Love Is Colder Than Death [Hardcover]

Robert Katz (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

From published interviews with the director and the recollections of his confidants Katz constructs a thin biography of the late German director Fassbinder, which emphasizes how he held sway over his associates through cruelly bullying manipulations. Little here, however, sheds light on Fassbinder's films or explains why critics continue to value them. Instead, Katz focuses on the director's sexual liaisons and drug use to fashion a trashy biography that reads like a tabloid without being as interesting or as entertaining. Marshall Deutelbaum, English Dept., Purdue Univ., W. Lafayette, Ind.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (March 12, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394534565
• ISBN-13: 978-0394534565
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,918,625 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Katz

Robert Katz is the author of twelve books and eight screenplays, including three adaptations from his own works: Death in Rome, The Cassandra Crossing, and Days of Wrath.

Death in Rome, which the Chicago Tribune called a "masterpiece of literature [and] a masterpiece of historical scholarship," was a worldwide bestseller published in twenty edi¬tions and ten languages. A study of the World War II Ardeatine Caves Massacre, it became an international cause célèbre culminating in a ten year freedom of speech court battle involving the Vatican. He has written extensively on this period and among his other publications are Black Sabbath: A Journey Through a Crime Against Humanity, a study of the roundup and deportation to Auschwitz of the Jews of Rome.

His most recent work, The Battle for Rome, a history of Nazi-occupied Rome, was praised by The New York Times as "a poignant, dramatic and definitive account..."

Days of Wrath is an investigative report on the terrorist kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, the Italian statesman. Reviewing Days of Wrath, the Washington Post wrote: "anyone who can be moved by the pity and terror of a modern tragedy will want to read this original and passionately heartfelt book." The book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; the film version won a Golden Globe and represented Italy in the main competition of the 1987 Berlin Film Festival, where it received a Silver Bear award.

His articles, short stories, and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout the world. He has been a consultant to CBS's 60 Minutes, ABC's PrimeTime Live and Italian television's RAI network news magazine Mixer.

In 1991 he was inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Both as author and screenwriter, Mr. Katz has been a guest lecturer on many university campuses in the U.S. and abroad. Between 1986 and 1992, he was a frequent visiting professor in investigative journalism at the University of California at Santa Cruz. A Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, he is a former grantee of the American Council of Learned Societies and has twice been elected a Knight of Mark Twain. His official web site is www.theboot.it

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Demonizing Fassbinder, December 24, 2010

By 

Raquel Shapira - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love Is Colder Than Death (Hardcover)

Besides being an awful writer, Mr. Katz chooses to demonize Fassbinder--ignoring the fact that a biographer should maintain objectivity. Mr. Katz is unable to delve deeper into the complexity of his subject. He ends up painting a shallow picture that tries to entertain by sensationalizing rather than providing an untainted portrait based on facts.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A heartfelt biography!, November 28, 2005

By 

Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love Is Colder Than Death (Paladin Books) (Paperback)

This colossal biography seems to have written with an accurate blend of sadness, desperation, outrage, amazement, blood and tears. Four months after the painful departure of Fassbinder, -L'enfant terrible of the German Cinema, the loyal expositor and protagonist of a lacerated nation for different demons, who always tried to show the dark side of his personages; from Berlin Alexanderplatz to Mria Braun, from Lolita to Petra von Kant, from Ali to Mama Kuster, all his characters are loaded of the original sin, disturbed and anguished for the weight of the conscious, a merciless world that is far to understand and so many times even distinguish between the Germany of Schiller and Beethoven respect the Nazi Germany.

A very complete motives exposition a long the febrile existence of this disturbed genius, who lived faster tan the speed of life, deputing thirty six films in just only seventeen years of artistic activity.

Go for this biography, a painful gaze inside the life and times of this monumental creator.