The State of Criterion’s Art
Mar 4, 2010Our own Eric Skillman, who has crafted the covers for numerous releases over the years (including Red Beard, Yi Yi, The . . .
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.
Cast
| 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 |
Credits
| 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 |
Disc Features
SPECIAL EDITION SEVEN-DISC SET:
- New high-definition digital transfer from the 2006 restoration by the Fassbinder Foundation and Bavaria Media, supervised and approved by director of photography Xaver Schwarzenberger
- Two new documentaries by Fassbinder Foundation president Juliane Lorenz: one featuring interviews with the cast and crew, the other on the restoration
- Hans-Dieter Hartl’s 1980 documentary Notes on the Making of “Berlin Alexanderplatz”
- Phil Jutzi’s 1931, ninety-minute film of Alfred Döblin’s novel, from a screenplay co-written by Döblin himself
- New video interview with Peter Jelavich, author of Berlin Alexanderplatz: Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A book featuring an essay by filmmaker Tom Tykwer, reflections from Fassbinder, an interview with Schwarzenberger, and German author Thomas Steinfeld on the novel
From the Current
Designing Berlin Alexanderplatz
by Jan 9, 2008Appropriately for Fassbinder’s fifteen-hour masterpiece, the process of coming up with a design for Berlin Alexanderplatz was epic. With a monumental film like this, there’s obviously no shortage of possible concepts, but the biggest challenge is finding a design that can speak not just . . .
Berlin Alexanderplatz:
He Who Lives in a Human Skin
by
Nov 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 skin, and, like this Franz Biberkopf, ask more of life than a piece of bread and butter.” —Alfred Döblin, from the preface to
Related Films
The Auteurs Forum
Displaying 1 discussion topic.
A question for people who have seen "Berlin Alexanderplatz"
13 posts by 11 people updated about 1 month ago
