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Elvira Weishaupt, once a burly working-class butcher named Erwin, has made an enormous sacrifice for love. She has undergone a sex change for a romantic interest who has abandoned her, and she now must struggle to reconcile her past life with her present identity. The emotionally fractured Elvira visits influential acquaintances and old haunts in hopes of putting the pieces of her life back together — and of confronting her lost love.Read More »
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder – In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden AKA In a Year of 13 Moons (1978)
1971-1980ArthouseDramaGermanyRainer Werner Fassbinder -
Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Martha (1974) (HD)
1971-1980ArthouseDramaGermanyRainer Werner FassbinderA single woman in her early thirties, Martha (Margit Carstensen) is on vacation with her father in Rome when he has a heart attack and falls down dead. She reacts rather indifferently and returns home to her highly-strung mother and begins to new era of her life taking care of a completely ungrateful and insulting mother (declining an offer of marriage from her boss). After a barrage of verbal abuse and offensive remarks from her mother who see’s her as an ‘ugly old spinster’ she accepts a proposal of marriage from an equally insulting and disrespectful man, Read More »
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)
1971-1980ArthouseDramaGermanyRainer Werner FassbinderQuote:
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s controversial, fifteen-hour Berlin Alexanderplatz, based on Alfred Döblin’s great modernist novel, was the crowning achievement of a prolific director who, at age thirty-four, had already made over thirty films. Fassbinder’s immersive epic follows the hulking, childlike ex-convict Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) as he attempts to “become an honest soul” amid the corrosive urban landscape of Weimar-era Germany. With equal parts cynicism and humanity, Fassbinder details a mammoth portrait of a common man struggling to survive in a viciously uncommon time.Read More » -
Hans Günther Pflaum et al. – R.W. Fassbinder – Criterion Bonus Disk (1993)
1991-2000DocumentaryGermanyHans Günther PflaumRainer Werner FassbinderQuote:
This is an excellent hour-and-a-half documentary overview of Fassbinder’s career. For those new to the director, this is the perfect starting place (perhaps even before watching the films).Read More » -
Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Das Kleine Chaos AKA The Little Chaos (1966) (HD)
1961-1970ArthouseCrimeGermanyRainer Werner FassbinderSYNOPSIS:
Three young people use the pretext of selling magazine subscriptions to enter apartments…Read More » -
Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Pioniere in Ingolstadt aka Pioneers In Ingolstadt (1971)
1971-1980DramaGermanyRainer Werner FassbinderA “Three Movie Buffs” review:
This early Fassbinder film tells the story of two very different women, both friends, in a small German town. One is Berta an innocent maid and virgin who falls hopelessly in love with Karl, the first man she has sex with. The other woman is Alma the town slut. She is sleeping her way through all the soldiers (or pioneers as they are called) that are in town to build a bridge.Read More » -
Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Die Ehe der Maria Braun aka The Marriage of Maria Braun [+Extras] (1979)
1971-1980ArthouseDramaGermanyRainer Werner FassbinderA World War II widow seeks to adjust to life in postwar Germany.Read More »
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Warum läuft Herr R. Amok? AKA Why Does Herr R. Run Amok (1970)
1961-1970ArchitectureArthouseDramaGermanyRainer Werner FassbinderFrom Jim’s Reviews:
Disclosure: I have written the liner notes for Fantoma’s DVD release of this film. With a few changes, that essay appears below.Image”You hear the one about the guy goes into a bakery, orders a loaf of bread? ‘White or black?’ the baker asks. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ the guy says. ‘It’s for a blind person.'”
How do we move from these opening words of Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? – one of five rapid-fire jokes delivered by Herr R.’s co-workers – to its climactic killing spree? Like the title, that’s another gnawing, and resonant, question.Read More »
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Despair (1978)
1971-1980ArthouseDramaGermanyRainer Werner FassbinderGermany in the early 1930s. Against the backdrop of the Nazis’ rise, Hermann Hermann, a Russian émigré and chocolate magnate, goes slowly mad. It begins with his seating himself in a chair to observe himself making love to his wife, Lydia, a zaftig empty-headed siren who is also sleeping with her cousin. Hermann is soon given to intemperate outbursts at his workers, other businessmen, and strangers. Then, he meets Felix, an itinerant laborer, whom he delusionally believes looks exactly like himself. Armed with a new life insurance policy, he hatches an elaborate plot in the belief it will free him of all his worries.Read More »