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Fassbinder masterpiece returns September 24, 2007

Restored digitally, mammoth ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’ to be screened in full at Trianon Theater in Athens

Remember Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Hanna Schygulla of “Berlin Alexanderplatz”? A revamped version of the mammoth production was recently unveiled at the Berlin Film Festival.

Is it a film or a television mini-series? To this day, film historians have not decided to which genre Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Berlin Alexanderplatz” belongs. Either way, the screen adaptation of the novel by Alfred Doblin (1878-1957) into 14 episodes totaling 15 hours is one of the most monumental productions of the 20th century. In 1983, when the series was first shown on television, New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote that without “Berlin Alexanderplatz,” Fassbinder would have been a great artist without a great work.

Greek broadcaster ERT offered the Greek public the same treat that same year, cultivating a weekly appointment that was never missed. Every self-respecting cinephile at the time felt a duty to know whether the young villain Franz Biberkopf does, in fact, murder Mieze with whom he is deeply in love and whether the reason Biberkopf’s life falls into ruin has to do with the hold exercised over him by Reinhold, the gangster with the sad eyes.

This year, 25 years after the death of the heretical German director, “Berlin Alexanderplatz” has been restored digitally on a Fassbinder Foundation initiative and was unveiled at the Berlin Film Festival during a special ceremony. As of this Thursday, the mammoth production will be screened over the course of a week at the Trianon cinema in central Athens. The event is being held in collaboration with the Goethe Institute and the Art Free distribution company.

“Fassbinder’s cinema is full of Biberkopfs, victims of false consciousness,” wrote Susan Sontag in Vanity Fair in 1983. “And the material of ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’ is prefigured throughout his films, whose recurrent subject is damaged lives and marginal existences, petty criminals, prostitutes, transvestites, immigrant workers, depressed housewives, and overweight workers at the end of their tether… But ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’ is more than a summary of his main themes. It was the fulfilment, and the origin.”

In the novel, Doblin describes Berlin as a city aboil in the 1920s: the hordes of the unemployed, the hungry, the proletariat, the hypocritical petit-bourgeoisie. He paints a portrait of a city like Sodom before its destruction, a city that would soon fall into the clutches of fascism. Fassbinder was first introduced to Doblin at the age of 14. Even though he only read 100 pages, the novel continued to haunt him. He carried it around with him for years.

Adapting the book for the screen was one of Fassbinder’s most ambitious endeavors, the dream of a lifetime and the crowning achievement of his career, it was filmed between 1979 and 1980. Although in his brief life, he died at the age of 37, Fassbinder created some 40 films, his work on Doblin’s novel remains a landmark to this day. The life and times of Biberkopf is a collage of myths, allegories, parabole and symbols. He comes out of prison with a desire to lead an honest life but the people around him and the world with all its troubles soon crush his aspirations. “He is a cheated victim who suffers his Golgotha until the very end, a blind, small man who refuses to open his eyes to History as it thunders ahead,” writes critic Michel Demopoulos.

The story, on page and on screen, has so many principal and secondary characters, plots and sub-plots, and twists and turns, that it is impossible to squeeze a synopsis into a few lines. The content, however, is not what’s important. What is important is the writer’s stance toward his characters. Doblin believed that even behind the most heinous acts lies a need for tenderness, that violence is another form of love and that people who become close will inevitably harm one another.

From the first episode, titled “The Punishment Begins,” to the epilogue, “My dream from the dream of Franz Biberkopf von Alfred Doblin,” the true subject for Fassbinder is the encounter between the hero Biberkopf and Reinhold, which he saw as an encounter that determined the lives of two men. Neither is homosexual, but they share a pure love that cannot be defined by social norms. Doblin’s interpretation of the relationship helped Fassbinder deal with his own problems, fears and homosexual urges, and, according to the director, saved him from destruction.

The greatest part of the film is set indoors and the only piece of the symbolic square that we are given is the metro station. The streets are narrow and sunless. Studio decor enhances the claustrophobic feel, while the stars, Gunter Lamprecht as Franz Biberkopf, Barbara Sukowa as Emilie “Mietze” Karsunke, Gottfried John as Reinhold and Hanna Schygulla as Eva, offer memorable performances, corpulent interpretations rich in tone and color.

“Berlin Alexanderplatz” triggered mixed reactions in West Germany when it first came out. Cinema critics exalted it, while television critics were extremely negative in their reviews. In the end, Fassbinder’s most arduous endeavor in his entire career may have been more suitable for the stage. For the artist, the work means freedom, a full statement of his obsessions and the end of his course as an artist. For the next two years and up to his death in 1982, Fassbinder turned to productions that were more professional and less about making a personal confession, “Lili Marleen,” “Lola,” “Veronica Voss” and “Querelle”.

At the Trianon Cinema, 21 Kodringtonos Street, Athens, tel 210 8215469, nearest metro station Victoria.