If you studied film in the early 1980's, you had to deal with the New German Cinema, an incredible upswelling of creativity in film generated by public funding for filmmakers who had a lot to say. Perhaps it was about time for a generation to express the... yup: angst, of growing up in post-Hitler Germany. The biggest of these film authors remain Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, although many deserve notice: Hans Jurgen Seyberberg, Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlondorff, Margaretta vonTrotta, among others. Fassbinder was the most phenomenally productive, making about 40 films before burning out at age 37, his heart giving out from overwork, drugs and alcohol. The baroque sophistication of Fassbinder's later work is overwhelming, involving beautifully staged melodramas pulled from the lives of Fassbinder and his actors to some extent, often filmed by a moving camera through glass windows and doors. Berlin Alexanderplatz is a monumental piece of film work, 15+ hours made for German television, quite possibly the greatest film ever done for television. I remember it finally playing on public TV in Boston, what an event that was, and its first film screening at the Harvard Film Archive. I saw it again in a marathon screening at the PFA in Berkeley in about 1997, part of a Fassbinder retrospective. And I've been viewing it recently, dubbing low-fi VHS copies over to dvd. I remain impressed at the amazing accomplishment of this piece and know it has been an influence on my own attempts to make film, to try to conceive grandiose or epic projects and see if they take wing. Of course, making films is complicated, from writing to acting and set designing. Even for a super8 film there are many elements that can be controlled or left open to chance. Fassbinder's work allowed for little chance operations. I just wanted to register here the effect left in me from viewing this work. It's a kind of monument to aspire to.
