Editing Rainer Werner Fassbinder (section)

===International films (1976–1982)===
Enthusiasm for Fassbinder's films grew quickly after ''Fear Eats the Soul''. [[Vincent Canby]] paid tribute to Fassbinder as "the most original talent since Godard". In 1977, the New Yorker Theater in Manhattan held a Fassbinder Festival.

However, as enthusiasm for Fassbinder grew outside of Germany, his films still failed to impress the native audience. At home, he was better known for his television work and for his open homosexuality. Coupled with the controversial issues of his films – terrorism, [[state violence]], racism, sexual politics – it seemed that everything Fassbinder did provoked or offended someone.

After completing in 1978 his last low-budget and very personal ventures (''[[In a Year of 13 Moons]]'' and ''[[The Third Generation (1979 film)|The Third Generation]]'') he would concentrate on making films that were becoming increasingly garish and stylized. However, his TV series ''Berlin Alexanderplatz'' was a naturalistic adaptation of the two-volume novel by [[Alfred Döblin]], which Fassbinder had read many times.

====''Chinese Roulette'' (1976)====
''[[Chinese Roulette]]'' (''Chinesisches Roulette'') is a gothic thriller with an ensemble cast. The film follows a twelve-year-old crippled girl, Angela, who, due to her parents' lack of affection, arranges an encounter between them with their respective lovers at the family country estate. The film climaxes with a truth-guessing game. The players divide into two teams, which take it in turn to pick out one member of the other side and ask them question about people and objects. The game is played at the suggestion of Angela, who plays against her mother. When the mother asks: "In the [[Third Reich]], what would that person have been?", Angela's answer is "Commandant of the [[concentration camp]] at [[Bergen Belsen]]"; it is her mother she is describing.<ref name="Hayman, 142">{{harv|Hayman|1984|p=142}}</ref>

====''The Stationmaster's Wife'' (1977)====
There are no happy endings in Fassbinder's films. His protagonists, usually weak men or women with masochistic tendencies, pay a heavy price for their victimization. ''[[The Stationmaster's Wife]]'' (''Bolwieser'') is based on a 1931 novel, ''Bolwieser: The Novel Of a Husband'' by the Bavarian writer [[Oskar Maria Graf]]. The plot follows the downfall of Xaver Bolwieser, a railway stationmaster submitted to the will of his domineering and unfaithful wife, whose repeated infidelities completely ruin Bolwieser's life. Broadcast initially as a two-part television series, ''The Stationmaster's Wife'' was shortened to a 112-minute feature film and released in the first anniversary of Fassbinder's death. The film stars [[Kurt Raab]], Fassbinder's close friend whom the director usually cast as a pathetic man. Raab was also set designer of Fassbinder's films until their friendship and professional relationship broke up after making this film.<ref>{{harv|Watson|1996|pp=206–207}}</ref>

====''Germany in Autumn'' (1978)====
''[[Germany in Autumn]]'' ''(Deutschland im Herbst)'' is an [[omnibus film]], a collective work of eight German filmmakers including Fassbinder, [[Alf Brustellin]], [[Volker Schlöndorff]], [[Bernhard Sinkel]] and [[Alexander Kluge]], the main organizer behind the project. They took a look at the wave of guilt and paranoia that afflicted [[West Germany]]'s society and its authorities in the months between the kidnapping and murder of industrialist [[Hanns Martin Schleyer]] by [[Red Army Faction]] members and the deaths of [[Andreas Baader]], [[Gudrun Ensslin]] and [[Jan-Carl Raspe]] in [[Stammheim Prison]]. The film is a document about terrorism and its sociopolitical aftermath. It begins with Schleyer's wake, a segment filmed by Alexander Kluge and Volker Schlöndorff, and it ends with the tumultuous joint funeral of Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe in Stuttgart.

====''Despair'' (1978)====
Fassbinder made three films in English, a language in which he was not proficient: ''[[Despair (film)|Despair]]'' (1978), ''Lili Marleen'' (1980) and ''Querelle'' (1982). All three films have international actors and are very ambitious, yet each faced artistic and commercial problems.<ref>{{harv|Thomsen|2004|p=34}}</ref>
''Despair'' is based upon the 1936 [[Despair (novel)|novel of the same name]] by [[Vladimir Nabokov]], adapted by [[Tom Stoppard]] and featuring [[Dirk Bogarde]]. It was made on a budget of 6,000,000 [[DEM]], exceeding the total cost of Fassbinder's first 15 films.

''[[Despair (film)|Despair – A Journey into the Light]]'' (''Despair – Eine Reise ins Licht'') tells the story of Hermann Hermann, an unbalanced Russian émigré and chocolate magnate, whose business and marriage have both grown bitter. The factory is close to bankruptcy, and his vulgar wife is chronically unfaithful. He hatches an elaborate plot to take a new identity in the belief it will free him of all his worries. The story of Hermann's descent into madness is juxtaposed against the rise of [[National Socialism]] in the Germany of the 1930s.

====''In a Year of Thirteen Moons'' (1978)====

''[[In a Year of Thirteen Moons]]'' (''In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden'', 1978) is Fassbinder's most personal and bleakest work. The film follows the tragic life of Elvira, a [[transsexual]] formerly known as Erwin. In the last few days before her suicide, she decides to visit some of the important people and places in her life. In one sequence, Elvira wanders through the slaughterhouse where she worked as Erwin, recounting her history amid the meat-hooked corpses of cattle whose slit throats rain blood onto the floor.<ref>{{harv|Thomsen|2004|p=257}}</ref> In another scene, Elvira returns to the orphanage where she was raised by [[nun]]s and hears the brutal story of her childhood. Fassbinder's camera tracks the nun (played by his mother) telling Elvira's story; she moves with a kind of military precision through the grounds, recounting the story in blazing detail, unaware that Elvira had collapsed and can no longer hear it.

''In a Year of Thirteen Moons'' was explicitly personal, a reaction to his former lover Armin Meier's suicide.<ref>{{harv|Thomsen|2004|p=255}}</ref> In addition to writing, directing, and editing, Fassbinder also designed the production and worked as the cameraman. When the film played in the New York Film Festival in October 1979, critic [[Vincent Canby]] (who championed Fassbinder's work in the United States) wrote, "Its only redeeming feature is genius."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C02E6D71438E432A2575BC0A9669D946890D6CF|title=In a Year of 13 Moons (1978) Film: Fassbinder's 'Year of 13 Moons': Unalterable Condition|last=Canby|first=Vincent|date=18 October 1979|newspaper=The New York Times}}</ref>

====''The Marriage of Maria Braun'' (1979)====

With ''[[The Marriage of Maria Braun]]'' (''Die Ehe der Maria Braun''), his greatest success, Fassbinder finally attained the popular acceptance he sought with German audiences. The title character is an ambitious and strong willed woman separated from her husband towards the end of World War II. The plot follows Maria Braun's steady rise as a successful business woman during the [[Adenauer]] era. Maria's dream of a happy life with her husband remains unfulfilled. Her professional achievements are not accompanied by personal happiness.<ref>{{harv|Watson|1996|p=209}}</ref> The film, constructed in the Hollywood tradition of "women's pictures" presenting a woman overcoming hardships, serves also as a parable of the West Germany economic miracle embodied in the character of Maria Braun. Her story of manipulation and betrayal parallels Germany's spectacular postwar economic recovery in terms of its cost in human values.<ref>{{harv|Watson|1996|p=243}}</ref>

The film was the first part of a trilogy centered on women during the post-war "[[Wirtschaftswunder|economic miracle]]" which was completed with ''[[Lola (1981 film)|Lola]]'' (1981) and ''[[Veronika Voss]]'' (1982).

====''The Third Generation'' (1979)====
The economic success of ''The Marriage of Maria Braun'' allowed Fassbinder to pay his debts and to embark on a personal project, ''[[The Third Generation (1979 film)|The Third Generation]]'' (''Die Dritte Generation'', 1979), a black comedy about terrorism. Fassbinder found financial backing for this film difficult to acquire and it was ultimately made on a small budget and borrowed money.<ref>{{harv|Watson|1996|p=164}}</ref> As he did with ''In a Year of Thirteen Moons'', Fassbinder worked again as the film's cameraman.<ref>{{harv|Thomsen|2004|p=263}}</ref>

The film concerns a group of aspiring terrorists from leftist bourgeois backgrounds who kidnap an industrialist during carnival season unaware that they have been manipulated by the capitalist and the authorities whose hidden agenda is for terrorism to create a demand for security hardware and to gain support for harsher security measures. The actions of the ineffectual cell of underground terrorists are overlaid with a soundtrack filled with newscast, voiceovers, music and gibberish. The political theme of the film aroused controversy.{{citation needed|date=June 2015}}

====''Berlin Alexanderplatz'' (1980)====
Returning to his explorations of German history, Fassbinder finally realized his dream of adapting [[Alfred Döblin]]'s 1929 novel ''[[Berlin Alexanderplatz]]''. A [[Berlin Alexanderplatz (television)|television series]] running more than 13 hours, with a two-hour coda (released in the U.S. as a 15-hour feature), it was the culmination of the director's inter-related themes of love, life, and power.<ref>{{Cite journal|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/01/17/the-genius-of-berlin/|title=The Genius of Berlin|last=Buruma|first=Ian|journal=The New York Review of Books|date=17 January 2008|volume=55 |issue=1 |access-date=16 February 2017}}</ref>

''Berlin Alexanderplatz'' centers on Franz Biberkopf, a former convict and minor pimp, who tries to stay out of trouble but is dragged down by crime, poverty and the duplicity of those around him. His best friend, Reinhold, makes him lose an arm and murders Franz' prostitute girlfriend, Mieze. The love triangle of Franz, Reinhold and Mieze is staged against the rising tide of Nazism in Germany. The film emphasized the sadomasochist relationship between Biberkopf and Reinhold stressing its homoerotic nature. Fassbinder had read the book at age 14; later claiming that it helped him survive a "murderous puberty". The influence of Döblin's novel can be seen in many of Fassbinder's films most of whose protagonists are named Franz, some with the surname Biberkopf like the naïve working class lottery winner in ''Fox and His Friends'', who is played by Fassbinder. He also took the pseudonym of Franz Walsch for his work as editor on his own films: Walsch was an oblique homage to director [[Raoul Walsh]].{{citation needed|date=June 2015}}

====''Lili Marleen'' (1981)====
Fassbinder took on the [[Nazi]] period with ''[[Lili Marleen (film)|Lili Marleen]]'', an international co production, shot in English and with a large budget. The script was vaguely based on the autobiography of [[World War II]] singer [[Lale Andersen]], ''The Sky Has Many Colors''.<ref>{{harv|Watson|1996|p=215}}</ref> The film is constructed as a big, tear-jerking [[Hollywood (film industry)|Hollywood]] [[melodrama]] in its depiction of the unfulfilled love story between a German variety singer separated by the war from a Swiss Jewish composer. Central to the story is the [[Lili Marleen|song]] that gives the film its title.{{citation needed|date=June 2015}}

Fassbinder presents the period of [[Nazi Germany]] as a predictable development of German history that was staged as spectacle supported by hate. Filmed with a morbid nostalgia for [[swastika]]s, showbiz glitz and as a cloak-and-dagger romance, the main theme of ''Lili Marleen'' is the question: is it morally justifiable to survive under National Socialism, as the naïve singer does by having a successful career?<ref>{{harv|Thomsen|2004|p=295}}</ref>

====''Theater in Trance'' (1981)====

''Theater in Trance'' is a documentary which Fassbinder shot in Cologne in June 1981 at the "Theaters of the World" Festival. Over scenes from groups such as the [[Squat Theatre]] and the [[Pina Bausch|Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch]] Fassbinder spoke passages from [[Antonin Artaud]] as well as his own commentary.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.kinowelt-international.de/detail_v3.php?lang=en&kid=009561_1_1&CID=b3e62c9a68f6952c56ed2b6eba5224cc|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719052502/http://www.kinowelt-international.de/detail_v3.php?lang=en&kid=009561_1_1&CID=b3e62c9a68f6952c56ed2b6eba5224cc|url-status=dead|archive-date=19 July 2011|title=Theatre In Trance|publisher=kinowelt-international.de}}</ref>

====''Lola'' (1981)====
''[[Lola (1981 film)|Lola]]'' tells the story of an upright, new building commissioner who arrives in a small town. He falls in love with Lola, innocently unaware of the fact that she is a famed prostitute and the mistress of an unscrupulous developer. Unable to reconcile his idealistic image of Lola with reality, the commissioner spirals into the very corruption he had sought to fight out.

====''Veronika Voss'' (1982)====
Fassbinder won the [[Golden Bear]] at the [[32nd Berlin International Film Festival]] for ''[[Veronika Voss]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1982/03_preistr_ger_1982/03_Preistraeger_1982.html|title=Prizes & Honours 1982|publisher=berlinale.de|language=de|access-date=14 November 2010|archive-date=15 October 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131015120231/http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1982/03_preistr_ger_1982/03_Preistraeger_1982.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> The original German title, ''Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss'', translates as "The longing of Veronika Voss". Set in the 1950s, the film depicts the twilight years of the title character, a faded Nazi starlet. A sports reporter becomes enthralled by the unbalanced actress and discovers that she is under the power of a villainous doctor who supplies her with the drugs she craves so long as she can pay the exorbitant fee. Despite the reporter's best attempts, he is unable to save her from a terrible end.<ref>{{harv|Watson|1996|p=221}}</ref>

====''Querelle'' (1982)====
Fassbinder did not live to see the premiere of his last film, ''[[Querelle]]'', based on [[Jean Genet]]'s novel ''[[Querelle de Brest]]''.<ref>{{harv|Watson|1996|p=256}}</ref> The plot follows the title character, a handsome sailor who is a thief and hustler. Frustrated in a homoerotic relationship with his own brother, Querelle betrays those who love him and pays them even with murder.