FOX AND HIS FRIENDS aka FAUSTRECHT DER FREIHEIT

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1975

Starring: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Chatel, Karlheinz Böhm

Franz Bieberkopf, a carnival worker known as “Fox, the Talking Head,” loses his job when his boyfriend, the owner, is arrested for tax fraud. Out of desperation, he prostitutes himself and plays the lottery with his earnings. He wins, to his surprise, and finds himself in a posh new social circle with upper class friends and a handsome, cultured new boyfriend, Eugen. Though Eugen secretly despises Franz, his wealthy family is suffering financially and he needs Franz’s money. Eugen soon convinces Franz to become a “partner” in the family printing business, which really just means he is giving Eugen large sums of money. Eugen also convinces him to buy an expensive apartment and lavishly decorate it, but Eugen will lose interest in Franz as soon as the relationship is no longer profitable…

Fox and His Friends holds a special place in my heart, because it was my first encounter with Fassbinder. It’s one of his finest films, which is perhaps unusual because he wrote, directed, and starred in the film. Though he would give a variety of supporting and starring performances in his own films and those of his friends, this is probably the best performance of his career. Fox/Franz is a uniquely sympathetic example among Fassbinder’s protagonists. He is innocent, yet also sexually mercenary, sweet, yet demanding, and above all suffers because of his desire to love and to please. While Fox engages in prostitution at the start of the film – it is ironically responsible for his lottery win – the film also depicts a different kind of prostitution. Fox and His Friends is the story of an upper class man and his family exploiting a guileless, lower class worker who lacks the education or life experience to realize that they may be duping and robbing him.

The film’s original German title, Faustrecht der Freiheit, translates to Right Fist of Freedom, implying that Fassbinder is examining the sort of social Darwinism – a belief that the strong have a right to exploit the weak, often violently -- espoused by contemporary writers like Ayn Rand, but also by Nazis like philosopher and key ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. Nazi propaganda films like Alles Leben ist Kampf (All Life is a Struggle) depict nature-based scenes of insects fighting each other for survival, implying that their campaign of anti-Jewish violence was somehow scientifically justified. This is one of the earliest public, government-sponsored combination (Marx and Engels were also proponents of it in their writings) of Darwin’s scientific findings with non-scientific theories of genetics, race, and evolution meant to defend exploitation, abuse, and murder.

Adolf Eichmann’s Protocol from the Wahnsee Conference relates the following: “In pursuance of the final solution, special administrative and executive measures will apply to the conscription of Jews for labor in the eastern territories. Large labor gangs of those fit to work will be formed, with the sexes separated, which will be directed to those areas for road construction and undoubtedly a large part of them will fall out through natural elimination. Those who remain alive — and they will certainly be those with the greatest powers of endurance — will be treated accordingly. If released they would, being a natural selection of the fittest, form a new cell from which the Jewish race could again develop.” While philosophers and scientists have responded to this tenet with horror, Fox and His Friends is Fassbinder’s more subtle essay on the subject, cloaked in a melodramatic plot about a romance gone wrong.

Fassbinder addressed the subject -- particularly in regards to Nazism -- in varying degrees previously with his controversial play Shadow of the Angels and in future film Lili Marleen, Fox and His Friends is fundamentally concerned with class-based prejudice. Fox is systematically destroyed by Eugen and his family, because they believe that his working class status makes him socially inferior. They treat him as sub-human and conspire to strip him of his wealth. A particularly painful moment is during a scene where Fox attends dinner with Eugen’s family. They almost sadistically humiliate him simply because he doesn’t handle his utensils in the proper way. There are moments reminiscent of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, where a woman introduces her adult children and their spouses to her young, black, Arabic husband, who is a poor and a migrant worker who is not familiar with all of their class-based social customs.

While Ali: Fear Eats the Soul ends on a tentatively hopeful note, Fox and His Friends is a work of persistent pessimism. Love is equivalent to financial worth and prostitution is a fact of life in varying forms. Fox’s death on a subway platform – an act of suicide by a bereft man – is one of Fassbinder’s most moving set pieces. While the film is primarily naturalistic and contains only subtle instances of Fassbinder’s dramatic sense of style, this death scene is a nightmarish vision of cold blue and white. Fox’s body is spotted by Eugen, who scurries away to avoid getting involved while equally unsympathetic children rob Fox's corpse.

The name Franz Bieberkopf is taken from Berlin Alexanderplatz, one of Fassbinder’s favorite novels, which he later turned into his masterpiece – a 14-episode series. Franz/Fox is a character demeaned by life at every turn. His one seeming success – winning the lottery – simply drives him further into despair and ruins his life because he is such a giving, generous person. This blunt message is an extreme version of “money won’t make you happy,” and the inherently innocent and simplistic Fox is simply unable to survive in a world of social Darwinism. While Fox and His Friends has been criticized for its negative depictions of homosexuals, this indicates a lack of understanding about Fassbinder’s work as a whole. He is unprejudiced and unrestrained in his portrayal of the bleak, selfish, and cruel side of humanity, so his villains, brutes, and manipulators are gay, straighten, men, women, white, black, anti-Semites, Jews, rich, and poor. His message here seems to be that no one possessing humanity can survive in this predatory, violent environment and even though Nazism has faded into history, its presence lingers malignantly on.

Fox and His Friends comes with the highest possible recommendation and is a crushing film, but an undeniably important one. Pick it up on DVD or watch it on Hulu through their partnership with the Criterion Collection – hopefully a release will follow on the tail of the Eclipse box set, Fear Eats the Soul, and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.

NORA HELMER (1974)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974
Starring: Margit Carstensen, Joachim Hansen, Barbara Valentin

Fassbinder’s made-for-TV film, Nora Helmer, is an adaptation of Ibsen’s famous 1879 play, A Doll’s House, and follows its plot relatively faithfully. A beautiful young housewife, Nora, is trying to convince her tight-laced, bourgeois husband, Torvald, to give her some extra money for the holidays, even if he has to borrow it. Torvald, who has recently been promoted to bank manager, enjoys spoiling Nora, but lectures her about the dangers of borrowing money. Though he treats Nora like a child, she has a dark secret. Years ago, when Torvald was ill, she borrowed money from another bank employee, the disreputable Krogstadt, though she told Torvald her father gave her the funds. It seems that she forged her father’s signature to provide collateral and after Nora making small, private payments for some time, Krogstadt is going to blackmail her, which could ruin her and Torvald’s current success and possibly their lives.

The impact of A Doll’s House cannot be understated. At its time, it was seen as an attack on the institution of marriage and an aggressive appeal for the rights of women. Its message also has a relationship with the writings of Kierkegaard, who wrote regularly about the individual’s struggle to remain separate from the overwhelming masses. In The Concluding Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments, he wrote, “To be a particular individual is world-historically absolutely nothing, infinitely nothing — and yet, this is the only true and highest significance of a human being, so much higher as to make every other significance illusory.” Ibsen and Kierkegaard’s careers may have overlapped in the 19^th century, but this existential concept of the importance of the individual is critical to Fassbinder’s work as well.

While Ibsen’s Nora is depicted as little more than a spoiled child, thanks to the treatment she has received from her father and husband, Fassbinder’s Nora is a notably different creation. Fassbinder stated that Nora used her “suppression as an effective means of terrorism.” His version is still the portrayal of a struggle between a free-thinking woman and an oppressive society, but Nora is far from being a victim of circumstance. She is less sympathetic here than the play (as are all the characters), and any softening elements – such as her devotion to her children – are absent. There is something of Lady Macbeth about her, particularly with the opening shot where her hand appears massive over Torvald’s, red nails glittering sinisterly.

Fassbinder did not see A Doll’s House as a work of women’s liberation, but yet another example of the restrictive, manipulative elements that exist in society. The parallel struggle between Nora and Thorvald and Nora and Krogstadt are power games, and in this case, money means power. Nora is at an immediate disadvantage because she does not have an inheritance or steady income, and is not a property owner. Thorvald, supposedly more morally upstanding than Krogstadt, does not treat her as an equal, but either as a helpless child to be tolerated and cared for, or as an attractive object and status symbol.

As with most of his films, Fassbinder refuses to have clear-cut victims and perpetrators. Because of this, Nora is somewhat more complex, but so is Krogstadt. The reason he is changing their agreement and blackmailing her is because Thorvald, in his classism and snobbery, is going to use his newfound power at the bank to fire Krogstadt and replace him with someone more appealing. The dialogue implies that Krogstadt has thus far not bothered Nora and quietly unobtrusively collected his money each month. Without reading too much into it, there is something of a Jewish stereotype about Krogstadt. He is dark and pale, a money lender (and collector), and he is clearly ostracized at the bank and in the Helmers’ social circle for no apparent reason. This sort of dated European stereotype was the sort of thing that Fassbinder loved to explore in his work – notably with In a Year of 13 Moons (1978) and the much criticized play Shadow of Angels.

Themes of sexism and classism were par for the course in Fassbinder’s films during this period with works like Whity, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, and The Merchant of the Four Seasons, and it is unsurprising yet fascinating that he chose to adapt a work of classic theater that dealt with similar themes. Fassbinder typically preferred to write his own scripts or adapt his own plays, but his adept use of A Doll’s House emphasizes that many of those themes remained unchanged in 1974 – and some 40 years later in 2015.

Fassbinder meticulously crafted the visual world of Nora Helmer. It is reminiscent of his more ornate films like The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, but has the sense of timelessness seen in Pioneers in Ingolstadt. Nora looks like a prosperous bourgeois housewife, though from a somewhat ambiguous time period hinting at the nineteenth or early twentieth century. The Helmer home is filled with large, pattered mirrors and a labyrinth-like assembly of doorways and windows that frame and confine the characters. Nearly every shot is obstructed by lace or lattice work, and the characters are divided by ornate furniture or shot reflected in mirrors. The house – as well as the female characters – is outfitted in cold, pale colors and saccharine pastels with meticulous decorative detail, highlighting the “doll’s house” aspect of the story.

Nora Helmer comes recommended – particularly to Ibsen fans – but it is unfortunately unavailable. Hopefully the Fassbinder Foundation will restore and release it sometime soon, because it belongs solidly with Fassbinder’s fascinating trilogy of “women’s films” – depicting a series of abused and repressed housewives – from 1974 alongside Effi Briest and Martha. This might not be an essential Fassbinder work, but it is well worth watching, particularly for a preview of his endlessly fascinating interplay with difficult works of literature (this would culminate in his masterpiece, Berlin Alexanderplatz).

EFFI BRIEST

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974

Starring: Hanna Schygulla, Wolfgang Schenck, Ulli Lommel, Lilo Pempeit

The young and beautiful Effi Briest is encouraged by her ambitious mother to marry an up-and-coming politicians, the Baron Innstetten, though he is twice her age. She is delighted in the match and expects that Innstetten will shower her with gifts and attention. But they move to an isolated coastal town and he spends most of his time working, expecting Effi to entertain herself at home. She soon grows bored and frustrated and takes a lover – Innstetten’s acquaintance, Major Crampas. The affair quietly dies down, but years later, a loyal maid discovers Crampas’ hidden letters to Effi and gives them to Instetten with tragic results.

Also known as Fontane Effi Briest or the improbably long Fontane Effi Briest or Many People Who Are Aware of Their Own Capabilities and Needs Just Acquiesce to the Prevailing System in Their Thoughts and Deeds, Thereby Confirm and Reinforce It, this has long been considered one of Fassbinder’s greatest films, though I have to admit that I don’t quite understand the allure. It is, without a doubt, a beautiful film and is a rare period piece, set in Bismarck-era Prussian society.  This restrained, carefully-paced film plots a woman’s rebellion against the claustrophobic, demanding, and unloving society that would prefer to see her as a jeweled bird in a gilded cage. I take this to be part of a loose, similarly-themed trilogy of 1974, where Fassbinder made three films about the oppressive domestic lives of women: Effi Briest, Martha, and Nora Helmer (an adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House).

Possibly the most interesting aspect of Effi Briest is that Fassbinder’s typical theme of emotional cruelty is so restrained. Effi is not beaten or abused; she is merely unloved and misunderstood. Fassbinder suggests that those who survive Effi – after her death of heartbreak -- are directly responsible for her plight, rather than Effi herself. Those around her, including her parents, her husband, and her daughter, essentially interpret that she has betrayed them, or somehow bitten the hand that has fed her. But Fassbinder shows that she is merely rebelling against a broken system, one that promises her love and affection, but cruelly dangles them in front of her, yet forever withholds them. She is punished for a past indiscretion, a moment of affection that could not even be fairly described as love.

This quiet encounter is actually how she learns about the artifice of her marital and social cage. Early in their marriage, her husband informed her that a dead “Chinaman,” a former servant, haunts her bedroom. She is absolutely terrified for the first half of the film and often has horrible nightmares and anxiety attacks, and refuses to sleep alone. She later learns, to her subdued sense of horror and betrayal, that this is simply a mean-spirited ploy meant to keep her prisoner psychologically.  Her husband, played by physically-imposing Fassbinder regular Wolfgang Schenk after a similar role in Bremen Freedom, clearly adores Effi, but as a status symbol rather than a human being. He is not portrayed as a villain, rather as a rigid example of his society. He ultimately claims that he has shunned Effi for her indiscretion, not because he wanted to, but because that’s what society would expect of him.

Based on Theodor Fontane’s popular German novel of the same name, this black and white film is essentially a sexless film about adultery, a restrained melodrama with utterly unemotional moments of betrayed love and dishonor. The major scenes – Effi’s marriage and its consummation, the birth and infancy of her daughter, her affair with Crampas, the fatal duel between he and Innstetten – are quickly passed over. What would normally unfold dramatically is either narrated (by Fassbinder himself) or presented with a brief scene and a line of text. Each scene feels separate, vignette-like, and there is the sense that the characters are sleepwalking, which such a staple of Fassbinder’s first few films and his theatrical productions.

It is hard to find overt fault with Effi Briest. The performances, especially from Fassbinder regular Hanna Schygulla, are solid and the story of a woman’s resistance against a society who refuses to love in favor of ambition, bourgeois ritual, and success should be compelling. But the somnambulistic nature of the film dampens this, particularly in comparison to similarly removed films like The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Fear of Fear, or Whity, all of which are superior to Effi Briest. There is simply no life in the film – as there is arguably no life in Effi’s existence – and the rare spark provided by a brief appearance from the wonderful Karlheinz Böhm casts this sharply into relief.

This is a rare case where I would suggest that, if you’re a Fassbinder fan, you give the film a chance regardless of my review. It’s available on German DVD and is certainly a compelling experiment, despite its flaws.  At the minimum, it proves yet again that Fassbinder was moved to make films about repression in all its forms and created particularly complex and moving films about the difficult lives of women.

ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL aka ANGST ESSEN SEELE AUF

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974

Starring: Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin

Emmi, a lonely older woman, happens to stop in a bar to escape a down pour. There she coincidentally meets Ali, a Moroccan working in Germany. His friends tease him that he should ask her to dance, which he does. They strike up a conversation, despite Ali’s limited German, and a surprising friendship. Ali walks her home and, due to the rain, she invites him to stay in a spare room. This quickly turns into an affair and soon a marriage, to the dismay of her neighbors, coworkers, and children, all of whom turn hostile, even violent. A broken-hearted Emmi suggests they go on vacation to be alone together and that things will improve when they return. Surprisingly, they receive better treatment – primarily because Emmi’s family and friends have ulterior motives – but she finds herself treating Ali poorly and their marriage crumbling.

Undeniably one of Fassbinder’s first masterpieces, Fear Eats the Soul is also one of his sweetest works, both tender and accessible in a way that many others were not. It is also his first true foray into melodrama. While I’ve read other reviewers describe this as a remake of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, it is far more homage than adaptation. It retains the central relationship – an older woman and a younger man of a different social class – while contains many themes Fassbinder explored throughout his career: loneliness and isolation, emotional cruelty, and prejudice. The racism, I’m sad to say, has not aged a day, which makes the film feel oddly un-aged. The stares that accompany the mixed race relationship (and one with an age discrepancy) would unfortunately not be all that out of place today – neither would the appalling comments about Arabs. Ali – this is not even his name, but a nickname given to him because he is an Arabic foreign worker – is described as dirty, stupid, and alien. It’s suggested that he is probably carrying a bomb, and lives like an animal, rather than a man. The nicest thing said about him is that he’s sex obsessed, which doesn’t seem to be true.

Ali’s relationship with Emmi seems implausible on paper, but Fassbinder makes it completely understandable. They are both desperately lonely and ignored by most of society. Many of Fassbinder’s characters possess sexuality outside the norm – gay, bisexual, transsexual – and though Emmi and Ali are heterosexual, they are certainly an exception. Their relationship reminded me a lot of American black comedy Harold and Maude (1971), where an aged concentration camp survivor and a depressed young man fall in love to the utter dismay of his family. This is one of Fassbinder’s most effortlessly absorbing films, one that emotionally involves the audience in nearly every scene and makes the viewer complicit in Emmi’s struggle to remain independent or bend to the pressure to become more xenophobic from family and friends.

Brigitte Mira and El Hedi ben Salem are absolutely wonderful in the film and help make it so compelling. Ben Salem was not a professional actor, but his natural stillness and stiffness is used to great effect. He was Fassbinder’s lover at the time, though their relationship was apparently tumultuous, leading to ben Salem stabbing a number of men (not fatally) in a Berlin bar just before the Cannes opening of Fear Eats the Soul. Fassbinder helped him to flee the country, though he was eventually imprisoned in France and hanged himself. Fassbinder didn’t learn about this until years later – during the production of Querelle, just before his own death – and decided to dedicate that film to ben Salem.

A number of Fassbinder’s regulars also appear in supporting roles, including Barbara Valentin, Irm Hermann, Fassbinder himself, Karl Scheydt, and Lilo Pempeit (Fassbinder’s mother). Irm Hermann plays Emmi’s adult daughter, while Fassbinder is her abrasive son-in-law; this pairing was perhaps intentional, as Fassbinder and Hermann were involved in an abusive romantic relationship that lasted several years. Fiction and biography overlap in many ways in this film. Mira suffered from prejudice during her childhood, as her father was a Russian Jew and the family had to hide from – and collaborate with – the Nazis. Fassbinder dealt with something similar, because his mother eventually returned to Soviet Poland to the horror of their family.

In terms of visual style, there are distant elements of Fassbinder’s first film, Love is Colder Than Death, but Fear Eats the Soul is proof of his development. While the stillness of the early works is staged, tableaux-like, here it is utterly natural, a blend of realism and melodrama. The camera is relatively stationary, and Fassbinder’s filmmaking tricks are very subtle. Vivid primary colors contrast the drab grays and browns of poverty and isolation. As with Merchant of the Four Seasons, the domestic spaces are cramped, restrictive, and tightly framed, a place of either intimacy, or claustrophobia.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul comes with the highest recommendation and is one of Fassbinder’s most powerful works. This story of prejudice, emotional cruelty, and loneliness has a rare hopeful ending compared to most of Fassbinder’s other films. The camera fades out on Emmi clutching Ali’s hand, while he lies in a hospital bed suffering from a stomach ulcer – something he could recover from, or something that will eventually kill him. This beautiful film provides a deceptively simple message about love and happiness, one that transcends typical melodrama to leave behind something richer, more painful, and utterly transformative. Pick up the excellent Criterion release, or watch it on Hulu.

WORLD ON A WIRE aka WELT AM DRAHT

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973
Starring: Klaus Löwitsch, Barbara Valentin, Mascha Rabben, Karl Heinz Vosgerau

Professor Vollmer, the director of a virtual reality program at the Institute for Cybernetics and Future Science, has created a computer with a simulation program containing thousands of “identity units,” beings who think their world is real. Vollmer has a mental breakdown and mysteriously dies. When his successor, Dr. Stiller, questions the security chief of the Institute, the man disappears without a trace and no one claims to have any memory of his existence. Some of the identity units also begin to act strangely — one tries to commit suicide — and Stiller enters the simulation world to investigate. One of the identity units suggests to him that Stiller’s reality is just another level in the world simulation and that Stiller must escape and try to find the real world above.

Released in two parts on German television in 1973, this little-seen film is the sole example of science fiction within Fassbinder’s prolific, varied catalog. Not quite a mini-series, but longer than an average feature-length film with part one at 100 minutes and part two at 105 minutes, this is one of Fassbinder’s most inspired works and oddly anticipates much of what was to come in science fiction cinema. An adaptation of Daniel F. Galouye’s novel, Simulacron-3 (1964), Galouye’s book was one of the first looks at virtual reality alongside Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint. World on a Wire belongs alongside early French science fiction efforts like Chris Marker’s La jetée (1962) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965), and prefigures everything from Blade Runner (1982) and Videodrome (1983) to The Matrix (1999).

This film wasn’t really rediscovered until 2010, when it was digitally restored by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation and soon after released on DVD by the Criterion Collection. 1973 was an important turning point for Fassbinder. Including World on a Wire, he also directed Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, his first major international breakthrough. Though it is radically different from his other works on the surface level, World on a Wire is another examination of some of Fassbinder’s fundamental themes: illusion, lies and manipulations, the nature of love and identity, and the effect of doubles and reflections. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is an emotionally fraught, melodramatic look at those topics, while World on a Wire is a colder and more detached venture. It’s a blend of film noir, science fiction, and corporate espionage thriller that philosophically examines the nature of reality and identity.

This look at reality, alternate worlds, and artificial intelligence is also fittingly Kafka-esque and contains many elements of horror, claustrophobia, and paranoia. Stiller thinks he is insane and is encouraged to believe this; he is later accused of having lost his mind, and must go on the run or face imprisonment or life in an insane asylum; finally, he is framed for murder and someone attempts to assassinate him. Though this film starts off relatively slowly, by the second half Stiller is constantly on the run with new, increasingly dangerous obstacles thrown in his path. These are designed to punish him, but also to prevent him from reaching the truth. On the surface, this is a less emotionally fraught film than Fassbinder’s other works, but still effectively examines isolation, manipulation, and alienation.

The handsome Klaus Löwitsch, one of Fassbinder’s regular collaborators, starred as Fred Stiller. His portrayal of a fundamentally rational and level-headed, yet inquisitive man is more stable and less emotional than some of Fassbinder’s other main characters, but he is compelling and convincing. If he is the brains of the operation, than television actress Mascha Rabben as Eva Vollmer is certainly the heart. She is not given much running time, but is as memorable as any of Fassbinder’s major heroines and provides the film with some necessary emotional resonance. Many of Fassbinder’s other regular actors -- Adrian Hoven, Margit Carstensen, Kurt Raab, Karl Scheydt, Ulli Lommel, and Ingrid Caven – round out a solid cast. Kurt Raab also took charge of the film’s breathtaking art direction. Though mirrors, glass, and other reflective surfaces are a constant in the films of Fassbinder’s mid to late career, they are never as ever-present as in World on a Wire, where Schiller and his companions are reflected and refracted in nearly every seen.

Available on a two-disc DVD from Criterion, World on a Wire comes with the highest recommend for both Fassbinder fans and science fiction-lovers. It’s one of his most underrated works and is a fascinating look at the origins of cinematic science fiction. Fassbinder does not really get distracted by the trappings of the genre, and provides a lean, intriguing, and deeply philosophical look at the nature of reality and the complex construction of human identity. It is not to be missed.

EIGHT HOURS ARE NOT A DAY aka ACHT STUNDEN SIND KEIN TAG

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972

Starring: Gottfried John, Hanna Schygulla, Luise Ullrich

This five-part television show focuses on a group of interconnected friends and family surrounding a worker named Jochen. He and the others juggle their working lives — including the struggle between striving for success and financial bonuses and fairness to the other works — and their home lives, which include varied kinds of relationships. The familiar foreman dies and instead of hiring from within, a new, outside manager is brought in. Jochen and his girlfriend plan to marry and invite another couple to move in; an elderly woman moves out of the family home to live with a boyfriend; another couple struggles and may be getting divorced.

On one hand, this is perhaps Fassbinder’s most accessible work — it’s a straightforward, realist tale of workers and their every day lives. On the other hand, it’s perhaps his most difficult work to see. It has never received English subtitles and has never been released on DVD in any country. Fortunately, the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation is intending to restore the series and release it for the first time on DVD at some point this year. I was able to hunt down parts of each episode, which means I saw about an hour or so of what is actually a 470-minute series, so this is not a complete review by any means, but I certainly got a solid sense of the show. The episodes, in order, are: “Jochen and Marion” (released October of 1972, 101 minutes), “Grandma and Gregor” (released December of 1972, 99 minutes), “Franz and Ernst” (released January of 1973, 91 minutes), “Monika and Harald” (released February of 1973, 88 minutes), and “Irmgard and Rolf” (released March of 1973, 88 minutes).

Eight Hours are Not a Day premiered on October 29, 1972 in West Germany and apparently caused quite a sensation within German homes. Though it was only five out of an intended eight episodes, and Fassbinder apparently felt like he wasn’t allowed to do with it what he really wanted to do, he effectively made a middle/working-class sitcom that challenged a number of notions about post-war German life. Shown between 1972 and 1973 on German television, this series was produced by created for Westdeutscher Rundfunk. It depicted a range of emotional and working experiences, depicting neither heroes nor villains, but just regular people. There were a number of unusually frank characters that would typically never be found on a ‘70s sitcom, including sexually active grandparents.

Fassbinder’s last romantic partner, one of his long-time editors, and head of his estate Juliane Lorenz has loosely compared this to what HBO has done over the last ten years with shows like The Wire. Though Eight Hours is far from an urban crime drama, I would have to agree with her. This is a frank look at working class issues such as how to balance work and life, how to resolve personal goals within the workplace, and how to navigate romantic relationships and family life. Fassbinder presents is a refreshing and thoughtful if mainstream blend of relationship styles, including an engaged couple, a married couple about to divorce, and an older woman with a boyfriend, as well as his typical social issues like the effects of prejudice.

When Eight Hours are Not a Day is finally released this year, it will be well worth checking out for fans of ‘70s sitcoms and Fassbinder alike. It includes some strong performances from his regular cast of actors, as well as new faces, such as Gottfried John, Hanna Schygulla, Luise Ullrich, Hans Hirschmüller, Renate Roland, Karl Scheydt, Irm Hermann, and the always delightful Kurt Raab. Eight Hours is most similar to Fassbinder’s realist films like Merchant of the Four Seasons, Fear of Fear, or even Pioneers in Ingolstadt — it lacks the stripped down quality of his first films as well as the ornate stylization of his later work, and remains a surprisingly fresh, if digestible work.

JAIL BAIT aka WILDWECHSEL

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973

Starring: Harry Baer, Marquard Bohm, Rudolf Waldemar Brem

Hanni, just fourteen, begins a relationship with Franz, a motorcycle-reading greaser who is 19 years old. She allows him to take her virginity, but he is soon arrested and imprisoned for a few months for having a sexual relationship with a minor. As soon as he gets out, they reunite, much to the horror of her conservative parents, particularly her father, who speaks increasingly of violence. Due to Hanni and Franz’s renewed relationship, she becomes pregnant, but they know no doctor will ever give her an abortion without arresting Franz again. But Hanni takes things into her own hands and develops a plan that will prevent her parents from interfering ever again.

Based on a play by Franz Xaver Kroetz, Kroetz initially worked with Fassbinder on the script, but hated the finished product because he thought it was too much like pornography. The German title, Wildwechsel, literally “Wild Game,” refers to the mating dance between the two teenagers, the chicken factory where Franz first works, and the farm location of their first sexual encounter. This blend of amour fou, sexual awakening, and Brechtian alienation affect is one of Fassbinder’s standard examinations of boredom, ennui, isolation, and the never-ending search for love. Similar in theme and style to Fassbinder’s earlier Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1971) and German playwright Franz Wedekind’s chilling Spring Awakening, what appears to be a family drama, even an after-school special at times, is really an attack against post-war bourgeois values.

The two teens, Hanni and Franz, are unable to communicate with each other and it seems completely impossible for them to express love or any other emotion. On the other hand, Fassbinder portrays the parents as affectionate towards each other, yet falling apart because they are losing control of their child. Though this seems highly domesticated, it also has numerous political elements. The parents discuss the government, stating that while the Nazis were wrong, the current government doesn’t have it right either. Out of his anger and digust, Hanni’s father that says that under Hitler, Franz would have learned his lesson in a concentration camp and that he would prefer a government that gassed Jews, as long as they took care of the pig that seduced his daughter.

The violence of thought, speech, and eventually deed is related to the air of repression and claustrophobia that settles over the film. Hanni does appear to be childlike with her dresses, braided hair, dolls on her bed, a preference for soda rather than beer, and a scene where she plays hopscotch, but this is perhaps out of proportion with her parents need to control her feelings and her behavior. Her family home — as well as other buildings and offices shown in the film — are adorned with crosses and religious imagery, showing that this form of moral control is expressed throughout the society they live in. Along with Pioneers in Ingoldstadt, this is one of Fassbinder’s most unlikable films. Both are more visually realist, simpler than his stark early works or ornate later films. And both deal with the struggles of lower middle class characters to either break out of social norms or make enough money to live up to them.

SPOILERS. Based on a real-life case from the 1960s, the ending prefigures Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, another film based on a real-life tale of teens who murder a parent when they are prevented from being together. But like so much of Fassbinder’s work, the horror present here is less in the moment of death than it is in the constantly frustrated scenes of living, or trying to live. Eva Mattes was not one of his regular cast of actresses, but performs admirably in the role of Hanni, where her rounded face and childlike demeanor belies the fact that she is clearly not a 14 year old. She is also either the seducer, or at least a more than willing participant. Fassbinder’s frequent collaborator Harry Baer (Gods of the Plague) looks youthful, but defeated, as if life (or Hanni) has led him down a path not of his own choosing. Regardless, as with many of Baer’s other characters, he refuses to act or to save himself from a certain doom brought by love — or at least sex.

WIldwechsel is not available on DVD, but you can hunt it down online with some searching. It only comes recommended for fans of Fassbinder or anyone interested in seeing a companion piece of sorts to Heavenly Creatures, a look flattened out look at the battle between teen counterculture and conservative working class values. It is still a worthwhile look at the still-developing career of one of cinema’s geniuses. The soundtrack -- a blend of ironically-used romantic '60s pop songs with classical themes better suited to high melodrama -- is a clear example of this transformation and is one of the finest things about the film.