Film Forum debut for famous Fassbinder TV series: EIGHT HOURS DON'T MAKE A DAY

When TrustMovies was young and Rainer Werner Fassbinder was alive and his internationally acclaimed work was in full bloom, that work seemed to me bracing mostly because of its "newness," strangeness and transgressive qualities.

One of the tests of time regarding how well art that initially shocks actually holds up decades later involves how meaningful it remains. In this regard, most of Fassbinder's oeuvre -- for me, at least -- has certainly stood that test.

As I've grown up, slowly and haltingly to be sure, Fassbinder's films seem to have opened up to include so much more than I initially could appreciate or understand.

That funny, chubby little artist, pictured at right, who possessed such an understanding and rather dark appreciation of women, men, sexuality, the workplace and the post-war Capitalist system that was slowly strangling his own country of Germany, as well as the rest of the western world, was able to transfer his knowledge into cinema (and television) at a rate that can only be called astonishing. Fassbinder completed in all some 48 films (as writer) and 44 (as director) in only 17 years, prior to his untimely death in 1982 at the age of 37.

Though his theatrical movies made the most noise overseas, it now turns out that his best work -- Berlin Alexanderplatz and the just-now receiving-its-U.S.-theatrical-debut EIGHT HOURS DON'T MAKE A DAY (Acht Stunden sind kein Tag), to use two stunning examples -- were made for German television.

The latter of those television series, first shown on German TV in the fall of 1972, is made up of five parts and runs 478 minutes (just a shade under eight full hours). At this point I've only had time to watch the first section, a 102-minute piece entitled Jochen and Marion that details the evolving love story/work story between the two title characters, a smart fellow who labors in a tool manufacturing plant, and his new girlfriend who takes classified ads for a local newspaper.

This striking pair is played by actors from Fassbinder's "repertory": an impressive man of near-Neanderthal beauty, the late Gottfried John (above, and below, underneath), and that still-stunning actress, Hanna Schygulla (below, on top), who made her mark in the title role of The Marriage of Maria Braun.

The two performers are magic, alone or together, and their story is the focal point around which revolve so many of Fassbinder's major interests -- from politics and economics to industrial design, love, lesbianism, child abuse, workers vs the Capitalist system, bathroom usage and necessity as the mother of invention. (And that's only a very incomplete list.)

This first part ends with a funeral (in the rain, of course: Fassbinder does love cliche and melodrama, but he manages to use most of this in ways both appropriate and slightly twisted) followed by a lovely, charming, deeply humane scene in the bedroom between our two lovers.

The workplace gets every bit as much attention as do the leading characters and their family life, and the scenes on the job are full of life, anger, surprise and lots more -- including a power play by management and some blackmail from the workers, along with some very interesting takes on the relationship between men and women. To call this director prescient does not begin to do him full justice.

How Fassbinder orchestrates all this is quite wonderful. Because he was working in television, his movie never "shocks" (even a near-full-frontal workplace shower scene is modulated just enough to pass the censors) yet he is able to give us a look at this surprisingly large-yet-distinct canvas in ways that are both specific (Jochen's family is made up of quite an eccentric bunch) yet pretty universal, too.

In the supporting cast are a number of Fassbinder vets -- from Irm Hermann (above, left) to Kurt Raab -- which should only increase your appetite to view the entire project. Released by Janus Films, Eight Hours Don't Make a Day will have a 2-week engagement, March 14 – 27, at New York's Film Forum and will be screened in three parts. Part 1 (202 minutes) and Part 2 (184 minutes) are separate admission. Part 3 (90 minutes) is free of charge for the viewers of the other two parts. The full screening schedule can be viewed here. Bookings elsewhere around the country? Nothing appears on the Janus website yet, but I can't believe there won't be more cities in which this series can soon be seen. In any case, a Blu-ray and DVD will surely be in the offing from Criterion at some future point.

What's this? A FILM UNFINISHED by Yael Hersonski discovers an archived, Nazi-made movie about the Warsaw Ghetto

After all the films made about life (and death) in the Warsaw Ghetto – from Polanski’s award-winning The Pianist to the rather silly Jews-fight-back-while-falling-in-love War and Love (aka The Children’s War), not to mention countless documentaries -- it is still a kick in the gut and the head to experience a movie like the new A FILM UNFINISHED from documentarian Yael Hersonski (shown below). Whatever the "magic of movies" (and I'm a firm believer in same), to my mind no narrative film I've yet seen begins to pack the punch of watching a documentary that covers the actual Holocaust.  There is something about the reality of documentary film that wipes the floor with the near-impossible-to-resist romanticizing that occurs in narrative Holocaust movies, from Schindler's List to whichever film you care to name. (Only, to a major extent, at least, Lajos Kotai's Fateless manages to avoid -- or maybe incorporate -- this in a way that does not end up somehow reducing the Holocaust.)

TrustMovies imagined, foolishly of course, that he was by now immune to further shocks about this event, but as usual, there's always room for one more.  As much footage over the decades as he's seen about the Warsaw Ghetto and the fate of its inhabitants, Hersonski's film breaks new ground. In it, the director shows and tells of the discovery of a single copy of an hour-long film -- unfinished -- shot by and for the Nazis in that ghetto in May of 1942. Labeled only Ghetto, this film had lay untouched since some time after WWII in an East German vault/archive.

That film is both a documentary and a faux documentary, as the Nazis appear to have documented the horrors of their ghetto but have also used some of the healthier looking Jews to create scenes of supposedly wealthy Semites partaking in "fun" activities -- dancing (below), dining and, hmmm, other things -- while their poorer brethren suffer terribly from want -- and being noticeably disdainful of them in the process. We learn some of this information because an actual cameraman on the project, one Willy Wist, was found along the way (captured once in his actual Nazi uniform) and speaks to us here about the film.

While we're being once again steeped in the horror of the Holocaust, we are also being made aware -- yet again -- of how film, "documentary film" at that, can lie like a rug.  Another layer is provided by actual Warsaw Ghetto survivors who watch the film with us, but on screen, and comment on various parts and situations.  "A flower?!" asks one of these viewers with disdain, as one of the "faux wealthy" Jews arranges a bouquet in a vase.  "Whoever saw a flower in that place?  We would have eaten it!"  As hard as it is for us to view this film, what must it be like for these survivors?  One woman, in a combination of expectation and fear, asks, "What if I recognize someone I knew...?!"  The faces of these women, along with another male survivor, watching as corpses slide down into a mass grave is one of many disturbing "keeper" images that the film provides.

Another layer of information and feeling is provided via the diary kept by the Jew-in-Charge-of-the-Ghetto-Jews, Adam Cherniakov. One can only wonder what he would make of some of the ridiculous "scenes" the Nazis created in their film:  the "circumcision," the ritual bath in which men and women bathe naked together, or the many "takes" the cameramen had to manage in order to get the correct piece of "reality." We see some of these, and they would be a hoot, were the subject matter different.

Finally, it is the very idea of this film that should command one's imagination most tightly. When is a film "real," and when is a real film "fake"?  For a blog with the name TrustMovies, this has partic-
ular meaning.  I still stand by my thesis that movies are indeed to be trusted.  Sometimes as much for their falsity (and what this signifies) as for their truth. In any case -- in every case -- we first have to know how to "read" them.

A Film Unfinished, via Oscilloscope Laboratories, begins its premiere U.S. theatrical run in New York City at Film Forum this Wednesday, August 18.  Click here for the FF performance schedule. You can find the complete list of upcoming playdates, theaters and cities here.

(Photos are from the film, except that of Ms Hersonski, 

cribbed from the web courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival.)