Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Birthday: Born in 1945-05-31 in Bad Wörishofen, Germany
Deathday: 1982-06-10
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (31 May 1945 — 10 June 1982) was a German film director, screenwriter, and actor. Considered one of the most important figures in the New German Cinema, Fassbinder was prolific; in a professional career less than fifteen years, he completed forty feature-length films, two television film series, three short films, four video productions, twenty-four stage plays, and four radio plays. He had tortured, personal relationships with the actors and technicians around him who formed a surrogate family. However, his pictures demonstrate his deep sensitivity to social outsiders and his hatred of institutionalized violence. He ruthlessly attacked both German bourgeois society and the larger limitations of humanity. Fassbinder died in June 1982 at the age of 37 from a lethal cocktail of cocaine and barbiturates. His death has often been cited as the event that ended the New German Cinema movement.
TV Credits
Am laufenden Band
Character: Self - Guest
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Stars in der Manege
Character: Self
Every year there was a Gala of the Stars at the Zirkus Krone in Munich....
Dalli Dalli
Character: Self
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Spécial cinéma
Character: Self
Marcello Mastroianni, Isabelle Adjani, Alain Delon, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen... the biggest stars in cinema were welcomed by Christian Defaye on his show Spécial cinéma. Between intimate confessions from actors and immersion in the world of the greatest filmmakers, Christian Defaye took viewers on a journey into the fascinating world of cinema for nearly thirty years....
NDR Talk Show
Character: Self
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Berlin Alexanderplatz
Character: Narrator (voice, uncredited)
In late 1920s Berlin, Franz Biberkopf is released from prison and vows to go straight. However, he soon finds himself embroiled in the city’s criminal underworld....
Movie Credits
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
Character: Eugen
Emmi Kurowski, a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali. Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi's family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future....
Shadow of Angels
Character: Raoul
Beautiful, detached, laconic, consumptive Lily Brest is a streetwalker with few clients. She loves her idle boyfriend, Raoul, who gambles away what little she earns. The town's power broker, called the rich Jew, discovers she is a good listener, so she's soon busy. Raoul imagines grotesque sex scenes between Lily and the Jew; he leaves her for a man. Her parents, a bitter Fascist who is a cabaret singer in drag and her wheelchair-bound mother, offer no refuge. Even though all have a philosophica...
Veronika Voss
Character: Kinobesucher (uncredited)
In Munich 1955, German film star Veronika Voss becomes a drug addict at the mercy of corrupt Dr. Marianne Katz, who keeps her supplied with morphine. After meeting sports writer Robert Krohn, Veronika begins to dream of a return to stardom. As the couple's relationship escalates in intensity, Veronika begins seriously planning her return to the screen -- only to realize how debilitated she has become through her drug habit....
Gods of the Plague
Character: Pornokunde
After his release from prison, ex-convict Franz Walsch finds his way back into the Munich criminal underworld. His attentions focus upon two women, Joanna and Margarethe, as well as upon Günther, his friend who earlier shot his brother....
Counter Shot: Departure of the Filmmakers
Character: Self (archive footage)
Documentary about filmmakers of the New German Cinema who were members of the legendary Filmverlag für Autoren (Film Publishing House for Authors). Among them are Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wim Wenders....
Katzelmacher
Character: Jorgos
A group of young slackers spend most of their time hanging out in front of a Munich apartment building. When a Greek immigrant named Jorgos moves in, however, their aimless lives are shaken up. Soon, new tensions arise both within the group and with Jorgos....
The Wizard of Babylon
Character: Self
A documentary about German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, during the time of filming "Querelle," features an interview with Fassbinder only ten hours before his death....
Beware of a Holy Whore
Character: Sascha
Film director Jeff and his lead actor are taking their time getting to set. In their absence, the crew lack a purposeful way to spend their time waiting, so they drink heavily. However, as booze is downed and frustration sets in, morale hits rock bottom....
Kamikaze '89
Character: Police Lieutenant Jansen
In a futuristic, totalitarian society wherein the government controls all facets of the media, a homicide detective investigates a string of bombings and uncovers more than he bargained for....
Love Is Colder Than Death
Character: Franz
Small-time pimp Franz is torn between his mistress and Bruno, the gangster sent after him by a shady crime syndicate he has refused to join....
The Last Trip to Harrisburg
Character: Voice of Man and Woman in Train (voice)
A soldier and a beautiful blonde on a train to Harrisburg....
Fox and His Friends
Character: Franz "Fox" Bieberkopf
Fox, a former circus performer, wins the lottery of DM 500,000 and can now have the life and things that he has always wanted. He enters an abusive relationship with wealthy industrialist Eugen in an attempt to climb the social ladder. His desperation for love and affection soon spirals into tragedy....
Germany in Autumn
Character: Self (uncredited)
Nine fictitious documentaries and films reflect the mood of late 1970s Germany, particularly the two-month period in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped by the RAF (Red Army Faction). The kidnap had been made to orchestrate the release of the original leaders of the RAF, aka the Baader-Meinhof....
The Merchant of Four Seasons
Character: Zucker
Hans is a street fruit peddler and born loser. His choice of career upsets his bourgeois family, causing him to turn to drinking and violence. After recovering from a debilitating heart attack, his business finally begins to take off. However, the more he becomes a credit to his family, the more depressed he becomes....
Alfonso Sansone: Producer by Chance
Character: Self (archive footage)
After the war, almost by chance, Alfonso Sansone started to produce documentary films and moved from Palermo to Rome, the city of film....
Cinémania: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Character: Self
A documentary about the director Fassbinder but edited as if it were a film of the master himself, with some sequences of his own movies....
I Don’t Just Want You to Love Me
Character: Self (archive footage)
A documentary about the life and work of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder....
The City Tramp
Character: Man #1 on Toilet
A tramp finds a gun lying in the street....
Tenderness of the Wolves
Character: Wittowski
A German serial killer preys on boys and young men during the so-called years of crisis between the wars. Based on the true story of Fritz Haarmann, aka the Butcher of Hanover and the Vampire of Hanover....
The Bridegroom, the Actress, and the Pimp
Character: the pimp
Three sequences are linked together in this short film by Straub; the first sequence is a long tracking shot from a car of prostitutes plying their trade on the night-time streets of Germany; the second is a staged play, cut down to 10 minutes by Straub and photographed in a single take; the final sequence covers the marriage of James and Lilith, and Lilith’s subsequent execution of her pimp, played by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. "The film is a look entirely at Western decadence" - Jean-Marie Str...
The Little Chaos
Character: Franz
Theo, Marite, and Franz cannot make any money selling magazines door to door, so they try a little robbery....
The American Soldier
Character: Franz Walsch (uncredited)
Ricky returns to Munich from Vietnam and is promptly hired as a contract killer....
The Culture Industry Needs Something Like Me
Character: Self (also interviewee) (uncredited)
An attempt at a psychological profile of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who answers the author's questions about his artistic and personal development in a manner that is at times shockingly laconic. Excerpts from his film "Beware of a Holy Whore" document how much the life circumstances of his group of actors influenced the work of the director....
Bremen Freedom
Character: Rumpf
A very stylized TV version of the Fassbinder play. The set consists of a few pieces of furniture in front of a large screen on which coastal scenery is back projected. Geesche is a nineteenth-century woman who wants to have a mind of her own. She defies convention and will do anything to achieve her freedom from oppression by her family and friends....
Bourbon Street Blues
Character: Writer
An adaptation of Tennessee Williams' "The Lady Larkspur Lotion" created by Douglas Sirk with the assistance of his film students and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It depicts the conflict between a dreamy, delusional heroine and her brusque, practical landlady, who wants to kick her out of her apartment....
Baal
Character: Baal
An exploration of the cult of the genius, an anti-heroic figure who chooses to be a social outcast and live on the fringe of bourgeois morality....
The Ancestress
Character: Jaromir
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Fassbinder in Hollywood
Character: Self (archive footage)
Though he never actually worked in Hollywood, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died in 1982 at the age of 36, was influenced greatly by American studio films of the 1950s and the convention of melodrama (the link most often mentioned is Douglas Sirk)....
The Niklashausen Journey
Character: Schwarzer Mönch
Can a small group of people start a proletarian revolution, asks the "Black Monk" in a leather jacket? The medieval shepherd, Hans Boehm, claims to have been called by the Virgin Mary to create a revolt against the church and the landowners. The "Black Monk" suggests that he would have more success if he dressed up Johanna and had her appear as the Virgin Mary....
1 Berlin-Harlem
Character: Self
An African-American GI retires from the US Army in West Berlin to live with his white girlfriend, who already has a baby with another black man. After an argument with her family, she deserts him as well. Despite finding a job and a new place to live, he keeps running into racism, which also manifests itself in sexual intimidation....
Mit Eichenlaub und Feigenblatt
Character: Soldier
A young man named Jürgen joins the military. As much as he tries to make a heroic career as a soldier in a rearmed West Germany, he fails utterly and ends up in a bizarre sanatorium....
Mathias Kneißl
Character: Flecklbauer
Inspired by the real-life events of Mathias Kneißl, a marginal man, son of poor farmers from Bavaria, in the late XIX century. Mathias stole from the rich to give to the poor, becoming a hero for the rural people and a popular social rebel. He was chased by the police until his unfortunate sentence....
Supergirl
Character: Man in Front of Shop Window
A beautiful woman, Supergirl Francesca Farnese, appears out of nowhere on a Bavarian highway. She wears only an orange jumpsuit and wants to go to Washington. Playboy Charly first takes her to Lake Starnberg, where she meets best-selling author Evers. He immediately leaves his wife and travels with Francesca to Spain, where he negotiates a project with the American film producer Polonsky. No one remains unimpressed by the mysterious beauty. Supergirl remains elusive— she quickly disappears again...
The Sudden Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach
Character: Bauer
In an attempt to escape 19th-century poverty, eight farmers and day laborers attack a prince's money transport in the Hessian Hinterland....
Whity
Character: Saloon guest (uncredited)
"Whity" is the mulatto butler of the dysfunctional Nicholson family in the American Southwest in 1878. The father, Ben Nicholson, has an attractive young wife, Katherine, and two sons by a previous marriage: the homosexual Frank and the feeble-minded Davy. Whity tries to carry out all their orders, however demeaning, until various family members ask him to kill some of the others....
Haytabo
Character: Bote des Professors
A biochemistry professor finds an old manuscript with the structure and formula of an immortality drug....
Fassbinder: Love Without Demands
Character: Self (archive footage)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was probably Germany’s most significant post-war director. His swift and dramatic demise at the early age of 37 in 1982 left behind a vacuum in European filmmaking that has yet to be filled, as well as a body of unique, multi-layered, and multifarious work of astonishing consistency and rigour. From 1969 onwards, Danish director and film historian Christian Braad Thomsen maintained a close yet respectfully distanced friendship with Fassbinder. The film is based on his pe...
Fassbinder
Character: Self (archive footage)
A film portrait of the influential Bavarian actor, director, and screenwriter who publicly confessed his homosexuality, which chronologically covers all the important stages from Action-Theater to the director's early death, supplemented with anecdotes....
Lili Marleen
Character: Günther Weissenborn (uncredited)
The story of a German singer named Willie, who while working in Switzerland, falls in love with a Jewish composer named Robert, whose family is helping people to flee from the Nazis. Robert’s family is skeptical of Willie, thinking she could be a Nazi as she becomes famous for singing the song “Lili Marleen”....
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1977
Character: Self
Rainer Werner Fassbinder reflects on the various stages of his career, discusses how his motives behind filmmaking evolved up his film Despair....
Room 666
Character: Self
During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders asked a number of global film directors to, one at a time, go into a hotel room, turn on the camera, and answer a simple question: "What is the future of cinema?"...
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Character: Peddler
Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone....
Signs of Vigorous Life: The New German Cinema
Character: Self
BBC documentary about the rise of the New German Cinema and several of its most important figures....
Notes on the Making of 'Berlin Alexanderplatz'
Character: Self
Documentary about the making of the 1980 German television series....
Once Upon a Time… The Marriage of Maria Braun
Character: Self (archive footage)
A documentary that focuses on the making of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "The Marriage of Maria Braun"....
My Name Is Not Ali
Character: Self (archive footage)
Travelling between Germany, France, and Tunisia, Viola Shafik reconstructs and deconstructs the unknown life story of El Hedi Ben Salem through interviews with his companions and family members as well as archival material. With openness and slight naivety, the interviewees explain how “Ali” became an oriental object of projection for the Fassbinder group, while El Hedi Ben Salem, the human being, was overlooked in order to establish the foreigner as “other.” A no-frills examination of a piece o...
Rio das Mortes
Character: Hannas Tanzpartner (uncredited)
Michel and Guenther, working in dead-end jobs, are obsessed with going to Peru to find buried treasure, using a map of the Rio das Mortes. Michel's girlfriend, Hanna, humors their plan, but really just wants to get married....
Effi Briest
Character: Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
When 17-year-old Effi Briest marries the elderly Baron von Instetten, she moves to a small, isolated Baltic town and a house that she fears is haunted. Starved for companionship, Effi begins a friendship with Major Crampas, a charismatic womanizer....
End of the Commune?
Character: Self (uncredited)
A documentary about Fassbinder and the early years of the legendary Antiteater, the group he was a member/leader of. You can here see and hear some of the actors he was going to use in his movies for the next years. The movie shows rehearsals for his play "The Coffeehouse," which also became a television movie, and you can watch unique footage from the 19th Film Festival in Berlin (1969) where "Love is Colder Than Death" was shown. As told in this documentary, his first feature movie was given a...
Wim Wenders, Desperado
Character: Self (archive footage)
"Wings Of Desire" and "Buena Vista Social Club", "Paris, Texas" and "The State Of Things": Wim Wenders is considered one of the pioneers of New German Cinema and one of the most important and influential representatives of contemporary cinema. With never-before-shown archive material and extraordinary encounters with companions and contemporary witnesses such as Francis Ford Coppola, Willem Dafoe, Andie MacDowell, Hanns Zischler, Patti Smith, and Werner Herzog, this documentary provides unique i...
Daniel Schmid: Le Chat Qui Pense
Character: Self (archive footage)
When director Daniel Schmid grew up, his parents ran a hotel in the Alps, and this singular setting was to influence his film. Rather by coincidence, he came to Berlin in the early 1960s and became part of the new German wave. Schmid worked with, among others, Wenders and Fassbinder, for example, as an actor in Wender’s The American Friend. He met Ingrid Caven, who was to play a diva in several of his films. This is a documentation of a part of modern European film history and a good analysis of...
Photographer "Eise"
Character: Self
A portion of the Emmy award-winning documentary on the great Life Magazine photojournalist, Alfred Eisenstaedt (Eise). He photographed for over 50 years and was doing well in prewar Germany until he had to leave. This is him returning to Germany in 1982 to experience the country again and see how he felt about the new Germany. In making this film, viewers get a sense of the uniqueness of his character....
Sukowa - Playful Like A Child
Character:
“Acting is something anyone can do,” says Barbara Sukowa. “It’s completely intuitive and instinctual, much like a child dressing up.” Those who have worked with her say that what she does is true artistry. Barbara Sukowa, a star of Fassbinder’s films, an icon, and a role model. Who says there are hardly any interesting roles for women beyond forty? New challenges continually come her way. A few years past normal retirement age, she is launching into a remarkable new chapter. The film chronicles...
Fassbinder's Women
Character: Self (Archive footage)
An essay film in which filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim interviews "the willing victims of Rainer Werner Fassbinder."...