Editing Rainer Werner Fassbinder (section)

====''The Niklashausen Journey'' (1970)====
In ''{{Interlanguage link multi|Niklashauser Fart|de|3=Niklashauser Fart|lt=The Niklashausen Journey}}'' (''Die Niklashauser Fahrt''), Fassbinder co-writes and co-directs with Michael Fengler. This avant-garde film, commissioned by the WDR television network, was shot in May 1970 and it was broadcast in October the same year.<ref name="Watson 87">{{harv|Watson|1996|p=87}}</ref>''The Niklashausen Journey'' was loosely based on the real-life of [[Hans Böhm|Hans Boehm]], a shepherd who in 1476 claimed that the Virgin Mary called him to foment an uprising against the church and upper classes. Despite a temporary success, Boehm's followers were eventually massacred and he was burned at the stake.<ref name="Watson 87"/> Fassbinder's intention was to show how and why revolutions fail.<ref name="Iden 129">{{harv|Iden|1981|p=129}}</ref> His approach was to compare the political and sexual turmoil of feudal Germany with that of the contraculture movement and the [[protests of 1968]]. Fassbinder did not clarify the time frame of the action, mixing medieval elements (including some costumes, settings, speech and music) with those from other time periods, like the Russian Revolution, the [[Rococo]] period, postwar Germany and the [[Third World]].<ref name="Iden 129"/>

''The Niklashausen Journey'', influenced by [[Jean-Luc Godard]]'s ''[[Weekend (1967 film)|Weekend]]'' and [[Glauber Rocha]]'s ''[[Antonio das Mortes]]'', consists of only about a dozen or so scenes, most of which are either theatrical tableaux where there is no movement of the characters and the camera darts from speaker to speaker or are shots where characters pace back and forth while giving revolutionary speeches about Marxist struggles and debates on economic theories.<ref name="Watson 88">{{harv|Watson|1996|p=88}}</ref>