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.

New German Cinema arrives in New York as KINO! 2016 hits town at the Cinema Village

A festival of new German cinema that looks special enough to make TrustMovies want to move back to New York City, this third annual edition of the KINO! fest -- KINO! 2016 -- looks very nearly as good -- diverse, entertaining and timely -- as the yearly Rendez-vous With French Cinema series from the Film Society of Lincoln Center usually is. As of now -- the festival begins this coming Thursday, April 7, and runs through the 14 -- I have viewed only two of the eleven features in  the program, but both were films I would not have wanted to miss. If I have time to cover the other two screeners sent me, I will add them to this post at a later date.

New German cinema seems to get better all the time, and we don't see nearly enough of it here in the USA. Consequently, this yearly series offers an opportunity to catch up, at least somewhat, with what Germany has on offer these days. SUMMERS DOWNSTAIRS (Im sommer wohnt er unten) written and directed by first-time full-length filmmaker, Tom Sommerlatte, is a good example of a very smart, singularly Germanic approach to the age-old feuding brothers-cum-family-reunion comedy drama. If the subject matter seems somewhat old hat, its execution proves a hell of a lot more than that.

The location is actually France, where a clearly quite successful German family has a summer house, in which one brother, Matthias, a charming ne'er-do-well played by Sebastian Fräsdorf (above, left), is vacationing with his French girlfriend (Alice Pehlivanyan, above, right) and her seven-year-old son (an excellent debut by young William Peiro, below).

These three are suddenly and unexpectedly joined by very different brother, David (Godehard Giese, below, left), and his wife Lena (Karin Hanczewski, below, right), and very soon tempers and much else are flaring out of hand. But wait: The film is full of small surprises and unexpected turns. By the end of its 98 minutes, actual change has occurred, and in believably small increments. Characters we expected to dislike intensely have become instead very flawed human beings worth consideration, even love.

The movie is a model of its kind: effective, never pushy, and beautifully written, directed and acted. Catch it if you can. It plays the festival at NYC's Cinema Village on Tuesday, April 10 at 1pm, with director Sommerlatte in attendance for a Q&A.

Few filmmakers in my lifetime have made such an immediate and semi-lasting international impression as Germany's Rainer Werner Fassbinder. If many of his films have not stood the test of time particularly well (a few certainly have), his reputation as a bad boy who made some good films has endured, and this new documentary about the man and his work will be a must-see for those of us who remember his movies and his relatively short time in the sun (he died in 1982 at age 37).

Nowhere near the rank of Welles, Hitchcock or any of the "greats," his oeuvre, I suspect, will take a permanent place somewhere closer to the echelon of, say, Woody Allen, though the two filmmakers have little in common except their secondary (but that's still pretty high-level) rank.

The excellent documentary, FASSBINDER, by writer/director Annekatrin Hendel, shown at left (from an idea by Juliane Lorenz), tries and very often succeeds at giving us a relatively intimate look into this transgressive-for-his-day artist, along with some of his interesting work.

It will help immensely if you've seen many of his films -- which I suspect will be the case for the older audience who seeks out this movie. The documentary shows us the filmmaker back in the day, along with interviews with many of those people -- actors, producers, lovers and the like -- who worked with him and were also responsible for much of his films' success.

These would include his leading ladies like Hannah Schygulla (above), Irm Hermann (below) and Margit Carstensen, and filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff, Their words and remembrances keep the film frolicking along, despite the often sad and angry life led by Herr Fassbinder, who was not, as this warts-and-all documentary shows, what anyone would call a "nice" man.

How Fassbinder treated his various lovers -- he was a homosexual who married two different women and fucked (and fucked over) a number of male companions along the way -- as well as from where the inspiration for much of his work came (the absence of central figures in the filmmaker's life is one of these) are made clear. Most interesting perhaps will be the tales told here of his earliest work -- Love Is Colder Than Death and Katzelmacher -- which are lesser known to many of us than his later films. Also of interest is his workplace style: "Praise, humiliation; humiliation, praise," as one actor puts it. His feverish pace -- 44 films for theaters and TV in some 16 years -- was achieved in part by having one project in production even as another was being filmed.

The documentary, more personal and rich than anything else I've seen about this fellow, also has a lovely beginning and ending in what looks like some kind of magically lit studio where the man and his movies might have taken shape. It is difficult to imagine that this film will not get some kind of at least limited theatrical release. Just in case, however, anyone in the New York City area should hightail it to the Cinema Village on April 8 at 6pm and/or April 9 at 2pm, where the doc's director will appear at both screenings for a Q & A.

You can find the complete roster of movies in the KINO! 2016 festival, along with a description of each, by clicking here, while the the time and location schedule can be found here. Note that the opening night film will screen at NYC's Landmark Sunshine Cinema, while the all others will be shown at the Cinema Village -- with the exception of the recently restored version of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which will screen at Manhattan's new Metrograph Cinema, and Decoder, which will screen at Goethe Institute.