Like writers penning their memoirs, making movies about making movies is a rite of passage for many a director. Fellini famously did it with 8 ½, Truffaut with Day for Night, Godard with Contempt and Fassbinder with Beware of a Holy Whore. More recently, Tarantino gave us Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Spielberg The Fabelmans, Michel Hazavanicius made Final Cut and Damien Chazelle, Babylon.
Almost all behind-the-scenes movies share the same theme: Filmmaking is tough, high-stress work that weighs heavily on everyone involved, especially the directors themselves. That’s certainly one of the main takeaways from Cédric Kahn’s very French variation on the subject, Making Of, which premiered out of competition in Venice.
Kahn is both an actor (he played the douchey Gallic lover in Pawel Pawikowski’s Cold War) and talented director, with a series of strong features under his belt that include hard-hitting thrillers like L’Ennui,...
Almost all behind-the-scenes movies share the same theme: Filmmaking is tough, high-stress work that weighs heavily on everyone involved, especially the directors themselves. That’s certainly one of the main takeaways from Cédric Kahn’s very French variation on the subject, Making Of, which premiered out of competition in Venice.
Kahn is both an actor (he played the douchey Gallic lover in Pawel Pawikowski’s Cold War) and talented director, with a series of strong features under his belt that include hard-hitting thrillers like L’Ennui,...
- 9/5/2023
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
“For once in my life, I wanted to make a movie without having all the responsibilities.” So moans Jeff, the director on the film-within-a-film in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Beware of a Holy Whore.” The West German drama sequesters a movie crew in a coastal Spanish hotel, where the combination of cabin fever and psychological discord between a group of insecure, neurotic people breeds the rarefied level of hysteria only found in show business.
Continue reading ‘The Bubble’ Review: Judd Apatow’s Pandemic Filmmaking Blockbuster Comedy Is An Epic Disaster at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘The Bubble’ Review: Judd Apatow’s Pandemic Filmmaking Blockbuster Comedy Is An Epic Disaster at The Playlist.
- 4/1/2022
- by Charles Bramesco
- The Playlist
Following on the heels (and somewhat novelty) of art-film director biopics Pasolini and Godard Mon Amour comes Enfant Terrible, which spans fifteen years in the life of the notorious Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Breathlessly running through a multitude of his films and strained interpersonal relationships in the span of 134 minutes, the film feels more concerned with hitting the major beats of a Wikipedia page than actually creating a fully formed cinematic character. À la David Fincher’s own highly inert showbiz-tale misfire Mank, one wonders what the specific point of this actually was in the first place.
Spanning from his early days in Munich’s avant-garde theatre to pathetic final moments on earth, the banalization of the great director and monstrous man’s life can’t help feeling like something of an insult. With a life dedicated to cinema, churning out three to five films per year, Fassbinder still found the...
Spanning from his early days in Munich’s avant-garde theatre to pathetic final moments on earth, the banalization of the great director and monstrous man’s life can’t help feeling like something of an insult. With a life dedicated to cinema, churning out three to five films per year, Fassbinder still found the...
- 5/7/2021
- by Ethan Vestby
- The Film Stage
Rainer Werner Fassbinder made more than 40 features in his 37 years on this planet, 23 of which starred Hanna Schygulla. The two first met in their early 20s when they were attending acting school in Munich, hitting it off instantly: “It suddenly became crystal clear to me that Hanna Schygulla would one day be the star of my films,” the New German Cinema stalwart wrote. “Maybe even something like their driving force.”
Schygulla was recently interviewed by the Guardian on the eve of an extensive BFI retrospective dedicated to Fassbinder, referring to herself as “one of the survivors” of the “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” and “The Marriage of Maria Braun” director.
Read More: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Top 10 Favorite Films
“He had a strong smell about him,” she recalls. “He smelled how he looked. Like a spotty rebel filled with angst.” Fassbinder, who died of an overdose in 1982, cast the actress in his debut film.
Schygulla was recently interviewed by the Guardian on the eve of an extensive BFI retrospective dedicated to Fassbinder, referring to herself as “one of the survivors” of the “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” and “The Marriage of Maria Braun” director.
Read More: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Top 10 Favorite Films
“He had a strong smell about him,” she recalls. “He smelled how he looked. Like a spotty rebel filled with angst.” Fassbinder, who died of an overdose in 1982, cast the actress in his debut film.
- 3/27/2017
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Museum of the Moving Image
The Scorsese retrospective has a music-filled weekend with The Last Waltz, his George Harrison documentary, and more.
Anthology Film Archives
The late, great Leonard Cohen is paid tribute with a small retrospective that includes Fassbinder’s Beware of a Holy Whore and McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
Jean Vigo’s masterpiece L’Atalante has showings.
Museum of the Moving Image
The Scorsese retrospective has a music-filled weekend with The Last Waltz, his George Harrison documentary, and more.
Anthology Film Archives
The late, great Leonard Cohen is paid tribute with a small retrospective that includes Fassbinder’s Beware of a Holy Whore and McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
Jean Vigo’s masterpiece L’Atalante has showings.
- 2/17/2017
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
It’s no real secret that we’re reaching a tipping point with home video. Streaming is proving a better and better option for the casual consumer every day, and even the cinephile dollar, which has rather successfully driven home video decisions for the past couple of years, has such services as Hulu, Fandor, Mubi, and – soon – FilmStruck vying for their attention. Physical distributors have subsequently doubled down on their most successful and acclaimed models. Criterion is going big on new-to-disc, big international titles with new restorations (Brighter Summer Day, Paris Belongs to Us, A Touch of Zen) and lavish new editions of American classics (The New World, Dr. Strangelove). Kino is investing in silent classics (Fantomas, The Phantom of the Opera, Diary of a Lost Girl) while diversifying to include more American studio titles. Masters of Cinema is going into deep specialty stuff with an Early Murnau box and Edvard Munch.
- 4/28/2016
- by Scott Nye
- CriterionCast
★★★★☆ Producing more work in his short fifteen-year career than most directors do in a lifetime, German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder is emblematic of the New German Cinema movement, and remains a powerful voice of avant-garde European cinema. In the first of a new collection, Arrow Video bring us ten of Fassbinder's most interesting pictures, starting with two films made in 1971 - The Merchant of Four Seasons and Beware of a Holy Whore.
- 4/12/2016
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor conclude their two-part discussion of Eclipse Series 39: Early Fassbinder.
About the films:
From the very beginning of his incandescent career, the New German Cinema enfant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder refused to play by the rules. His politically charged, experimental first films, made at an astonishingly rapid rate between 1969 and 1970, were influenced by the work of the Antiteater, an avant-garde stage troupe that he had helped found in Munich. Collected here are five of those fascinating and confrontational works. Whether a self- conscious meditation on American crime movies, a scathing indictment of xenophobia in contemporary Germany, or an off-the-wall look at the dysfunctional relationships on film sets, each is a startling...
About the films:
From the very beginning of his incandescent career, the New German Cinema enfant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder refused to play by the rules. His politically charged, experimental first films, made at an astonishingly rapid rate between 1969 and 1970, were influenced by the work of the Antiteater, an avant-garde stage troupe that he had helped found in Munich. Collected here are five of those fascinating and confrontational works. Whether a self- conscious meditation on American crime movies, a scathing indictment of xenophobia in contemporary Germany, or an off-the-wall look at the dysfunctional relationships on film sets, each is a startling...
- 6/30/2015
- by David Blakeslee
- CriterionCast
“We’re all pigs,” remarks a character late in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1971 classic The Merchant of Four Seasons, on observation one could apply to most of the desperate and disparate characters littered throughout the German New Wave master’s oeuvre. In this instance, the comment is made by the protagonist’s familial successor. Fassbinder’s flaccid fruit vendor shrinks into the shadows of his own periphery, a failed patriarch reduced to the general fate of mediocre men in times of societal resurgence, (here specifically in the 1950s, the post-war period of the German economic miracle) marked for replacement by a trusted friend, stepping in to pinch-hit. Regarded as one of Fassbinder’s best early titles, it is one of his most accessible Sirkian inspired melodramas earning notable critical applause during an impressively fruitful period, imbued with the director’s favorite themes concerning dwindling personas of those foolish enough to...
- 6/2/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
This past Sunday, Leonard Cohen, the poet and singer songwriter with the beautiful baritone voice sandpapered by time, “about 500 tons of whiskey, and millions of cigarettes,” turned 80. A day later, he released his thirteenth studio album (Popular Problems), 47 years after his first. Nearly half a century since he sung about Suzanne, Cohen’s career has been beautifully long, spanning vastly different worlds, and evolving through the years without being felled by the indecipherable mumbles of his contemporary, Bob Dylan. His poetic lyrics ruminate on everything from love and passion to religion and politics, sold through the man in the suit and fedora, but extending far beyond his shadow’s reach, especially in the realms of cinema. Where other artists enjoy surges and disappearances, their music only returned to when the passage of time makes then wildly affordable, Cohen’s presence in film has been almost constant, spanning everything from silent foreign films to bloody Hollywood blockbusters. It...
- 9/25/2014
- by Monika Bartyzel
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Riffing on Terek Puckett’s terrific list of director/actor collaborations, I wanted to look at some of those equally impressive leading ladies who served as muses for their directors. I strived to look for collaborations that may not have been as obviously canonical, but whose effects on cinema were no less compelling. Categorizing a film’s lead is potentially tricky, but one of the criteria I always use is Anthony Hopkins’s performance in Silence of the Lambs, a film in which he is considered a lead but appears only briefly; his character is an integral part of the story.
The criteria for this article is as follows: The director & actor team must have worked together at least 3 times with the actor in a major role in each feature film, resulting in a minimum of 2 must-see films.
One of the primary trends for the frequency of collaboration is the...
The criteria for this article is as follows: The director & actor team must have worked together at least 3 times with the actor in a major role in each feature film, resulting in a minimum of 2 must-see films.
One of the primary trends for the frequency of collaboration is the...
- 7/24/2013
- by John Oursler
- SoundOnSight
DVD Release Date: Aug. 27, 2013
Price: DVD $69.95
Studio: Criterion
R. W. Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore (1971)
From the very beginning of his incandescent career, the New German Cinema enfant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder (World on a Wire) refused to play by the rules. His politically charged, experimental first films, made at an astonishingly rapid rate between 1969 and 1971, were influenced by the work of the antiteater, an avant-garde stage troupe that he had helped found in Munich.
Collected in Eclipse Series 39: Early Fassbinder are five of those fascinating and confrontational works; whether a self-conscious meditation on American crime movies, a scathing indictment of xenophobia in contemporary Germany, or an off-the-wall look at the dysfunctional relationships on film sets, each is a startling glimpse into the mind of a twenty-something man who would become one of the cinema’s most prolific artists.
Love Is Colder Than Death (1969)
For his debut, Fassbinder fashioned an acerbic,...
Price: DVD $69.95
Studio: Criterion
R. W. Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore (1971)
From the very beginning of his incandescent career, the New German Cinema enfant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder (World on a Wire) refused to play by the rules. His politically charged, experimental first films, made at an astonishingly rapid rate between 1969 and 1971, were influenced by the work of the antiteater, an avant-garde stage troupe that he had helped found in Munich.
Collected in Eclipse Series 39: Early Fassbinder are five of those fascinating and confrontational works; whether a self-conscious meditation on American crime movies, a scathing indictment of xenophobia in contemporary Germany, or an off-the-wall look at the dysfunctional relationships on film sets, each is a startling glimpse into the mind of a twenty-something man who would become one of the cinema’s most prolific artists.
Love Is Colder Than Death (1969)
For his debut, Fassbinder fashioned an acerbic,...
- 6/6/2013
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Let's join Der Tagesspiegel's Claudia Lenssen in wishing Margarethe von Trotta all the best on her 70th. Lenssen reminds us that when von Trotta hoped to see her first feature, The Second Awakening of Christina Klages (1978), in cinemas, the "fine machos" at the Filmverlag der Autoren in Munich judged it worthy of television, but no more. For the movers and shakers of the New German Cinema, the story of a bank employee and a bank robber who fall for each other was all together too much a woman's picture. Lena (Katharina Thalbach) finds out that the stolen money's supposed to save a kindergarten from being shut down? Not sexy enough.
Lenssen: "Margarethe von Trotta's films are inspired by real events and circumstances. Die bleierne Zeit (Marianne and Juliane, 1981) tells the story of Raf terrorist Gudrun Ensslin and her sister, Christiane, Rosa Luxemburg (1986), the story of the revolutionary who was...
Lenssen: "Margarethe von Trotta's films are inspired by real events and circumstances. Die bleierne Zeit (Marianne and Juliane, 1981) tells the story of Raf terrorist Gudrun Ensslin and her sister, Christiane, Rosa Luxemburg (1986), the story of the revolutionary who was...
- 2/21/2012
- MUBI
George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) has had it with the movies in "The Artist"Over at Fandor's Keyframe blog I'll be musing about the Oscar race on a biweekly basis. This week's topic is the unusual abundance of movies about movies in this year's Oscar race from Marilyn Monroe (My Week With Marilyn) to George Melies (Hugo) to Hollywood's seismic sound shift in the late 20s (The Artist). But one thing I didn't dwell on too much in the article (which I hope you'll go and read!) is the lack of Oscars won for movies about movies.
Everyone predicting a win for The Artist (2011) before the nominations are even announced should consider the following list and sobering fact: No movie about movies has ever won Best Picture.
Movies About Movies: How Do They Do With Oscar?
(Best Picture Nominees are in red)
Janet Gaynor (already an Oscar winner) was nominated again...
Everyone predicting a win for The Artist (2011) before the nominations are even announced should consider the following list and sobering fact: No movie about movies has ever won Best Picture.
Movies About Movies: How Do They Do With Oscar?
(Best Picture Nominees are in red)
Janet Gaynor (already an Oscar winner) was nominated again...
- 11/23/2011
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
by Steve Dollar
Nothing would be greater cause for joy than to think that the 1970s-style sci-fi film is enjoying a second orbit. Writers in major daily newspapers and across the Twitterverse are talking about Solaris again (even if it's for the wrong reasons). Duncan Jones, whose 2009 Moon was a smartly devised homage to the era, scored big with his recent Source Code—which resonated more for its existential quandaries than any pyrotechnic flash. Two recent Sundance favorites, Another Earth and The Sound of My Voice, play off of fantastic premises with limited technical mojo, letting the script drive the imagination.
Even if that doesn't add up to a zeitgeist moment, it doesn't hurt that an actual film of the era and genre gets its never-intended American theatrical debut next week: World on a Wire, the 1973 production made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder for German television. At three-and-a-half hours, it was broadcast in two parts,...
Nothing would be greater cause for joy than to think that the 1970s-style sci-fi film is enjoying a second orbit. Writers in major daily newspapers and across the Twitterverse are talking about Solaris again (even if it's for the wrong reasons). Duncan Jones, whose 2009 Moon was a smartly devised homage to the era, scored big with his recent Source Code—which resonated more for its existential quandaries than any pyrotechnic flash. Two recent Sundance favorites, Another Earth and The Sound of My Voice, play off of fantastic premises with limited technical mojo, letting the script drive the imagination.
Even if that doesn't add up to a zeitgeist moment, it doesn't hurt that an actual film of the era and genre gets its never-intended American theatrical debut next week: World on a Wire, the 1973 production made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder for German television. At three-and-a-half hours, it was broadcast in two parts,...
- 7/15/2011
- GreenCine Daily
Chicago – We have now reached the fourth and final week of the 13th Annual European Union Film Festival at the Siskel Film Center, and what a fantastic festival it has been. From international sensations to critically acclaimed gems rarely available in the Us, the EU annual line-up is consistently one of the finest offered by any festival in the Windy City.
The first three weeks were loaded with highlights that just seemed to get better as the days progressed. Some of the selections, such as Austria’s diabolical delight “The Bone Man” and the Netherlands’ beguiling documentary “Rembrandt’s J’Accuse,” were more entertaining than the majority of mainstream Hollywood releases. Both France and Italy had several exceptional entries this year, including Amos Gitai’s spellbinding “Disengagement” and Luca Guadagnino’s ravishing “I Am Love.” Read more here, here and here.
The final week is somewhat of a letdown in comparison,...
The first three weeks were loaded with highlights that just seemed to get better as the days progressed. Some of the selections, such as Austria’s diabolical delight “The Bone Man” and the Netherlands’ beguiling documentary “Rembrandt’s J’Accuse,” were more entertaining than the majority of mainstream Hollywood releases. Both France and Italy had several exceptional entries this year, including Amos Gitai’s spellbinding “Disengagement” and Luca Guadagnino’s ravishing “I Am Love.” Read more here, here and here.
The final week is somewhat of a letdown in comparison,...
- 3/25/2010
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
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