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Title: Fassbinder: Life and Work of a Provocative Genius by Christian Braad Thomsen ISBN: 0-8166-4364-4 Publisher: University of Minnesota Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary:
Filmdom's Resident Ogre
Comment: 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.
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Title: Chaos As Usual: Conversations About Rainer Werner Fassbinder by Juliane Lorenz, Marion Schmid, Herbert Gehr, Christa Armstrong, Maria Polikan ISBN: 1557833591 Publisher: Applause Theatre & Cinema Book Publishers Pub. Date: 01 August, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title:Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy (The Marriage of Maria Braun / Veronika Voss / Lola) - Criterion Collection ASIN: B0000AKY56 Publisher: Criterion Collection Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $79.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $69.56 |
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Title:In a Year with 13 Moons ASIN: B0001A79DK Publisher: Fantoma Pub. Date: 13 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $22.46 |
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Title: The Anarchy of the Imagination: Interviews, Essays, Notes (Paj Books) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Toteberg, Leo A. Lensing ISBN: 0801843693 Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1992 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan by Jimmy McDonough ISBN: 1556524951 Publisher: Chicago Review Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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