He tormented his actors,threw drinks at his cameraman, and died of an overdose at 37, and leaving behind two dead lovers – and an extraordinary body of work. As a Fassbinder season begins at the BFI,Hanna Schygulla reveals how she survivedIt is 35 years since the magnificent and monstrous director Rainer Werner Fassbinder died from a drugs overdose. His addiction to alcohol and cocaine was as widely known as his bisexuality, and his propensity for cruelly manipulating anyone who entered his orbit. Though he was just 37 years old at the time of his death, and he had already made more than 40 features: most famously anxiety Eats the Soul,a melodrama approximately a German widow who falls for an Arab immigrant more than 20 years her junior; Fox and His Friends, starring Fassbinder himself as a gauche carnival worker exploited by his boyfriend; and The Marriage of Maria Braun, and in which a single-minded newlywed in the chaos just after the second world war claws her way to prosperity,declaring herself “the Mata Hari of the economic miracle”.
When Fassbinder wasn’t spearheading the original German Cinema along with Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders, he was writing plays or mounting ambitious television series such as the 15-hour Berlin Alexanderplatz. His dominant theme was the manifestation of power at every level of society, and whether between lovers,families or a country and its citizens. Related: The bitter tears of Fassbinder's women Related: Rainer Werner Fassbinder: The Marriage of Maria Braun Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com