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Rainer Werner Fassbinder is one of the most prominent and important authors of post-war European cinema. Thomas Elsaesser is the first to write a thoroughly analytical study of his work. He stresses the importance of a closer understanding of Fassbinder's career through a re-reading of his films as textual entities. Approaching the work from different thematic and analytical perspectives, Elsaesser offers both an overview and a number of detailed readings of crucial films, while also providing a European context for Fassbinder's own coming to terms with fascism.
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Fassbinder's Germany FILM CULTURE IN TRANSITION Thomas EIsaesser: General Editor Double Trouble Chiem van Houweninge on Writing and Filming Thomas Elsaesser, Rober! Kievit and ian Simons (eds.) Writing for the Medium Thomas Elsaesser, Jan Simons and Lucefte Srank (eds.) Between Stage and Screen Ingmar Bergman Directs Egil Tornqvist The Film Spectator: From Sign to Mind Warren Bllckland (ed.) Film and the First World War Karel Dibbets, Bert Hogenkwnp (eds.) A Second Life German Cinema's First Decades Thomas Elsaf'.ucr Fassbinder's Germany History Identity Subject by THOMAS ELSAESSER AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS for K.P.E. Cover illustration (front): R.W. Fassbinder shooting Lifi Murleen, 1980. Coil. Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation I KaTl Reiter, Berlin. (back): Veronika Voss, 19lH Cover design: Korpershoek Ontwerpen, Amsterdam Typesetting: JAPES, Jaap Prummcl, Amsterdam ISBN 90 53561846 (hardbound) ISBN 90 5356 059 9 (paperback) © Thomas Elsaesser / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 1996 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of this book. Table of Contents 7 Introduction: A Work Upstaged by Life? 13 1. Fassbinder Representing Germany 45 2. From Vicious Circles to Double Binds Impossible Demands in the Field of Vision 73 3. Murder, Merger, Suicide The Politics of DESPAIR 97 4. The BRD Trilogy, or: History, The Love Story? THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN, LOLA and VERONIKA voss 129 5. Fassbinder, Reflections of Fascism and the European Cinema 149 6. ...wie einst? 175 7. Frankfurt, Germans and Jews LILI MAR LE EN The City, Garbage and Death 197 8. Beyond 'Schuld' and 'Schulden' IN A YEAR OF THIRTEEN MOONS 217 9. Franz Biberkopf's/ex-changes BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ 237 10. Historicising the Subject A Body of Work 261 Appendix One: A Commented Filmography The House That Rainer Built 299 Appendix Two: Fassbinder's Germany 1945-1982 A Chronology 319 Appendix Three: Bibliography 341 Notes 389 Index Introduction: A Work Upstaged by Life? In the cinema of the post-war period, Rainer Werner Fassbinder is a unique filmmaker. Between 1969 and 1982 - barely more than a decade, which is all he had to make his mark - he transformed the very idea of the German cinema, because by writing himself into German film history, he had to rewrite its history. Yet in the years since, the work he directed has, though not exactly vanished, undergone a strange transformation. A few of the films have entered the ca