Life is wilder than art: The Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder story

Rain­er Wern­er Fass­binder is a hell­ish won­der­land. To be fas­ci­nat­ed by him is to tum­ble down a the­atri­cal, dry­ly com­ic rab­bit hole into a soci­ety where cin­e­mat­ic pas­sions rule and good behav­iour has no cur­ren­cy. The head­line facts about the pro­lif­ic New Ger­man Cin­e­ma direc­tor are dense with intrigue. There was his untime­ly death at 37 (from a cock­tail of cocaine and sleep­ing pills), the way he was found (still clutch­ing a cig­a­rette), the num­ber of filmed works (44), his lovers (count­less men and women), his great loves (three men) his abus­es (drugs, alco­hol, food, peo­ple) and, string­ing all togeth­er, a seer’s abil­i­ty to atone for his bleak­est deeds by cre­at­ing films shot through with emo­tion­al integrity.

It’s easy to get lost in the shad­owy byways of mythol­o­gy sur­round­ing this great and con­tro­ver­sial direc­tor. For sala­cious rea­sons, sure, but also because Fassbinder’s life and art over­lapped so much that under­stand­ing one enhances under­stand­ing of the oth­er. The urge to play detec­tive, link­ing film to life, extends to those described by biog­ra­ph­er Robert Katz as ​“Fassbinder’s peo­ple” – those who loved, lived with, and worked for him in one com­mu­nal mass of cre­ative and emo­tion­al energy.

Actors usu­al­ly dis­ap­pear by play­ing char­ac­ters. Fassbinder’s peo­ple – who act­ed across mul­ti­ple films – were exposed. He did not spare his own moth­er, Lilo Pem­peit (real name Liso­lette Eder) – not in pub­lic and not on screen. He made her into an actress and cast her in over 30 films, always in small, thank­less mater­nal roles. This was his revenge for a ​“heavy” child­hood, a revenge repeat­ed­ly reset, like a Ground­hog Day bit part.

Most oth­er fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tors were in sex­u­al rela­tion­ships with him. Gold­en girl muse Han­na Schygul­la was an excep­tion. These entan­gle­ments act­ed as cre­ative fuel and were worked out in thin­ly-veiled fic­tions. Fass­binder was par­tial to ded­i­ca­tions. ​“To him who became Mar­lene,” begins 1972’s The Bit­ter Tears of Petra Von Kant. The ​“him” is com­pos­er Peer Raben, a con­quest shunt­ed to the side when Fass­binder fell mad­ly in love with Gun­ther Kauf­man, a sea­man-turned-actor, encod­ed in the film as ​‘Karin’, beau­ti­ful obses­sion for the director’s avatar, ​‘Petra’.

To add an extra blurred lay­er to the fact/​fiction rela­tion­ship pow­er games, Mar­lene – Petra’s mute and ver­bal­ly abused assis­tant – was played by Irm Her­mann, a sec­re­tary Fass­binder turned into an actress. She fell in love with him when they first met in 1965 and did every­thing with­in her pow­er to help his fledg­ling the­atre and film career. She raised mon­ey, found him work, act­ed when he asked her to and lived in a posi­tion of ador­ing def­er­ence. In return, Fass­binder saved the worst of his off-screen abus­es for her (Ryan Gilbey’s recent inter­view with Han­na Schygul­la cat­e­goris­es the most damn­ing aspects) and cast her in roles that showed exact­ly how lit­tle she meant to him.

Her­mann was the biggest fall guy for Fassbinder’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with ​“the exploitabil­i­ty of feel­ings, who­ev­er might be the one exploit­ing them.” With her nar­row gov­erness frame, thin pursed lips and cold eyes, she shuf­fles through his back cat­a­logue like a pris­on­er drag­ging a ball and chain. It is gross­ly com­ic how Fass­binder car­i­ca­tures her with servile roles. Take her intro­duc­tion in Effi Briest, from 1974. Dressed all in black, she gri­maces furi­ous­ly into a mir­ror, while her white-clothed mis­tress Effi (Schygul­la) sim­pers in the back­ground, angel­ic and happy.

1971’s Beware of a Holy Whore is a gift to those seek­ing to under­stand how Fass­binder saw his role as a direc­tor. Based on the pro­duc­tion trou­bles of his pre­vi­ous film, Whity, it sees a bul­ly­ing pro­duc­tion man­ag­er and a volatile direc­tor ter­ror­is­ing the crew as they wait in a Span­ish hotel for shoot­ing to begin on film-with­in-a-film, Patria O Muerte. Fassbinder’s alter egos are usu­al­ly called Franz (he edit­ed his films under the pseu­do­nym ​‘Franz Walsh’), so it is sur­pris­ing that the direc­tor here is called Jeff, although oth­er famil­iar iden­ti­fiers are in place. Like our guy, Jeff con­sumes Cuba Libras with zeal and wears a leather jacket.

The film is a mood piece chron­i­cling an atmos­phere of grow­ing anar­chy in which sex and fights release ten­sion. Film­mak­ing is pre­sent­ed as chaos presided over by a loud leader. The most telling lines of dia­logue are spo­ken by char­ac­ters at oppo­site ends of the pro­duc­tion hier­ar­chy. Jeff has an emo­tion­al melt­down towards the film’s end, call­ing his col­lab­o­ra­tors ​“blood suck­ers”. Ear­li­er, a put-upon crew mem­ber mut­ters to him­self, ​“You can treat me as you like because what you do has qual­i­ty.” These two lines indi­cate that Fass­binder found film­mak­ing mad­den­ing and jus­ti­fied unleash­ing that mad­ness because it advanced his prospects, bring­ing his col­lab­o­ra­tors up with him. Before any­thing else, Fass­binder was a results guy. He placed empha­sis on expres­sive­ness, cre­ativ­i­ty and mov­ing for­ward. Asked about his extra­or­di­nary pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, he respond­ed, ​“it must be a spe­cial kind of men­tal ill­ness” and ​“I am extreme­ly sure of myself.”

In 1992’s Role Play: Women on Fass­binder, an inter­view-dri­ven doc­u­men­tary fea­tur­ing Her­mann, Schygul­la, Mar­git Carsten­son and Rosel Zech, the actors dis­cuss their intense work­ing rela­tion­ships with the direc­tor with pierc­ing ambiva­lence. Har­row­ing tales emerge but so too does love. He awoke some­thing inside peo­ple, but he didn’t always do it gen­tly or kind­ly. This was a high-risk strat­e­gy. As Carsten­son laments, ​“Rain­er was a mas­ter of attract­ing him­self to peo­ple so that they felt they could not live with­out him, which unfor­tu­nate­ly some­times happened.”

“The one who loves or loves more is obvi­ous­ly the infe­ri­or one in the rela­tion­ship,” Fass­binder said in a 1978 inter­view with Peter Jansen, ​“This is to do with the fact that the one who loves less has more pow­er, obvi­ous­ly. Deal­ing with this fact – accept­ing an emo­tion, or love, or a need – requires a great­ness, which most peo­ple don’t pos­sess. That’s why things usu­al­ly get very nasty.” These com­ments were informed by per­son­al expe­ri­ence, and show why main­tain­ing the whip-hand in rela­tion­ships was an ongo­ing inter­est to Fass­binder. In his head, it was a mat­ter of survival.

In 1978 Fass­binder made what über-fan Richard Lin­klater has described as ​“his most per­son­al film”. Ear­li­er that year, Fassbinder’s third great love, Armin Meier, com­mit­ted sui­cide in the pair’s shared apart­ment while the direc­tor was away at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. Fassbinder’s response was In a Year with 13 Moons, which he turned around with typ­i­cal speed. It is a ten­der and clear-eyed med­i­ta­tion on lone­li­ness. While not a straight biog­ra­phy, in its DNA it seeks to under­stand the sui­ci­dal impulse. The result is a flab­ber­gast­ing dis­play of empa­thy for the deceased.

In a Year with 13 Moons chron­i­cles the qui­et­ly spi­ralling despair of a trans­sex­u­al named Elvi­ra (Volk­er Spen­gler) dur­ing the last five days of her life. Imag­ine It’s a Won­der­ful Life, but instead of the peo­ple of Bed­ford Falls ral­ly­ing around George in his moment of need, they turn away – not out of mali­cious­ness, but because of oth­er pri­or­i­ties. There are a hand­ful of unfor­get­table scenes, sev­er­al vis­cer­al­ly so, and one that is plain hum­drum. Reject­ed by every­one she has ever loved, Elvira’s final stop is at the door of a jour­nal­ist who recent­ly inter­viewed her. She wants com­pa­ny. She needs com­pa­ny, and polite­ly asks if the jour­nal­ist will come for a beer. He’s game until his wife point­ed­ly reminds him that it’s not a good time. It’s late. He has an ear­ly start tomor­row. Turn­ing up at people’s hous­es is not the done thing.

Respect for con­ven­tion­al behav­iour­al pat­terns caus­es the jour­nal­ist to say no. Elvi­ra leaves alone. A prac­ti­cal social deci­sion from one per­son hap­pens to be the final rejec­tion for anoth­er. The dra­mat­ic irony of the scene evokes sui­ci­dal depres­sion as a state that can­not make itself known to a per­son blink­ered by ordi­nary pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. There is a des­per­ate need for sin­cere engage­ment and when that is unavail­able, inter­ac­tions are hol­low. Elvira’s des­per­a­tion goes unchecked because peo­ple don’t reg­is­ter the sever­i­ty of lone­li­ness until it’s too late.

So it was with Meier. Through sen­si­tive­ly ele­vat­ing emo­tion­al dra­ma, Fass­binder offered immor­tal­i­ty to some­one he didn’t take care of in life.

Fass­binder only learned of the sui­cide of his sec­ond great love, El Hedi Ben Salem, five years after the fact, in 1982, the same year his own heart gave out. Salem had non-fatal­ly stabbed two men and fled to France, where he was arrest­ed, hang­ing him­self in his jail cell in 1977. The news of his death was kept from the still emo­tion­al­ly-invest­ed Fass­binder. After find­ing out, he ded­i­cat­ed his final film, Querelle, to Salem. Their sto­ry began in 1971 in a gay sauna in Paris. In oppo­si­tion to the way he treat­ed Her­mann and Pem­peit, Fass­binder used cin­e­ma to phys­i­cal­ly idolise his beloved. His 1974 mas­ter­piece Ali: Fear Eats The Soul was Salem’s star vehi­cle (oppo­site Brigitte Mira). Many scenes feel like a direc­tor sali­vat­ing over a prize catch. Bare­ly dis­guised lust moti­vates a mir­ror shot of Salem in the shower.

Empires of con­dem­na­tion could be mount­ed atop Fassbinder’s shoul­ders, and the melo­dra­mat­ic details of his per­sona used as a spring­board for psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­missals. Fass­binder com­posed his rav­ages on cel­lu­loid in order that we can still view them. As Schygul­la put it: ​“He was capa­ble of what he demand­ed of oth­ers, of open­ing him­self up com­plete­ly with­out hid­ing behind the mask of sophis­ti­ca­tion.” This open­ness is his lega­cy. It eclipses the lurid mis­be­hav­iour that was a part of him by drilling into that very lurid mis­be­hav­iour. Fass­binder adds com­plex­i­ty to the moral dilem­ma of sep­a­rat­ing art from the artist by build­ing his cin­e­mat­ic rep­u­ta­tion through lac­er­at­ing self-aware­ness. He did not pre­tend to be grander or bet­ter than the tumul­tuous night­mare artist that he was.

Where does that leave us and his body of work today? This writer agrees once again with Han­na Schygul­la: ​“I don’t believe that he suc­ceed­ed in reflect­ing some uni­ver­sal real­i­ty. It was more his own world that he was able to extract from him­self.” Yet with­in Fass­binder we can see shades of our­selves. Inevitably the qual­i­ty varies across his many works but the mas­ter­pieces, the ago­nised tapes­tries of per­son­al rela­tion­ships, are warn­ing shots fired. While I believe that love can be non-exploita­tive and cre­ative rela­tion­ships can thrive with­out pow­er games, there is a part of me that knows how this oth­er way of coex­ist­ing would go. This is what makes Fassbinder’s trag­ic melo­dra­mas so recog­nis­able and com­pelling: they are the twist­ed parts of our natures giv­en oxy­gen, they are life through the look­ing glass.

RW Fass­binder runs at BFI South­bank until May 31. For more info vis­it bfi​.org​.uk