RWF. 60.

Had Rainer Werner Fassbinder not died in June 1982, he would have been 60 today. While his films have been playing for a few weeks now on German television and events - discussions, screenings, lectures, what have you - are rolling across the country, and while a retrospective unreels in the Centre Pompidou in Paris before it moves on to Tokyo, there isn't much of anything in the English-language papers today. But a few items in the German press should be noted before pointing to a timeless item or two:

• A portrait by Thomas Elsaesser would have to appear somewhere today, and the taz is a fine place for it. "Jean-Luc Godard once said: 'Maybe it's true that all of his films are bad, but still, Fassbinder is Germany's greatest filmmaker. He was there when Germany needed films to find itself. He can only be compared with Rossellini because even the New Wave didn't make France as present as postwar Germany is in Fassbinder."

• Beginning with a recollection in the Tagesspiegel of running into RWF at Cannes in 1974, Peter W Jansen remembers RWF's furious drive and the effect it had on those who worked with him, the "group": "It was, plain and simple, a '68 commune in which everyone shared everything with everyone. Except for the last word. Fassbinder used the word 'group' only ironically and he hated the word 'leader.' But there was no way around his becoming precisely that."

• "Rainer always had a tendency to make films for the public," remarks cinematographer Michael Ballhaus in Die Welt, which is why he wanted to work in television, even if it meant compromising here and there: "Rainer was very flexible; it was one of his great strengths, this ability to rethink and react quickly." Example: Having dealt with RWF's drug problems on The Marriage of Maria Braun, Ballhaus declined to work with him on Berlin Alexanderplatz; but RWF made a "blitzschnell" turnaround, dropped the cocaine and stayed off it for a year's intensive work on Alexanderplatz. Also: Ballhaus is sure RWF would be shooting on video today.

• Also in Die Welt: Producer Günter Rohrbach recalls "the only true genius of the last 50 years," Hanns-Georg Rodek explains that while RWF bound himself to neither the Right nor the Left, his "persistent contemplation of his identity as a German" makes him one of the most important representative figures of the country around the world to this day; and a RWF timeline.

• The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung runs brief comments from Wim Wenders, Jan Schütte, Benjamin Heisenberg, Hans Weingartner, Christian Petzold, Christopher Roth, Romuald Karmakar, Hans Steinbichler, Caroline Link, Christoph Hochhäusler and Dominik Graf.

In English:

• Bright Lights editor Gary Morris's 1998 profile remains one of the best introductions.

• Joe Ruffell took on the challenge of writing the RWF piece for the Senses of Cinema "Great Directors" critical database; more links are collected at the end.

• And of course, the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation.

Happy b-day, RWF. Wherever you are.

Posted by dwhudson at May 31, 2005 6:50 AM