Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Faustrecht der Freiheit | Fox and His Friends (1975)

I'm not exactly too sure why, but to some extent I see Fox and His Friends as the flipside of Fassbinder's Fear Eats the Soul. Homosexuality never presents itself as a problem here, rather it's the difference between social classes, and it's this second issue which is partly why I see this as a film which has aged more than Fear Eats the Soul. We're still living with racism and ageism today, although class issues have partly blurred: who is really interested today if a person doesn't eat a dessert with a fork, as if they know nothing of classical music or opera? Pop and rock are the great levellers.

'Fox' (played by Fassbinder himself) is an illiterate working-class gay guy who loses his fairground job when his boyfriend Klaus (Karl Scheydt) is arrested for tax fraud, but wins 500,000 marks in the lottery*. While cruising a public toilet Fox meets Max (Karlheinz Böhm), an art dealer who introduces him to some of his gay friends. One of these is Eugen (Peter Chatel), who leaves his boyfriend when Fox stupidly mentions his win. Fox is soon living with Eugen, who is a swindler and a manipulator, although it's too late as Fox has fallen in love with him.

Eugen first gets Fox to 'invest' 100,000 in his factory, then to buy an appartment and to fill it with expensive furniture. They hold a party there but it has to be disbanded when Fox's sister Hedwig (Christiane Maybach) gets drunk and behaves uncouthly. To ease feelings off – it's obvious that Eugen is using Fox to milk him of all his money but Fox is too far gone to understand that – they decide to go on holiday, to Morocco but nothing so common as a cheap package tour, of course. In Morocco they meet Salem (El Hedi ben Salem, from Fear Eats the Soul – and incidentally a former boyfriend of Fassbinder's), who seems interested in them, but on the way to their hotel room a member of staff tells them Arabs aren't allowed in the rooms. They stare at the member of staff (who's surely  an Arab too), but he says they can have one of their 'boys' if they like: they pass on that one.

Eugen's company is going bankrupt and the workers need to be paid. The forever gullible and unbelievably good-natured Fox gives his flat to Eugen so he can take out a bank loan. Things get worse. When they have Eugen's family to dinner all Eugen can do is criticise Fox's table manners and generally make fun of him. Eventually Fox he splits with Eugen, only to find what a mess he's in: he's not been able to read the agreement he made on the 100,000 marks, Eugen now owns his flat and put new locks on it, and the new car he's bought is a gas guzzler that no one wants so he has to sell it for just 8000 marks.

Fox had previously been prescribed strong Valium for panic attacks, he gobbles the lot and is found dead lying in an underground station. Schoolkids rifle his pockets and even take his jacket from him.

*Brigitte Mira, who starred in Fear Eats the Soul, makes a cameo appearance as the kindly shop keeper who sells Fox the ticket just as she's closing down.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte | Beware of a Holy Whore (1971)

Beware of a Holy Whore is influenced by Fassbinder's own experiences with his previous film Whity, a spaghetti western which never went on general release. In turn, this was an inspiration behind Olivier Asseyas's Irma Vep (1996), and it's interesting to note the appearance of the French actor Eddie Constantine is this, in which he plays himself and his appearance as Lemmy Caution in Godard's Alphaville is also mentioned.

As one of Fassbinder's preoccupations is unhappy families – and by extension the vast majority of social relationships in his cinema are unhappy (that's the way of the world as he sees it) – then here we have a film about the horrors of making a film (in a sea resort in Spain in this case). The main characters in Beware of a Holy Whore (apart from Constantine) are the director of the film within a film Jeff (Lou Castel), actors Ricky (Marquard Bohm) and Hanna (Hanna Schygulla), and the producer Sascha (Fassbinder himself).

Egos collide; many cuba libres are drunk and glasses thrown about the bar and hotel lobby; money doesn't arrive; the director, producer and other members of the film crew yell at each other; people (hetero- but mainly homosexual) kiss, have sex or simply lust after each other; there's a lot of Leonard Cohen music; and everyone is thoroughly pissed off. 

There's a final amusing quotation, from Thomas Mann: 'And I say to you that I am weary to death of depicting humanity without partaking of humanity'.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant | The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)

This is very much a play-like film, and claustrophobically set in one bedroom with a small cast of only women. This is where Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen) lives, and where she dictatorially treats her secretary Marlene (Irm Hermann) not so much as a servant but as a slave. She's a fashion designer with naked models as furniture and a mural of Poussin's Midas and Bacchus as a backcloth. She's had two husbands, had a daughter by the first who's away at boarding school, although she seems to be essentially bisexual. This film is mainly about her bisexual relationship with Karin (Hanna Schygulla), with whom she's madly in love but Karin doesn't feel at all the same way – she merely likes Petra.

Karin is married although her abusive husband is in Sydney for some time, from where Karin has just returned. Petra, in love at first sight, says that Karin should be a model. As with other films by Fassbinder, there's a difference between social backgrounds here, and Petra comes from a stable middle-class family whereas Karin's working-class father killed his wife while drunk and then killed himself. Petra has her move out of her hotel and in with her. She stays there for some months but Karin wants to go to Frankfurt when she learns her husband's there, and Petra – now drunk – gets Marlene to take her to the airport.

In another scene the bed appears to have disappeared and Petra is sprawled on the carpet drinking and eagerly expecting Karin to phone her every time there's a call. It's her birthday and her daughter Gaby (Eva Mattes) joins her, along with her cousin Sidonie Katrin Schaake) and her mother Katrin (Katrin Schaake). Throwing a tantrum, she smashes her presents.

Although Petra is later repentent, Marlene leaves her, inexplicably taking a gun with her.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Die Ehe der Maria Braun | The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)

At the beginning of the film initially set in 1943 an explosion comes at the start of a marriage, at the end of it an explosion ends the marriage: the first explosion is of a worldwide political dimension, whereas the second is – if we exclude the possibility of suicide – an accidental lapse of memory. And lack of memory a crucial factor, of course, in Germany being able to renew itself after its defeat in the war: ironically, this is when the 'renewal' of the marriage comes to a tragic end.

Germany collapses and we will see emblems of American culture appearing: not only has Fassbinder made his German American, Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama for the masses-cum-auteur film for the cinephiles, but this is an end-of-the-war film which will span several years, working through Germany re-building itself as a monster capitalist force. Eva will say she works for capitalism by day, the working-class by night, and is, er, the Mata Hari of the economic miracle.

Maria (Hanna Schygulla) marries Hermann Braun (Klaus Lowitsch) as the bombs fall and in under two days Hermann is off to fight and is (apparently) killed. Maria becomes a prostitute and falls for Bill (George Byrd) until a very much alive Hermann stumbles in on the beginning of a love scene between Maria and Bill, and Maria hits Bill over the head with a full bottle and kills him. But Maria isn't imprisoned because Hermann takes the blame for it and is sent down for several years.

In this time Maria (much like Germany itself) recreates herself, forcing herself up the social ladder by amazing intelligence and not a little cunning manipulation: it's not for nothing that the feminism (if failed in the end) in this film has been noted. She begins as secretary to Oswald (Ivan Desny)'s business and in the end is making the main decisions in it, although at the same time she joins the older Oswald in his bed.

When Hermann leaves prison he doesn't join his wife but goes off to Canada to make his money and sends her a red rose to remind her of his eternal love for her. He only rejoins her a few years later on the death of Oswald, and Maria learns of the pact he'd made with Hermann while he was in prison: on his death Maria and Hermann would inherit all his wealth if Hermann leaves Maria until that time.

So, united after so many years, the couple are free to live together, although Maria, lighting a cigarette from the gas stove, forgets to turn it off and there's an almighty explosion which kills them both.

The film is full of references to the public and the private world - bombs at the wedding, the family eating a meal while Adenauer speaks on radio, and when Maria and Hermann are blown up we hear from the radio that Germany has won the world cup against Hungary: a symbol of Germany's new post-war power which one couple won't enjoy.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Angst essen Seele auf* | Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

This is a film of love and loneliness – and also racism and ageism in post-war Germany – and is a inspired by Douglas Sirk's films (and All That Heaven Allows in particular). One evening Emmi Kurowski (Brigitte Mira), an elderly widowed cleaning woman, shelters from the rain in an café unknown to her: the blank stares are mainly due to the fact that she is in a bar frequented by north Africans. Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) is more than twenty years younger than her asks her to dance to a jukebox record. They do so and leave together, Ali walking her to her flat. As it's raining she invites him in for a coffee and a few brandies, and as she desperately wants her loneliness to be held off she asks him to stay, which he does. But in the spare bedroom he can't sleep, knocks at her door and she is stunned but delighted to have found a lover.

The slander mill begins and the racism of the neighbours comes to the fore. Immigrants, of course, are dirty, only want money and sex, and are idle. While Ali works in the car factory Emmi goes to her daughter Barbara (Barbara Valentin) to announce that she's in love, and her son-in-law Eugen (Fassbinder himself) is pretending to be on sick leave, although he's evidently perfectly well in his vest, swilling beer, ordering his wife around and spouting hypocritical clichés about the worthlessness of immigrants. Emmi is undeterred.

It's significant that, when the lovers (for they are lovers) get together again that night, Emmi cooks him a meal and Ali insists on giving Emmi money for the hospitality he's received. That same night the landlord's son visits and tells Emmi that she's breaking her lease by subletting the property, although Emmi responds that she's marrying Ali: landlord's son and scandal mill silenced.

The unusual couple do indeed marry and Emmi later introduces him to her dumbstruck family, one of her sons reactions being to kick in her television set. He later sends a cheque to replaces the set, Ali even shakes his hand when her son apologises, but the damage is done, and anyway they've already had to go through the trauma of her racist local shop owner in effect refusing to serve her husband who he says can't even speak German.

Emmi herself falls into a racist trap by having her work colleagues meet him and feel his muscles, treating him as some kind of circus exhibit, and she doesn't want to cook him his beloved couscous. Inevitably he falls into the hands of younger women, his workmates mock her by calling her his grandmother, and in the bar he begins to burn their savings away.

As on the first day, Emmi enters the café and asks the server to put the same song on. Ali immediately gets up from the card game, asks her to dance with him, and although she says she can understand him sleeping with younger women, that she sees how old she is every time she looks into the mirror, he tells her she's his one love. He has a fit and has to be rushed to hospital, the doctor says its a perforated stomach ulcer very common in immigrants due to stress, and that he's sure to be back in hospital in six months time. Emmi says, with determination, that he won't.

*The literal meaning of this is 'Fear Eat Soul Up', and the English title is taken from an Arabic expression, the unorthodox German being the way Ali speaks 'pidgeon German', and this style of his talking is reproduced in the sub-titles.