Customer Reviews

Berlin Alexanderplatz (The Criterion Collection)

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Twenty-six years after its creation Berlin Alexanderplatz is finally given the restoration it so desperately deserved.Fassbinder's monumental fifteen plus hour epic has been completely restored and remastered so that the story of the hapless Franz Biberkopf can finally be experienced in all its glory.

The film (presented in 13 episodes and an epilogue) follows the daily life of Franz Biberkopf (Gunter Lamprecht) from his release from prison for the murder of his girlfriend as he tries to lead a decent life in post World War I Berlin. Along the way he becomes among other things a seller of shoestrings, a newspaper salesman, a pimp and a petty thief.

Fassbinder's world is populated with a panoply of ordinary people and lowlifes. The key is that the viewer begins to care about these people as if he knew them. One reviewer described the Biberkopf character as an uncle that the German people invited into their homes each week.

The film looks like it never looked before. Director of Photography, Xaver Schwarzenberger says that the image is now able to be seen as it was intended. Originally shot on 16mm the film has been completely restored and the color regraded. The result, while not perfect is as good as it has ever been. The film has a sort of brownish gold glow that suits it quite well.

The package by Criterion presents the film in a windowboxed version that runs for 941 minutes. This is about 4% longer than the original due to a NTSC slow down of the original Pal 25 frame per second master. The sound is mono but holds up quite well and the subtitling is clear and easy to read.

The bonus features are quite good and feature two shorts by film editor Juliane Lorenz on the making of the film and its restoration, a contemporary documentary on Fassbinder's working methods and a discussion of the original novel by historian Peter Jelavich. Perhaps the most significant extra is the complete 1931 film version by Phil Jutzi.

This is a highly recommended set for any fan of serious cinema.

Long one of the most sought after video bootlegs in the world, Fassbinders' 931 minute tele-film adaptation of the Alfred Doblin novel "Berlin Alexanderplatz" is one of the all time great accomplishments in cinema. It was originally filmed in 16 millimeter as a German television series; shown in the USA in both a two day 7+ hour a day festival type event, and in shortened versions... Having the full version, restored (hopefully lovingly and successfully), is something very long in the waiting. For any true student of the art of cinema this is a must have. There is decidedly too much to say, or risk giving away, by giving a plot review of this nearly 16 hour masterpiece. For 27 years I have told people that "the last 3 hours of this film is possibly the greatest achievement in film art history." Why? Fassbinder directs like a master conductor artfully emulating the styles of a pantheon of the great cinema maestro's to that date - at the same time proving both their genius -- and his own. Stock the house with German fare and bier, wait for a long rainy weekend, get together with a literate friend or two - and enter into one of the most rewarding, fascinating, and awe inspiring examples of filmic story telling ever created. It is not always a happy story to be sure -- but it is indeed one of the most astounding viewing experiences a spectator can ever have.

David Lean, one of my favorite directors and the man responsible for Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai, once said that seeing a film after you haven't seen it in a long time was like seeing an old friend you haven't seen for a dog's age, and it makes you feel alive again when the memories flow within you and your friend. I feel like that now, as Criterion has decided to return a film/miniseries/friend whom I have not seen in what feels like an eternity. I feel like this miniseries, which I watched as a young person and have never forgotten it (I saw it on PBS...imagine what the ignorants in Congress would say about PBS broadcasting it today), is coming to pay its respects to me, and I look so forward to seeing it and embracing it. This is a truly magnificent achievement in film/television history, one of Fassbinder's most towering achievements, and a milestone in what television and film can do. All the episodes are wonderful, but the epilogue (as one reviewer noted) is truly amazing, and seeing it as a young person really fired my imagination. Fassbinder made his own boundaries in his life and in his art, then always crossed them. There is no better example than this film/miniseries. I miss him terribly (he died a few years after this miniseries was completed), and his art. But thankfully, as with all great artists, the art lives on, breathing, living, and embracing each one of us who comes in contact with it, touching us, and staying with us forever...

A wonderful, truly ironic thing about this miniseries is that when it was broadcast in West Germany, it was actually a critical and commercial failure. Fassbinder was a lightning rod for controversy in West Germany, and this film didn't help matters much. It was shot on 16mm, and when broadcast, many Germans didn't have color televisions at this time, and the print was too muddy, killing off the potential for any meaningful viewership (this edition has been loving restored by Xaver Schwarzenberger, the cinematographer of this film and much of Fassbinder's later output). When it was shown here in the States, it first appeared in cinemas, shown over the course of 3 days or so. The press loved it, and it was a major happening on the art house circuit, and later it appeared on PBS. It was Americans, who aren't universally known for their sense of art, who really rescued this film/miniseries from obscurity. It shows (at least to me) that once upon a time this country had a very good notion about art. Even though that was many years ago, it still gives one hope that we're not all doomed to artistic illiteracy and idiocy.

It is worthy to note that the incredibly prolific Fassbinder managed to write the script for this epic in 3 months, shoot it in roughly 150 days or so, come in a month ahead of schedule on the shooting, and had the final cut edited shortly after completing shooting. His editor and lover at the time, Julianne (contrary to popular belief, Fassbinder was BISEXUAL, not strictly gay, as he is commonly referred to), says in her documentary on the bonus disc that they were editing as they were shooting. Fassbinder shot only a few takes of a scene, quite often getting it one take. To make such a masterpiece in such a short time is remarkable. It makes me wonder about how some directors who insist on many, many takes. I adore Kubrick, Chaplin, and Lean (for example), but quite often, they would take very long with their films and shoot a large number of takes. All three of them have something in common. The more control they assumed at the end of the careers, the longer they took to put out films, and their later films are not nearly as good as their classic work. Just an observation.

As for the film itself, it's filled with great performances, including a towering, defining one by Gunther Lampecht, who is practically in all of the 15 1/2 hours you see here. It is one of the greatest performances in European cinema. Barbara Sukowa is wonderful as Mieze, and Gottfried John is wonderful as Rheinhold, Franz's sometime friend, sometime enemy. Xaver Schwarbennger's cinemtography is first rate, and he oversaw the restoration of this mammoth work for the Fassbinder foundation and this DVD. Just everything in this monumental production works brilliantly.

Criterion's DVD is excellent. The whole film is featured on 7 discs, and there are tons of extras that are really worth watching. There is a documentary that was shot when the miniseries was made called "Notes on the Making of Berlin Alexanderplatz". I always like watching older "film" documentaries because people weren't so media literate then. They were more natural (even filmmakers and actors) and didn't "play" for the camera. Julianne Lorenz's documentary looking back on the production is wonderful. It mainly consists of reminiscing, and people marveling on how Fassbinder managed to accomplish what he set out to do. There isn't any "analyzing" of the film itself, which is very welcome. There's a documentary on the restoration, which is fascinating. They essentially had to take a 15 1/2 hour film shot on 16mm (which is not the greatest format anyway), and completely digitize it to save it and transfer it to the DVD you see here. And there is the original film by Phil Jutzi made in 1931. It can't really compare to Fassbinder's film, but it's interesting to watch nevertheless.

It is wonderful that this series has returned to us, and we can
partake of it again, and see what a real artistic masterpiece is.

I'm a huge fan of Fassbinder's work. His first film I'd ever seen was the last film he made--Querelle. I didn't think that was a terrible film, but I never explored more of his work, because of the theme and imagery of that piece. Naturally my luck, Querelle is considered his worse film, and it took me a couple of decades to find out what this cinematic master was about. Fassbinder's work, can't be qualified against the other new wave German directors like Wim Werners, Schlondorf, and Werner Herzog. He is so much more expressionistic, and compulsive, than other directors. Fassbinder just poured himself into his films. Unlike the other German director/writers of the "hippie" generation, Fassbinder films are strident, often shocking, filled with emotional bathos at times, yet not maudlin, symetaneously ugly and beautiful, philosophically paradoxical, visually surreal within natural settings, and nearly always expressionistic in tone. All these various themes and esthetic qualities are brought together in BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ. Perhaps this is because he created his own version of "Remember of Things Past". And, like that series of books, this entire movie telescopes the most mundane, and banal parts of the Everyman hero of the film, Biberkopf, into a symbol of the city in which he lived, and the people of his mileau. I see so many analogies between this work, and Proust. Just as one of the books from "Rememberance" which dealt with only one day of the hero's life, as he obsessed over his girlfriend, so also is one of the one hour episodes from this film, focused on nothing but two men in their pajamas, surrounded by empty beer bottles in a flop house, drinking themselves to death, and bemoaning the existance of man, and pondering his need for God, in a Godless society. No wonder the Germans didnt know what to make of this when it was broadcast on TV. The picture is dark and moody, both figuratively and visually. But the Fassbinder Association did a great job of digital scrubbing, brightening of the film's visual look, so that whole scenes wouldnt be much more than empty darkness. Each episode, up to the bizarre and outrageously surreal epilogue, becomes increasingly tragic, as one watches with mute horror Biberkopf's descent from an "upright man", to a broken wreck in the DOG EAT DOG world which Germany in 1928 apparently was. This film was broadcast in Germany in 14 episodes, one a week. When it was shown in MoMA, they simply split the film into two parts, and cinema fans sat down for two 8 hour sessions. I took the film in little one hour bites, personally. (Emotionally it's too dense for two long viewings.) What fascinated me, was the way visual repetitions, like the constant repetition of Biberkopf's killing of his girlfriend, for which he was originally sent him to jail, work like a symphonic leitmotif, to deconstruct the various facits of this man's psyche. The film is loaded with symbolism at every turn. (Like the canary in a cage, that symbolizes Biberkopf's innocence, and love for Mieze.) The film's surreal two hour ending, however, has to be one of the most intense pieces of "inner poetry" i've ever seen. Not to be a spoiler, but Biberkopf finally snaps by the end of the film, and this modern "Job" is thrown into an asylum for the criminally insane, where every character in the film, and every major theme, is psychedelically merged in and out of the realities of Biberkopf's sick mind. For me, watching the film is worth the expenditure of time, just to experience this "epilogue". I honestly cant think of ANYTHING in cinematic history that compares to this ending. Maybe Buneul and Dali's "Un Chien Andalou", mixed with a bit of Bergman's "Seventh Seal", best describes the epilogue to the film. In summation, you either LIKE Fassbinder, or not. If you, like me, saw only one film of his oeveur, you have no idea what he is really about. He did too many films, and explored too many styles, for any one film to be definative. However, BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ comes close to being definative for Fassbinder, if for no other reason than its gigantic size. Maybe for that reason alone, this film must simply be experienced. Criterion did an outstanding job packaging and analysing the film, drawing together documentaries, interviews, and even another filmed version of this book. The 1933 version of the film written by Doblin himself, is included with the extras DVD, for comparison. Also, a documentary about Fassbinder was filmed during this film's production for German TV, which shows Fassbinder's process of creation in detail. Almost the whole cast is still alive, so some incredible interviews with the actors are included. Hanna Schygulla said she could not remember much, and then went on to detail little emotional insights about the cast, and the shoot, that were beautiful. And the poor actor that had to deal with portraying the lead Character Biberkopf, and the hundreds of pages of script he had to study. Oi Weh. The actor had to gain a lot of weight, and slowly transform himself completely into the part. His acting was remarkable, and one of the great overlooked thespian achievements of that time. Also included in the DVD case, is a 73 page book of articles on the film. All in all, even tho this 7 DVD boxset is pricey, I'd say it is money well spent. You could rent a hundred DVDs like the recent "Bourne Ultimatium", (which cost many times more to make than this 15 hour film), and never have an experience this film gives the soul. Oh, one last spoiler: in the sense of "the Divine Comedy", this film has a happyend. Biberkopf the man is alive at the end of the film, but Biberkopf the child, the innocent soul, dies. Therein lies the real power of the film. ITs a total metaphor for the death of the Weimar republic as the death of the German soul, which prepared the corpse of Germany for the nazi maggots that infested it. Now, germany is somewhat like Biberkopf: Hard at work, recovering from the temporary insanity that lead to the country's psychic death. AND, like Biberkopf, Germany must with weltschmertz dripping from it's brow, toil and work, to find some kind of redemption from the monsterous images that they must live with, from those horrible years of the third reich. Biberkopf, not unlike Gunter Grass's Oskar from THE TIN DRUM, is a symbol for the post nazi Germany. Maybe that was the reason why this film was so disliked when it was first broadcast on their German TV stations. It touches, then tortures, the raw nerve of the german soul. Oddly enough, everyone seemed to hate the film. That most have really broken Fassbinder, who obviously poured himself into this project, in the atempt to produce his opus magnum. So, go ahead and buy it. Torturous insight is good for the soul.

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.

What can I add that others have not already said, how much further can one laud one of the greatest achievements in filmdom?

The first time I tried to take this on, I foolishly tried to bite off more than I could chew at one sitting. Don't do like I did back in the '80s and skip through it, but take it at a pace with which you are comfortable. To attempt to scale such a massive work in one or a few viewings is as much madness as exists in the final three hours of this film's duration. It possibly could make a Franz Bieberkopf out of you.

The entire gaumut of human experience is in here. All the pettiness, stupidity, calumny, backstabbing, frailties, and finally, yes just a little of man's occasional kindness; greatness must be left for another film, for such is not the task alloted this film's purpose. This film is an advertisement for humankind's weaknesses.

I rarely attach the word 'genius' to something, but with this film, no other word will do. If you have read this far among the various reviews and still haven't seen the film, I strongly urge you to do so, if you are up to the task it requires to fully experience its breadth and totality. Not for the faint of heart, not for Disneyphiles, not for those wanting a movie to iron clothes by, this masterpiece requires the dedication necessary to fully comprehend and be oversatiated by the vastness of its nature. The loving of this film requires, of necessity, a sufficient admixture of both empathy and schadenfreude in the viewer, to properly wallow in its excesses.

"BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ" (Fassbinder, Germany,1980).

"We are too miserable for to be unhappy".

Charles Bukowsky

The first thing is that person, that comes out from about four years prison: He is Franz Biberkopf (A Superb!!! Günter Lamprecht). He has now to continue in the outside word jail, but now alone. He holds in the chest a guilty wound which seeks to cover with alcohol, prostitutes and disposable women from another main character Reinhold Hoffman (Gottfried John) a psychopath guy with a tin layer of lamb. Fassbinder was fascinated with this two characters, Franz and Reinhold, form Alfred Döbling's novel about the same name, manly because by their latent homosexuality, which was clearly the only explanation of a friendship highly unlikely in other circumstances.
Franz Biberkopf murdered his woman, almost without notice, at least the first blow. She cried; face him, hoping that he could do something, in the positive side of a couple mood. But Franz is far away of the emotional side of the brain, and cannot continue shaving himself, with one of those blades that seemed swords of cavalry, and as in a reflex movement, he cut a pit what it cannot handle, like a dermal bump.
That act of despicable impulsivity, transforms him into a paralyzed being by the possibility of the evil within. Germany is just through an economical crisis after of the First World War. There is a great economic depression, and a lonely man is only under his skin. It is an animal sentimental, but at the same time explosives. In his life stop by different women, but remains, as an angel love, Eva (Hanna Schygulla), which appear like a friend that is in love with him, but is living with a wealthy man. The other woman the he is love with is Mieze (Emilie "Mieze" Karsunke, by a young Barbara Sukowa, that was directed to act like Gelsomina, a Giulieta Massina's character in "La strada" - 1956. F. Fellini).
After all, Franz Biberkof is without job, a pimp sometimes, because he loose one of his arms after to be betrayed by Reinhold, once. Subsequent to being released from jail, he strides, slips, falls from one stretch of his life to the next. He wants to be honest, but circumstances, "bar friends", enroll him again in merchandise robbery, and is betrayed by his companions, not one but several times. He is not allowed to have nothing not even love. Men like Biberkopf are everywhere, are the "Nowhere Man" of The Beatles song. They are just like floating corpses going in the current direction, the flood is their highway, doesn't matter were heading to.
The editing and restoration of this film of 15 and a half hours, it was possible thanks to The Criterion Collection. The film was divided into six DVDs with 13 chapters, an epilogue to 2 hours and disk extras.
The film, by extension, was shown on television, breaking record of viewers and inaugurated with much and inadvertently, the phenomenon of serial tale. That repeated after with Twin Picks of David Lynch, with decorum. Thanks Reine W. Fassbinder by "Berlin Alexanderplatz" and by all the other wonderful and master pieces that you created!!

This mega-movie is an expressionist, modernist masterpiece that combines the best of Wellesian cinema (expressionistic) with Godardian cinema (modernist). The (Godardian) voice-over snatches of random news items and medical health items (referenced in the prior 'review') are simply being faithful to Dobler's novel, which is a somewhat Germanic version of Joyce's Ulysses. But instead of the Joycian modernist take on the travels of Odysseus, Dobler's novel presented us with a modernist take on the Passion Play.

This film is not for simpletons. Just like a long, great novel... there will be stretches that will bore you a bit... and other stretches that are riveting and will break your heart.

Two major points:

1) Don't get too caught up with what some people see as a form of homo-eroticism between Franz Biberkopf and Reinhold. Although expressionistic, Fassbinder has presented the material with enough objectivity that different people will come away with different subtexts. Fassbinder has explained the film as a love story between Franz and Reinhold... but Fassbinder was bisexual.

Franz is a grown up naive child. One could easily see Franz's 'curiosity' about Reinhold as a longing for an absent father. Eva, the one constant in Franz's life, could represent his longing for an absent/replacement mother/big sister/protector. How else to explain Franz's reluctance to mate with her?

2) The two-hour epilogue contains an extended surrealistic pastiche that upsets 90% of the people who like the previous (more realistic) 13 hours.

What did everyone expect? Biberkopf's brain snaps like a twig! Fassbinder takes us inside his brain and there is a bad mixture of cocktail there! Insanity doesn't look so good! Reviewers ask how Lou Reed and Kraftwerk can be on the soundtrack when Franz (in insane delirium) is living in 1928: People... that's what they call 'modernist'. That's what they call... 'expressionist'. Were you expecting Robert Flaherty in a Fassbinder film?

SUMMARY: See the film. If THE DECALOGUE is the great cinematic short story collection... BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ is the great cinematic novel. Savor the first 13 hours... then, if you like, go through the delirium in the epilogue at 4X or 8X speed... it works even better!

Nothing can be more melodramatic than German melodrama, particularly that of the beginning of the 20th century. Franz Biberkopf's story is such a deep, thick and sickening melodrama and Fassbinder makes it so dense, so heavy that we are totally overwhelmed by this hardening cast-plaster, a melodrama contained between Biberkopf's release from the prison where he has spent four years for killing his girlfriend, Ida, to the end of his life as a concierge in some factory after the trial in which he is a witness against the accused, his friend Reinhold who had assassinated Franz's last girl friend Mieze, after he was released from the mental institution to which he had been committed after the crime. Biberkopf is the perfect victim who is ready to do anything he is asked to do by the people he considers his friends at the moment of the request. He is totally dependent on women and ta the same time reveals he is very particular about them and actually loves only very few. Eva of course, his permanent love who lives with a rich Herbert and carries his child for a few months. Ida, who he killed out of rage one morning. And Wieze who will be killed by Reinhold. The second characteristic of Franz Biberkopf is that he has the brain of a beaver, as his name implies. He is not very swift but he is faithful and he can suffer anything from his friends, though at times he may be taken, over by a fit of rage that makes him blind and murderous, though he can easily be stopped. But to survive in Germany in 1928-29 he is doing what he can, anything he comes across: selling newspapers, including the nazi newspaper, selling erotic literature, selling shoelaces, being part of a gang of thieves, and being a pimp. Then the whole story is nothing but details of a sad ,life that can only be sad. Fassbinder makes it so dense, so packed with hefty details and events that we don't see the thirteen episode flying by. And yet the masterpiece of this long series is the epiloque. Then Fassbinder describes what is happening in Biberkopf's mind after his seizure of insanity when he realizes his Mieze was killed by his supposedly best friend who had caused him to lose an arm when this Reinhold had tried to kill him, the infamous Reinhold. In this epilogue, Fassbinder becomes the most baroque, or even rococo, of all screen artists you can imagine. He brings Biberkopf down into the deranged world of his insanity. He is cruder than Bosh, crueler than Goya, and he depicts the physical dereliction to which Biberkopf is reduced in that mental institution, the haughty condescending carelessness of doctors and personnel, and the haunted mind of his. And in this haunted nightmare he experiences, Fassbinder shows how he is tortured by Reinhold and a few others who have used him in life, how he is tortured by both his lubricity and his refusal to acknowledge it, how he is physically tormented in all kinds of cruel physical punishments repeated ad eternam, a vision of hell borrowed from Dante of course. The point here is that Biberkopf will come out of the institution when he reaches some personal peace in that insanity, in no way the consciousness of his own victimization, but a dull taming of his inner world into a senseless, meaningless and emotionless routine that will transform him into a faithful and reliable concierge looking after cars, lost and abandoned forever in his blessed solitude of the body and the soul. This epilogue is luxuriant and so dense that we just wonder how it could go on like that, over and over again, each situation of victimization opening onto another as naturally as a door you push open and drop closed behind you. Sickening and thickening at the same time, so that you feel totally buried in that grossness and in that cruelty. You are becoming Biberkopf and at the same time the torturing insanity because Biberkopf appears to you as deserving his fate, his insanity, hence your scourges and your violence. It is amazing at this moment to see how Fassbinder manages to make you be a double voyeur and transport you both into Biberkopf himself who cannot rebel in spite of you inhabiting him with the justification to rebel, and thus into the torturing insanity to punish him for not rebelling or to incite him to rebel. The only film-maker Fassbinder can compete with in this perverse mediatic transfer is Clive Barker in his early films or in his Hellraiser series, except that Fassbinder adds an ancient Greek dimension to that delirium that is vital since it will lead Biberkopf to surviving in a mixture of the International, patriotic sings and emerging nazi military rites, rituals and marching beating tempos.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

A totally different Place! Despite the initial impression one gets that Rainer Werner Fassbinder intended to replicate the novel "Berlin Alexanderplatz" by Alfred Döblin in unprecedented detail, omitting as little as possible, etching every scene and subtext into his 13-episode, 16-hour epic for television, the novel and the film are ultimately as different as could be. Döblin's novel is not merely the story of Franz Biberkopf, a 'simple' man in several senses of the word, but also the tale of a place and a time in profound cultural illness. Fassbinder's film is only peripherally about Berlin, about the collapse of the German economy and the conditions that nurtured the rise of Nazism; the cameras rather focus on the repressed homosexuality of the principal characters, Biberkopf and Reinhold, both murderers -- one at the beginning, one at the end -- of women. The tormented consciousness of homosexuality becomes increasingly prominent in the film begining with the ninth or tenth installment... to my surprise, I have to admit, as the illusion of 'faithfulness' to the novel is cast aside. With the inclusion of the nightmarish "Epilogue", Fassbinder has converted Döblin's inspection of a sick society into a hellish Apocalypse of perversion, a sado-masochistic Götterdammerung of Wagnerian grandiosity. It's immensely pretentious. Lurid. Sickening ...

... and brilliant. Yes, it is brilliant, truly the "Ring Cycle" of German cinema, one of the greatest accomplishments of Expressionism in film. The acting is astonishingly real; even though I don't really know or want to know a single character from that loathsome crew, I find myself convinced of their humanity, that is, of our kinship of species. The camera-work and ambient sound and the oddly obsessive music, all brilliant! The spoken and scripted subtexts all reverberate potently. The longer one submerges oneself in the experience, the more aghast one becomes at the horror of it, the more one has to acknowledge its brilliance. Sixteen hours of depravity and ugliness? Why put yourself through something of this sort? Well, according to the words Biberkopf murmurs to himself; "Sometimes the song is too short for the eternity of the feelings."

Ultimately, this is a film about Fassbinder himself, with his two conflicting self-projections, Reinhold as Satan, Biberkopf as Christ. Thus it's a film about a consciousness of Sin and a lust for redemptive Death, wallowing in self-pity. I hate it intensely (witness my absurd one-star rating) and admire it almost as intensely (witness the five stars I could just as easily have given it). I'm glad I've seen it, though I could wish I hadn't. There's nothing else in the realm of cinema quite like it, and may there never be!