Berlin Alexanderplatz - Criterion Collection (1983)

Well Worth the Effort

This German mini-series by the great Rainer Werner Fassbinder still resonates 20 years after I saw it. Fassbinder was quite a character in his day, and some people nicknamed him "the German Belushi" for his out of control lifestyle and tastes.

I viewed this many chaptered masterpiece, which some critics now see as the precursor to The Sopranos, when it was premiered on NYC's public Channel 13. I made a commitment to watch this series in its entirety, even with the burden of subtitles, and I was rewarded with a spellbinding, extremely psychological portrait of the Berlin of yesteryear.

Some startling memories: Fassbinder's own mother appears in vivid red as part of a crime syndicate, Franz, the lead character's arm being run over by a motor vehicle and what has to be one of the most bizarre scenarios I've ever witnessed on television: a hallucinatory vision of the afterlife to the tune of Janis Joplin.

All actors are outstanding, and most of them I had never seen before: Barbara Sukowa and Hannah Shygulla (sorry for misspelling) and the the actors who played Franz and Rheinhold.

I would love to watch this again, because I'm sure there are scenes that I missed and also to revisit something extraordinary. November 20, 2008

See It

If you like German cinema or just incredibly well-made films of any sort, watch this. This is the best made for tv production I have ever seen. It makes any mini-series American television has made look amatuerish by comparison. This is made with the professionalism and skill of a major studio movie.

Fassbinder and several of the actors had worked together before and it shows. The various professionals involved trust each other and I understand it was a quick, relatively painless shoot. The series functions as one long movie and I was never bored or weary.

Gunter Lamprecht, Gottfried Johns and Barbara Sukowa are particularly impressive. Lamprecht is in about 99% of the 15 1/2 hour running time. An incredible performance. Simply immerses himself in the role.

Fassbinder tends to run hot and cold for me but this is a tour de force. I've never seen anything like it anddon't expect to again. It combines the best of television's leisurely storytelling w the best of cinema's creativity and technical excellence.

This is it. This is how good film or tv can be. Try it. November 2, 2008

Round One

I just finished parts 1 and 2 of this extraordinary project. At this length, it is not properly speaking a movie, but rather a TV series. It is to be compared to the very best American and British serials of this sort; "Lovesome Dove" comes to mind, perhaps there are others. This is a magnificent project and I can't wait to watch the next parts. The film has the look of a studio lot production. The lighting and so on are made to create a seedy realism and an artificiality, which could probably be traced back to Brecht and beyond. This is theatre; this is life. I happen to love this blend which is almost absent from American film-making. The acting is superb. The lead plays a classic sort of loser. We haven't been asked in this country to like someone like this for a very long time. There is a hint, though, of the 1940s throughout, so perhaps American studio stars of the period will come to mind. There's a bit of Willy Loman about this guy. He's a Nazi, but he could just as well have become a pharmacist, a trucker, a public school teacher, or a doorman. He fell in with the Nazis but who's to know why. It's the kind of thing that explains the lives of 80% of the human race. Fassbinder directs with great tenderness; clearly, he loves this guy and sees him as a man of honor or as a nobody. What's the difference? September 20, 2008

Well, I Made It !

Whew,finally got through the whole thing from Netflix..
I would rate it higher if not for one glaring thing..

Hello??
Did you know it is unacceptable to pulverize women ??
Beat them to the floor and choke the life out of them ?
Uh,I think the author really seemed to enjoy these parts of the
book(film).

The violence toward women has to be the worst I personally have ever
seen in film..I suspect one notch from snuff films.

OTHER THAN THAT..
I enjoyed the series very much..
He surely is not a likable or sympathetic character to me..
Kind of repulsive..
But the history of the film showing the times change,etc..was terrific.

And the stuttering guy..have you ever seen a more repulsive character
in film than him ??

I really recommend this series..but beware..it's sickening to see
the lack of humanity toward women.
July 15, 2008

15 1/2 Hours of Brilliant Magnificence:

It took me over four months to finish watching Berlin Alexanderplatz that Criterion released on seven discs. As with the other two my favorite TV Series (Ingmar Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander" and "Scenes from the Marriage), Criterion deserves the highest praise for the quality of the set. I would receive a disc from Netflix, watch it without stopping and then I would need a break - so intense and involving, and demanding the film was. It's been said a lot about Werner Rainer Fassbinder's most opulent, magnificent, and controversial work based on the novel "Berlin Alexanderplatz" written by Alfred Döblin in 1929 that Fassbinder had known by heart and always wanted to adapt. In short, "Berlin Alexanderplatz" is a story of an ex-convict Franz Biberkopf and his attempts to lead a good honest life after he was released from the prison where he had spent four years for accidentally murdering his girlfriend in the fit of rage. Döblin's book is considered one of the most important German novels, which used the techniques similar to and is as influential as James Joyce's "Ulysses" and John Dos Passos' "Manhattan". As Joyce and Dos Passos, Doblin paints the portrait of the city that we could recognize and re-build in our imagination even if Berlin of the 1920s, the most modern city of its time does not exist anymore. Doblin also had shown how the city affects the life of a person and tears them apart. There could be many reasons why Fassbinder felt so strongly about the novel and always dreamt about adapting it to the screen. He was certainly fascinated by the language of the book and he took it upon himself to narrate some of the most impressive pages as the comments to the action on the screen. Perhaps the young filmmaker was attracted to Doblin's non-judgmental approach in depicting marginality of criminal life, in accepting homosexuality and bisexuality as a part of life without neither glorifying nor demonizing them. The hero of Döblin'/Fassbinder's magnum opus is a deeply flawed man, a pimp, a thief, a murderer yet childishly naive and sympathetic who wants to start a new honest life (not pimping or joining the gang of thieves) but keeps forgetting that "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." Fassbinder also could've seen the similarities in the political situations in Germany of 1970 and 1930.

I realize that 15 1/2 hours long "Berlin Alexanderplatz" can evoke very controversial emotions from the viewers but I believe it is impossible not to admit the brilliance and magnificence of the project and of the final product which is without doubt a truly outstanding event in the history of the medium. Just to think that such enormous work had been finished in the course of 150 days, that Fassbinder took only three months to write the script, and how he'd envisioned the main players even before they could imagine they would participate in the project. It was incredibly interesting to watch the documentary about making BA. I found it symbolic that some parts of the film were shot using the earlier set decorations for Ingmar Bergman's "Serpent's Egg" which I like very much and don't agree that it was Bergman's mistake. I also see the influence Fellini might have had on Fassbinder - the scenes in the Red Light District could've came come from the Italian master's films who knew how to stage the "freak shows" and Barbara Sukowa's confession that she had looked at Fellini's "La Strada" to understand better the character of Mieze. Günter Lamprecht, Hanna Schygulla, and especially Gottfried John (who I believed had given the greatest performance in the film as one of the most mysterious villains ever on screen) all contributed their memories of the time they worked with Fassbinder on Berlin Alexanderplatz. I might have not perhaps "gotten" the whole complexity of the film and the novel it is based on but I feel greatness when I encounter it. Of all amazing 15+ hours, the final part, "My dream from the dream of Franz Biberkopf von Alfred Doeblin: An Epilogue" stands out even for Fassbinder. Rarely have I been so mesmerized and fascinated by what an artist's imagination is capable of as during the two final hours of the incredible filmmaking. The epilog made me think that if ever a film director lived who could've adapted to screen successfully "Divine Comedy", "The Book of Revelation", "Ulysses", and Goethe's Faust (the whole poem, not just a Margaret's affair), it was Rainer Werner Fassbinder. We lost our chance when he was gone and we would never see the likes of him again. Not often I feel sorry that the film is over and I miss it as soon as I finish watching - it happened after the final scene of "Berlin Alexanderplatz" was over.
May 3, 2008

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