Content area
Full Text
Rainer Werner Fassbinder died in 1982 at the age of 37, shortly after having completed his final film Querelle, adapted from Jean Genet’s Querelle de Brest. Upon completing Christian Braad Thomsen’s book, the reader will wonder at which point Fassbinder, who divided his time between the cinema and theatre as director, screenwriter, producer, and actor, lived but for his art. Seen this way, Fassbinder’s career becomes one long passion, in the religious sense of the term. The insatiable need to create appears like a pathology of exuberant creation and suffering, which he inflicted not only on himself but on his many collaborators, which accounts for the theme of masochism which recurs throughout all his work. What Fassbinder accomplished in such a relatively short time is simply stupendous, and it is highly unlikely for a contemporary artist to aspire to be as prolific. As Thomsen remarks:
The speed at which Fassbinder worked and his workaholism must be unique in film history. Directors usually manage, at most, a feature film every two years; Fassbinder rarely made less than four films a year, always based on his original ideas. Only rarely did he enlist the help of others for a script. He made 33 feature films for cinema and TV, fourtelevision series (consisting of a total of 23 episodes) and four feature-length video films, which makes a total of 60 individual units for film and television within the space of thirteen years. On top of that, Fassbinder wrote or directed 30 plays for the stage and four for the Radio. As an actor, he appeared in a large number of his own films, as well as in 12 films by other directors, four times in the lead role. From the start, he was his own producer and only when his films were more successful commercially was he able to hire other producers. He also produced three films for other directors. He edited several of his own films, and was his own cameraman twice. 1
With such a career it is not surprising that Fassbinder died at a young age and that in the final months of his life his physical appearance made him look much older than he really was.
We already know certain details of...