Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982) is one of the defining directors of New German Cinema. In just thirteen years he made over forty films, plus television work and plays. His films form a distinct, unmistakable genre: melodramatic material in artificial staging, with a recurring ensemble of actors and a sharp critique of post-war West German society and its gender and class relations. The visual language comes from melodrama (especially Douglas Sirk); the attitude comes from the epic theatre of Bertolt Brecht.
Underlying theme: love and power.
Hardly any relationship in a Fassbinder film is on equal terms. Characters love and are loved, but they use, humiliate, instrumentalise and barter each other. Love is a relation of possession — and the relation of possession is laid bare without mercy.
People:
- the ambitious climber — Maria Braun, Lola, Mother Küsters,
- the bourgeois figure — cool, dutiful, living a lie,
- the seducer — pulls the other into a relation of dependency,
- the foreigner — Moroccan in Munich, American GI in West Germany,
- the mother — often patriarchal, merciless, or victim herself,
- the child as observer — sees everything, says little,
- the group / clique — regulars at the bar, neighbourhood pub, office, film world — a collective that can break a person,
- the friend who turns traitor,
- the ageing actress / fallen star (Veronika Voss).
Fassbinder's ensemble:
- Hanna Schygulla (Maria Braun, Lili Marleen, Berlin Alexanderplatz),
- Margit Carstensen (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant),
- Brigitte Mira (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Mother Küsters),
- Irm Hermann — often the silent, frozen observer,
- Barbara Sukowa (Lola, Berlin Alexanderplatz),
- Harry Baer, Kurt Raab, Gottfried John, Volker Spengler, El Hedi ben Salem, Günther Kaufmann, Rosel Zech.
Fassbinder himself appears repeatedly in front of the camera — and is at once producer, writer, editor under pseudonyms, head of the collective.
Features:
- rigid movement of the figures, monotone, sometimes declamatory speech,
- an artificial use of cinematic devices and visual objects like mirrors and glasses,
- Fassbinder deliberately pulls the audience out of the story and uses cinematic devices that produce continuous distance and reflection in the Brechtian sense (cinematic V-effekt),
- long, static takes with little movement,
- tableau composition — figures look arranged rather than lived,
- hard, contrast-rich colour design (yellow, red, green, often symbolic),
- the set as a cage — staircases, bars, door frames, curtains cut the image,
- music is quoted (Schlager, tango, opera, Elvis) and comments on the scene rather than "underscoring" it,
- voiceover and inserted texts break the illusion,
- melodrama is built up and immediately broken — feeling must not consume.
Typical themes and conflicts:
- love as a relation of power — those who love lose; those who lose let themselves be exploited,
- racism and xenophobia in post-war Germany,
- petty-bourgeois morality and its cruelty,
- homosexuality and the silence around it,
- women's lives in West Germany — rise, humiliation, sacrifice,
- the world of work and its alienation,
- Germany's past — war, reconstruction, the economic miracle, the RAF,
- family as a community of compulsion,
- loneliness in the middle of company.
Dramaturgical structure:
Fassbinder's films refuse the classic suspense arc. Instead of suspense and resolution: slow intensification, repetitions, sudden ruptures. Characteristic is an observer's stance — the camera watches as a figure destroys herself or another. Endings are often open, tragic or abrupt:
- suicide in a quiet, almost incidental scene,
- gas accident or an accident as a sudden full stop,
- drowning in one's own life-lie,
- silent image — a figure alone in the room, music sets in.
Typical stylistic devices:
- Mirrors — characters see themselves while speaking to others; the audience sees them double,
- glasses, vases, bottles — between figure and camera, fragmenting the image,
- frame within a frame — doorways, window panes, mirrors, bars — anything that confines,
- the staircase as the site of descent or ascent,
- quoted music — Schlager (Zarah Leander), tango, Elvis Presley, Verdi arias, the Mahagonny song,
- stillness and sudden movement — long motionless takes, then a surprising turn or hard cut,
- self-quotation — Fassbinder picks up his own scenes and figures again later,
- alienation — figures look into the camera, speak with a heightened tone, voiceover comments,
- violence between lovers — emotional, rarely explicitly physical, always visible,
- work clothes and uniforms — waitress, cashier, soldier, cleaner — clothing as class identification,
- cabaret or stage scene as a film-within-the-film,
- long close-ups of faces that don't change.
Typical locations:
- corner pub, regulars' table, gambling den,
- Munich apartment building with a back yard and narrow staircase,
- provincial flat with plush sofa and display cabinet,
- butcher's, grocer's, employment office,
- factory, office, workshop,
- nightclub, brothel,
- post-war hotel,
- beach or mountain lake (a brief, almost cynical idyll),
- theatre stage or film studio in the film-within-a-film,
- station as the place of farewell or arrival from the south.
Important films (selection):
- Katzelmacher (1969) — xenophobia against a Greek migrant worker,
- The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) — chamber piece in a bedroom set on lesbian dependency,
- Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) — love between a German widow and a Moroccan migrant worker,
- Effi Briest (1974) — Theodor Fontane, black-and-white, severely stylised,
- Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (1975) — working-class widow and leftist instrumentalisation,
- Fox and His Friends (1975) — gay lottery-winner drama, Fassbinder himself in the lead,
- Chinese Roulette (1976) — bourgeois marriage drama at a country house,
- In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) — trans identity and memory,
- The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) — the opener of the BRD trilogy, the rise of the economic miracle,
- Lili Marleen (1981) — Nazi era, love, song,
- Lola (1981) — BRD trilogy, brothel and town politics,
- Veronika Voss (1982) — close of the BRD trilogy, UFA star's morphine descent,
- Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) — 14-part TV series after Alfred Döblin, 15 hours, his largest single corpus,
- Querelle (1982) — final work, after Jean Genet, stylised harbour world.
Context and fellow travellers:
- part of New German Cinema — together with Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg,
- antiteater Munich, an early collective from which many of Fassbinder's actors came,
- model: Douglas Sirk — Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s, especially All That Heaven Allows (model for Ali: Fear Eats the Soul),
- theoretical background: Bertolt Brecht — alienation, gestus, attitude.
Tips for improv theatre (Fassbinder style):
- Speak slowly and artificially. Two seconds longer than usual. Not natural — placed.
- Characters hold a stance. No one is "just there" — every figure represents a social position (property, lack, the wish to climb).
- Pull status apart without mercy. Fassbinder loves humiliations; let one figure break another and show it without sweetening.
- Play love as a relation of possession. Whoever loves wants to keep, to shape, to use. Ask in the scene: who needs whom more?
- Imagine mirrors, frames, bars. Place players behind imaginary glass, in doorways, between staircase rails. The image becomes a cage.
- Hold silence. A scene can stand still for ten seconds and still carry on.
- Quote music, don't illustrate. A Schlager or an opera comments on the scene — not in rhythm with the feelings, but cross-grained.
- No redemption. Don't let the scene end in reconciliation or a joke; Fassbinder ends often with a silent gaze, a fall, an abrupt cut.
- Allow alienation. A figure may speak to the audience, drop a comment, step out of role and back in.
- Use clichés, don't ironise. The barmaid, the mayor, the GI — types stay types, but the scene takes them seriously.
- Think ensemble. Fassbinder almost always works with groups. Play regulars' tables, families, office worlds in which one person is ground down.