Authors: Thomas Elsaesser
ISBN-13: 9789053560594, ISBN-10: 9053560599
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Date Published: June 1996
Edition: 1st Edition
Rainer Werner Fassbinder is one of the most prominent and important authors of post-war European cinema. Thomas Elsaesser is the first to write a thoroughly analytical study of his work. He stresses the importance of a closer understanding of Fassbinder's career through a re-reading of his films as textual entities. Approaching the work from different thematic and analytical perspectives, Elsaesser offers both an overview and a number of detailed readings of crucial films, while also providing a European context for Fassbinder's own coming to terms with fascism.
Introduction: A Work Upstaged by Life? | 7 | |
1 | Fassbinder Representing Germany | 13 |
2 | From Vicious Circles to Double Binds: Impossible Demands in the Field of Vision | 45 |
3 | Murder, Merger, Suicide: The Politics of Despair | 73 |
4 | The BRD Trilogy, or: History, The Love Story? The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lola and Veronika Voss | 97 |
5 | Fassbinder, Reflections of Fascism and the European Cinema | 129 |
6 | ...wie einst? | 149 |
7 | Frankfurt, Germans and Jews: The City, Garbage and Death | 175 |
8 | Beyond 'Schuld' and 'Schulden': In a Year of Thirteen Moons | 197 |
9 | Franz Biberkopf's/ex-changes: Berlin Alexanderplatz | 217 |
10 | Historicising the Subject: A Body of Work | 237 |
Appendix 1 | A Commented Filmography: The House That Rainer Built | 261 |
Appendix 2 | Fassbinder's Germany 1945-1982: A Chronology | 299 |
Appendix Three: Bibliography | 319 | |
Notes | 341 | |
Index | 389 |