*  Als:  Bad Wörishofen

AKA:   Franz Fassbinder, Franz Walsch

Ook: Film- en scenario schrijver,filmacteur, filmproducent.

* 31.5.1945, Beieren - †  10.6.1982, Munich.

By far the best known director of the New German Cinema, Fassbinder has also been called the most important filmmaker of the post-WWII generation. Exceptionally versatile and prolific, he directed over 40 films between 1969 and 1982; in addition, he wrote most of his scripts, produced and edited many of his films and wrote plays and songs, as well as acting on stage, in his own films and in the films of others. Although he worked in a variety of genres—the gangster film, comedy, science fiction, literary adaptations—most of his stories employed elements of Hollywood melodrama from the 1950s overlayed with social criticism and avant-garde techniques. Fassbinder's expressed desire was to make films that were both popular and critical successes, but assessment of the results has been decidedly mixed: his critics contend that he became so infatuated with the Hollywood forms he tried to appropriate that the political impact of his films is indistinguishable from conventional melodrama, while his admirers argue that he was a postmodernist filmmaker whose films satisfy audience expectations while simultaneously subverting them.

Fassbinder often described his early years as lonely and lacking in love and affection. His father, a physician, and his mother, a translator, were divorced in 1951, and Fassbinder had little contact with his father after that. From around the age of seven, Fassbinder would be sent by his mother to the cinema so that she could work on her translation projects. He would later claim that during this period of his life he went to the movies almost every day, sometimes two or three times a day. He attended private and public schools at Augsburg and Munich but left before graduating in 1964 to enroll in a private drama school. 

In the summer of 1967 Fassbinder joined the Action Theater, modeled on American Julian Beck's Living Theater. Two months later, he had become the company's co-director, and when it reorganized under the name "anti-theater," he emerged as its leader. The group lived together and staged a number of controversial and politically radical plays in 1968 and 1969, including some of Fassbinder's original works and adaptations. 

(Onder: Fassbinder en Peter Chatel)

Fassbinder's work in the theater, however, was primarily a means toward his goal of making films. He had applied in 1965 to the Berlin Film and Television Academy but failed the entrance exam. In the same year he wrote and directed his first film, a ten-minute short entitled THE CITY TRAMP. During his "anti-theater" period he made ten feature films, including LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH (1969), KATZELMACHER (1969), and BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE (1971). Influenced by Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Marie Straub and the theories of Bertolt Brecht, these films are austere and minimalist in style, and although praised by many critics, they proved too demanding and inaccessible for a mass audience. It was during this time, however, that Fassbinder developed his rapid working methods. Using actors and technicians from the "anti-theater" group, he was able to complete films ahead of schedule and often under budget and thus compete successfully for government subsidies.

In search of a wider, more sympathetic audience, Fassbinder turned for a model to Hollywood melodrama, particulary the films of German-trained Douglas Sirk, who made ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION and IMITATION OF LIFE for Universal Pictures during the 1950s. Fassbinder was attracted to these films not only because of their entertainment value but also for their depiction of various kinds of repression and exploitation. This mixture of melodrama and politics is evident in Fassbinder's first commercially successful film, THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS (1971). But the film that brought him international acclaim was ALI—FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974), which won the International Critics Prize at Cannes in 1974.

ALI relates a love story between a German cleaning woman in her fifties and a young Moroccan immigrant worker. The two are drawn to each other out of mutual loneliness. As their relationship becomes known, they experience various forms of hostility and public rejection. Fassbinder makes it apparent that social and economic factors constrain the couple, through his favorite techniques of double-framing shots and extremely long takes of characters looking with objectifying gazes. At the end, Fassbinder withholds a "happy solution" and directs our attention to the ongoing problems of migrant workers. The overall effect of the film is to foreground the tenuous boundaries between public and private life and to stimulate the audience to find a solution to the couple's problems. 

Enthusiasm for Fassbinder's films grew quickly after ALI. Vincent Canby paid tribute to Fassbinder as "the most original talent since Godard," and in 1977, Manhattan's New Yorker Theater held a Fassbinder Festival. That same year saw the release of DESPAIR. Shot in English on a budget that nearly equalled the cost of his first fifteen films, DESPAIR was based on a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, adapted by Tom Stoppard, and starred Dirk Bogarde. Favorable comparisons with such revered directors as Ingmar Bergman, Luis Buñuel, and Luchino Visconti soon followed.

But even as enthusiasm for Fassbinder grew outside of Germany, his films seemed to make little impression on German audiences. At home, he was better known for his work in television (EIGHT HOURS ARE NOT A DAY, 1972 and the 151 hour BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, 1980) and for a certain notoriety surrounding his lifestyle and open homosexuality. Coupled with the controversial issues that his films took up—terrorism, state violence, racial intolerance, sexual politics—it seemed that everything Fassbinder did provoked or offended someone. Charges leveled against him included anti-Semitism, anti-Communism, and anti-feminism.

With THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (1978) Fassbinder finally attained the popular acceptance he sought, even with German audiences. The film recounts and assesses postwar German history as embodied in the rise and fall of the main character, played by Hanna Schygulla. Its story of manipulation and betrayal exposes Germany's spectacular postwar economic recovery in terms of its cost in human values. In the years following MARIA BRAUN, Fassbinder made "private" films, such as IN A YEAR OF THIRTEEN MOONS (1978) and THE THIRD GENERATION (1979), stories that translated personal experiences and attitudes, as well as big budget spectacles like LILI MARLEEN (1981) and LOLA (1982). By the time he made his last film, QUERELLE (1982), heavy doses of drugs and alcohol had apparently become necessary to sustain his unrelenting work habits. When Fassbinder was found dead in a Munich apartment on June 10, 1982, the cause of death was reported as heart failure resulting from interaction between sleeping pills and cocaine. The script for his next film, ROSA LUXEMBURG, was found next to him. He had wanted Romy Schneider to play the lead.

Fassbinder in actie als regisseur bij zijn film Lili Marleen.

Korte biografie van Fassbinder

Lange tijd was Rainer Werner Fassbinder het enfant terrible van de naoorlogse Duitse cultuur. Sinds zij n dood is dat beeld veranderd en geniet hij de faam een van de eersten te zijn geweest die de moderne Duitse samenleving keihard confronteerde met eigen falen.

Vriendelijk ging dat nooit. Dat kon niet. Volgens Fassbinder maken zachte heelmeesters stinkende wonden. En aan nog meer stank had Duitsland volgens hem geen behoefte.

OP 10 JUNI 1982 werd Fassbinder in München dood op zijn bed gevonden. Hij had een overdosis cocaïne genomen. Het bezoek van de Amerikaanse president Ronald Reagan aan Bonn werd van de voorpagina's van de Duitse kranten verdrongen. Het drama Fassbinder kreeg voorrang. In alle Duitse (maar ook andere Europese) kranten verschenen lange beschouwingen over het fenomeen Fassbinder en de vermeende ziekte van hem en van de Duitse samenleving. Telkens kwam de fascinatie van de man voor dood en geweld ter sprake. Over (gewelddadige) seks werd in meer bedekte termen gesproken. Hetzelfde gebeurde met drugs als middel om tot het uiterste te gaan. In alle verhalen werden de films en toneelstukken genoemd die door een avant-garde waren bejubelden door de Duitse burgerij als even zovele klappen in het gezicht waren ervaren: Katzelmacher, over een Griekse gastarbeider; Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant, over menselijke relaties en macht; en bovenal Die Ehe der Maria Braun, Fassbinders bittere portret van het Duitse Wirtschaftswunder met Hanna Schygulla in de rol van de soldatenvrouw die wacht op haar man en ondertussen een bloeiend bestaan weet op te bouwen.

Deze en alle andere films van Fassbinder had. den min of meer hetzelfde thema: treurige menselijke relaties tegen de achtergrond van een naoorlogs Duitsland dat met zijn verleden nooit korte metten had gemaakt en slechts aan de oppervlakte minder ziek leek dan in de nazitijd.

Genoemde drie zijn slechts enkele van de tientallen producties die Fassbinder in zijn 36 levensjaren wist te maken. Het waren 11 toneelstukken, 2 hoorspelen en 45 speelfilms. Zoiets kan alleen in een leven als een orkaan. En dat had Fassbinder! Na op zijn 16^de de school vaarwel gezegd te hebben, belandde hij in de Münchense (anti)theatre wereld. Daar maakte hij in 1969 zijn eerste lange film. Al slaagde hij daarin niet meteen, het doel was vanaf het begin was duidelijk: Fassbinder wilde geen films maken om te amuseren maar om te confronteren. Hij verkondigde het keer op keer: dat de film pas begon nadat het beeld op zwart was gegaan. De bedoeling was immers geen andere dan in de harten van de kijkers woede en schaamte en andere extreme gevoelens opwekken. Fassbinder zou daarin keer op keer slagen. Er waren bijna net zo veel rellen als producties.

Met zijn obsessie voor dood en geweld en in zijn niet aflatende werkdrang eiste Fassbinder meer van zichzelf dan goed is voor een mens. Hij wist het, hij deed het bewust, hij speelde niet alleen op het witte doek met uitersten. Bovendien liet zijn eigen aftakeling hem koud. Hij weigerde grenzen te erkennen, weigerde verlies te aanvaarden en ging net zo lang door tot hem eigenlijk niets anders overbleef dan ook de laatste grens te overschrijden.

In zoverre kwam de dood van Fassbinder voor zijn omgeving nauwelijks als een verrassing. Het is zoals een van zijn intieme vrienden (voorzover hij die had), Harry Baer, enkele weken na de dood in een interview zei: Fassbinder had eigenlijk tien jaar lang zelfmoord gepleegd."