourer in Paris where he met Fassbinder in a gay sauna in 1970. Fassbinder had a habit of convincing lovers to appear in his films so Salem acted in 10 of his, helping out in the set department in a few of them.

Salem’s starring role as ‘Ali’ in ‘Fear Eats the Soul’ is his most-well known and best. His unlikely chemistry with Brigitte Mira makes it a sublime depiction of a pure love - an immigrant and an old lady, who are depicted by Fassbinder as the loneliest people in all Berlin, find and try to complete each other, to no happy ending, of course. Though Fassbinder was inspired by the melodramas of Douglas Sirk which were usually mandated by the studios to end on a happily-ever-after note; he was free to explore his dark instincts as a storyteller.

Salem’s relationship with Fassbinder was tumultous and violent. Fassbinder had a habit of bringing people in, using and abusing them, and then letting them go. After Fassbinder ditched him, Salem got drunk, and during a fight, stabbed three people, killing one. Salem was smuggled out of Germany by Fassbinder and their friends - Fassbinder is said to have cried the whole journey. Salem went on to be jailed in Nimes, France. He hanged himself in his cell. Fassbinder’s friends kept the news from him for years for fear of his reaction. Eventually, he found out and dedicated QUERELLE (BFI Player) to Salem - Fassbinder’s last film before his death in 1982. It’s the second of Fassbinder’s films dedicated to a former boyfriend who committed suicide.

There is a documentary about Salem that I’ve yet to find online. I’m fascinated by his story and the Fassbinder universe in general. It’s a macarbe interest - maybe not too different to the dark draw of horror films or gruesome true crime documentaries. Others have been sucked in too; the documentaries, books, and films about him are a testament to that. Past the camp veneer of his films, his films were honest and personal. He wrote his life in his characters - Hans’s mother in ‘Merchant…’ is proof of that (buy tickets here) - but he never was able to learn from the tragedies he so eloquently put on the screen.

Fassbinder lent into the artifice of cinema rather than away from it like those in the cinéma vérité mode. He used every instrument he could. Amongst which: intentional framing and blocking, detached acting, and harsh expressive lighting in claustrophobic sets - a style that makes everything expressive and intriguing to look at. He mixed Old Hollywood influences, pop melodrama set to American and European pop music (plenty of his film soundtracks are in our Spotify playlist), and an arthouse sensibility, depicting what could be ordinary relationships but streched into an artificial, heightened extreme while remaining uniquely personal and honest.

Hope to see you at The Garden on Tuesday - do say hi if you see me around before or after! Not during.

Further Reading

RW Fassbinder filmography profile. 

Great read from Daniel Schmidt, a friend of Fassbinder’s till the end.

Interview from a straight-talking Ingrid Craven about her husband, Fassbinder’s legacy.