SYNOPSIS: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s controversial, fifteen-hour-plus Berlin Alexanderplatz, based on Alfred Döblin’s great modernist novel, was the crowning achievement of a prolific director who, at age thirty-four, had already made forty films. Fassbinder’s immersive epic, restored in 2006 and now available on DVD in this country for the first time, follows the hulking, childlike ex-convict Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) as he attempts to “become an honest soul” amid the corrosive urban landscape of Weimar-era Germany. With equal parts cynicism and humanity, Fassbinder details a mammoth portrait of a common man struggling to survive in a viciously uncommon time.
| Franz Biberkopf | Günter Lamprecht |
| Reinhold Hoffmann | Gottfried John |
| Emilie "Mieze" Karsunke | Barbara Sukowa |
| Eva | Hanna Schygulla |
| Minna | Karin Baal |
| Cilly | Annemarie Düringer |
| Lina | Elisabeth Trissenaar |
| Fränze | Helen Vita |
| Ida | Barbara Valentin |
| Frau Bast | Brigitte Mira |
| Director | Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
| Written and directed by | Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
| Music | Peer Raben |
| Costumes | Barbara Baum |
| Editing | Juliane Lorenz and "Franz Walsh" (Fassbinder) |
| Producer | Peter Märthesheimer |
| From the novel by | Alfred Döblin |
| Cinematography | Xaver Schwarzenberger |
SPECIAL EDITION SEVEN-DISC SET:
By November 12, 2007
I The Anti–Television Film “To listen to this, and to meditate on it, will be of benefit to many who, like Franz Biberkopf, live in a human Read more »
By January 09, 2008
Appropriately for Fassbinder’s fifteen-hour masterpiece, the process of coming up with a design for Berlin Alexanderplatz was epic. With a monumental film like Read more »
March 04, 2010
Our own Eric Skillman, who has crafted the covers for numerous releases over the years (including Red Beard, Yi Yi, The Bad Sleep Well, Berlin Alexanderplatz, the Read more »
