Berlin Alexanderplatz
In West Germany in the 1970s a theatrical film director could easily switch back and forth to making TV movies, also. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's epic thirteen part plus feature film length epilogue, Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) aired on German television and was somehow released theatrically in a small number of venues in the U.S. Maybe audiences went to it over a few days, in installments? In any case, I recall Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, Chicago film critics with their own TV show, giving it their almost trademarked, "Thumbs Up!"
Ebert or Siskel mentioned how the long format of the fifteen hour thirty-one minute movie allowed the viewer to roll along with a big story full of many subtleties.
Having watched the film myself--it took me about three weeks to watch it--I can attest firsthand to the raw power of the film, starting with its protagonist actor, Günter Lamprecht, a big slob of a man with a head shaped like an unopened sugar bag. He plays Franz Biberkopf, just set free after a four year sentence for killing his girlfriend, Ida. Ida and Franz were friends with Eva (Hanna Schygulla) and Herbert (Roger Fritz). The film, laden with flashbacks, heads in the shape of a cone into the slow-building psychosis of Franz Biberkopf. He joins a criminal gang, is essentially the lookout, but he's slow to realize things. Once he realizes whatever it is, he begins talking to himself, louder and louder, sometimes breaking into song. Franz's monologues are the best part of the film. I could see them in my mind's eye italicized in text.
The film depicts crosscurrents of politics and societal mores. A place called, if I recall rightly, Babylon, is simply a hellhole of sex with torches, candles, painted naked women sitting on windowsills, a bald circus barker-type who every time points out "the whore of Babylon, seven heads, ten horns!"
Franz never partakes of the fruits of the servants of Beelzebub, doesn't bed the High Priestess of Ishtar. He wanders into places, like with Babylon. At that time, 1927-1928, Berlin was a very permissive city. Hitler preferred Munich, Fassbinder's city, site of many of his films. He shot this mini-series in Grünwald, Bavaria. Studio sets abound, plus one memorable place, woods where Franz enjoys an idyllic moment with the love of his life, Mieze (Barbara Sukowa), lying together on the forest floor. That same forest where Mieze later dies, lying alone on the forest floor. The two murders in this film, replayed at times with different audio, are shown in long medium shot. The effect of this is to show it as what violence and death-dealing are. No deceptive cuts interfering with a realistic depiction of someone strangling a woman in the woods, and earlier, repeated many times during the film, our protagonist, Franz Biberkopf, only time he's wearing a mustache in the movie, gets into a shouting contest with Ida, who's about to go somewhere. She lingers, she dies. The big body and bulk of Gunter Lamprecht show the odds in this scene. Ida, barring help from another big strong dude, is going to die, pummeled and fractured, the landlady watching the last minute of it, unable to do anything, standing still, horrified.
I wondered why someone killing his girlfriend in that manner, whether Franz intends to kill her or not, would get only four years? Unless the court determined manslaughter.
Still, it's a brutal killing. He does his four years. He did time in the army, too, the war. A movie about Biberkopf in 1916 France would be interesting. Given his wandering-into-disaster-type personality, he probably, in World War One, accidentally saved his own life a few times. That's beside the point.
The length of the film is taken care of by the viewer being able to experience it over several days or weeks. It's a TV movie, but the frankness of sex hinted at and depicted has never shown itself on conventional American television. Hanna Schygulla seethes sexuality, flicks her tongue across her upper lip in two shots. Barbara Sukowa plays the 12-year-old girl mentality, Mieze. A prostitute, like Eva, Mieze has a childlike wonder about Franz. She's his girlfriend and employee in the pimping days of Franz that take up several episodes. Mieze is his only working girl. She gets the favor of a wealthy man who demands more and more of her time.
Franz's colleague in a criminal goods-thieving operation, Reinhold (Gottfried John), passes off his girlfriends (once he tires of them) to Franz, three in a row. Reinhold later pushes Franz out of the back of the getaway van. Franz's right arm, run over by the tires of the car following the van, has to be amputated. Work possibilities for Biberkopf shrink. Into his darkening life comes Mieze, sent to him by Eva. Love at first sight. She even likes listening to him snore.
These examples may sound sentimental, but the movie is fifteen and a half hours long! There's just about everything in this movie, even Brownshirts. It's still too early for the guy with the funny mustache to shift the country's priorities. The film takes place before the Wall Street Crash. Before the Depression, though Germany had dropped as low as a depressed country can go in 1923.
Such a vast movie defeats the intention of a review. An overview of this huge canvas would take up too much of my time. I recommend the film. Criterion Collection has a nice set, several discs. I checked my copy out at the library, renewed it three times to the limit, paid a fine when I returned it. For all you who read this blog, thank you. It's the little brother of One Damned Thing After Another.
YouTube Channel John Berner to see my movies, twenty-nine of them on there now.
Vic Neptune
In West Germany in the 1970s a theatrical film director could easily switch back and forth to making TV movies, also. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's epic thirteen part plus feature film length epilogue, Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) aired on German television and was somehow released theatrically in a small number of venues in the U.S. Maybe audiences went to it over a few days, in installments? In any case, I recall Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, Chicago film critics with their own TV show, giving it their almost trademarked, "Thumbs Up!"
Ebert or Siskel mentioned how the long format of the fifteen hour thirty-one minute movie allowed the viewer to roll along with a big story full of many subtleties.
Having watched the film myself--it took me about three weeks to watch it--I can attest firsthand to the raw power of the film, starting with its protagonist actor, Günter Lamprecht, a big slob of a man with a head shaped like an unopened sugar bag. He plays Franz Biberkopf, just set free after a four year sentence for killing his girlfriend, Ida. Ida and Franz were friends with Eva (Hanna Schygulla) and Herbert (Roger Fritz). The film, laden with flashbacks, heads in the shape of a cone into the slow-building psychosis of Franz Biberkopf. He joins a criminal gang, is essentially the lookout, but he's slow to realize things. Once he realizes whatever it is, he begins talking to himself, louder and louder, sometimes breaking into song. Franz's monologues are the best part of the film. I could see them in my mind's eye italicized in text.
The film depicts crosscurrents of politics and societal mores. A place called, if I recall rightly, Babylon, is simply a hellhole of sex with torches, candles, painted naked women sitting on windowsills, a bald circus barker-type who every time points out "the whore of Babylon, seven heads, ten horns!"
Franz never partakes of the fruits of the servants of Beelzebub, doesn't bed the High Priestess of Ishtar. He wanders into places, like with Babylon. At that time, 1927-1928, Berlin was a very permissive city. Hitler preferred Munich, Fassbinder's city, site of many of his films. He shot this mini-series in Grünwald, Bavaria. Studio sets abound, plus one memorable place, woods where Franz enjoys an idyllic moment with the love of his life, Mieze (Barbara Sukowa), lying together on the forest floor. That same forest where Mieze later dies, lying alone on the forest floor. The two murders in this film, replayed at times with different audio, are shown in long medium shot. The effect of this is to show it as what violence and death-dealing are. No deceptive cuts interfering with a realistic depiction of someone strangling a woman in the woods, and earlier, repeated many times during the film, our protagonist, Franz Biberkopf, only time he's wearing a mustache in the movie, gets into a shouting contest with Ida, who's about to go somewhere. She lingers, she dies. The big body and bulk of Gunter Lamprecht show the odds in this scene. Ida, barring help from another big strong dude, is going to die, pummeled and fractured, the landlady watching the last minute of it, unable to do anything, standing still, horrified.
I wondered why someone killing his girlfriend in that manner, whether Franz intends to kill her or not, would get only four years? Unless the court determined manslaughter.
Still, it's a brutal killing. He does his four years. He did time in the army, too, the war. A movie about Biberkopf in 1916 France would be interesting. Given his wandering-into-disaster-type personality, he probably, in World War One, accidentally saved his own life a few times. That's beside the point.
The length of the film is taken care of by the viewer being able to experience it over several days or weeks. It's a TV movie, but the frankness of sex hinted at and depicted has never shown itself on conventional American television. Hanna Schygulla seethes sexuality, flicks her tongue across her upper lip in two shots. Barbara Sukowa plays the 12-year-old girl mentality, Mieze. A prostitute, like Eva, Mieze has a childlike wonder about Franz. She's his girlfriend and employee in the pimping days of Franz that take up several episodes. Mieze is his only working girl. She gets the favor of a wealthy man who demands more and more of her time.
Franz's colleague in a criminal goods-thieving operation, Reinhold (Gottfried John), passes off his girlfriends (once he tires of them) to Franz, three in a row. Reinhold later pushes Franz out of the back of the getaway van. Franz's right arm, run over by the tires of the car following the van, has to be amputated. Work possibilities for Biberkopf shrink. Into his darkening life comes Mieze, sent to him by Eva. Love at first sight. She even likes listening to him snore.
These examples may sound sentimental, but the movie is fifteen and a half hours long! There's just about everything in this movie, even Brownshirts. It's still too early for the guy with the funny mustache to shift the country's priorities. The film takes place before the Wall Street Crash. Before the Depression, though Germany had dropped as low as a depressed country can go in 1923.
Such a vast movie defeats the intention of a review. An overview of this huge canvas would take up too much of my time. I recommend the film. Criterion Collection has a nice set, several discs. I checked my copy out at the library, renewed it three times to the limit, paid a fine when I returned it. For all you who read this blog, thank you. It's the little brother of One Damned Thing After Another.
YouTube Channel John Berner to see my movies, twenty-nine of them on there now.
Vic Neptune
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