Fassbinder on Melodrama
Inspired by innovations in French cinema, a group of German filmmakers in the sixties collaborated on, and published a document called the Oberhausen Manifesto, named after the short film festival at which it was tabled. Although not published in the manifesto itself, the motto Papas Kino ist tot, or Papa’s cinema is dead, summed up their attitudes towards the prevailing cinematic sensibility of the time.
The Oberhausen Manifesto is regarded as the origins of German New Wave Cinema.
One of the young signatories on the manifesto, was the filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder was such a significant proponent of this new style of cinema, that his premature death in 1982, at the age of 37, has come to signify the end of that cinematic epoch.
Fassbinder was a prolific filmmaker, who generally preferred to work with the same, or a similar group of people. Like many filmmakers of his era, he was multi-skilled: acting, producing, directing, and even composing music.
The stories in his films are quite diverse, but many of the themes are repeated, though never quite in the same way. Recently, Madman Entertainment has released a massive volume of his films. While some have been released individually, many have been grouped into DVD compilations comprised of thematic categories. It’s impossible to cover the sheer volume of his output in one session, so let’s focus on one particular type of film, which, ironically, has its roots in the so-called “Papa’s cinema” that he so earnestly negated.
The Fassbinder On Melodrama collection includes three of his most accessible films. Effi Briest, based on the novel of the same name, features the magnificent Hannah Shygullah (seen most recently here in Australia in Fatih Akin’s The Edge Of Heaven). You may have seen the remake during the recent Festival Of German Films. It was very good; but not a patch on the original. In Fassbiner’s version, the young Effi cannot escape the fate that befell all bourgeois women in 19th century society. Fassbinder utterly loathed the moral prescriptions of bourgeois society. Compare the ending of this film to the remake, and you have a sense of his motivations: he is interested in the suffering of humanity and the quiet, desperate agony that people withstand. None of his films capture this quite as strongly as his melodramas.
Martha, the second of the Melodrama trilogy, is the disturbing story of another doomed woman doomed. Martha marries a sadistic man who continues the torturous patriarchy implicit in her relationship with her dead father. In fact, the scene in which her father dies, is extraordinary in itself. Karlheinz Boehm, who played Kurt, Martha’s cruel husband, said that this was one of his favourite roles. Not because of the cruelty, but because of its interest, and the dramatic challenge it posed.
If you saw the documentary Auge zu Auge (Eye to Eye) at this year’s Festival of German Films, (and I certainly hope you did), you’ll already be aware of the way in which the scene where Martha and Kurt first see each other, was highly innovative, not to mention, effective. Look out for it.
Fear Of Fear is a deft study of urban neurosis that affected many women, in particular, as a result of the post-war urban sprawl, and the expectation that women who had been proactive during the war, should happily be relegated to domestic duties after the war, leaving the men to assume positions of power.
See a familiar theme running through these films?
Fassbinder was interested in people whom he considered to be marginalised by society: these included women, homosexuals, and, in the case of The Year of the Thirteen Moons, transsexuals. Not surprisingly, he has influenced filmmakers such as Pedro Almodovár and Wong Kar Wai.
Fassbinder’s distinctive style owes more to traditional melodrama than the influence of the gritty new wave. What we’re left with, is a stylish, more contemporary and honest exposition on human experience.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder made an extraordinary number of films. Not all of them are as good as each other, but they are all interesting. For some, he is an acquired taste, but well worth the rewards.