Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s controversial, fifteen-hour 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 over thirty films. Fassbinder’s immersive epic 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.

Berlin Alexanderplatz was shot at a speed of 25 frames per second. Due to technical discrepancies between PAL and NTSC standards, the film is presented on the DVD edition at a slightly slower speed. On the Blu-ray edition, however, it was possible to present the film at its original speed. This accounts for the difference in run time between the two editions.

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Film Info

  • Germany
  • 1980
  • 902 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.37:1
  • German
  • Spine #411

Special Features

  • High-definition digital restoration by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation and Bavaria Media, supervised and approved by director of photography Xaver Schwarzenberger, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • Two documentaries by Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation president Juliane Lorenz: one from 2007 featuring interviews with the cast and crew, the other from 2006 on the restoration
  • Hans-Dieter Hartl’s 1980 documentary Notes on the Making of “Berlin Alexanderplatz”
  • Phil Jutzi’s 1931 feature-length film of Alfred Döblin’s novel, from a screenplay cowritten by Döblin himself
  • Interview from 2007 with Peter Jelavich, author of “Berlin Alexanderplatz”: Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture
  • PLUS: An essay by filmmaker Tom Tykwer, reflections on the novel by Fassbinder and author Thomas Steinfeld, and an interview with Schwarzenberger

    Cover by Eric Skillman

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • High-definition digital restoration by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation and Bavaria Media, supervised and approved by director of photography Xaver Schwarzenberger, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • Two documentaries by Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation president Juliane Lorenz: one from 2007 featuring interviews with the cast and crew, the other from 2006 on the restoration
  • Hans-Dieter Hartl’s 1980 documentary Notes on the Making of “Berlin Alexanderplatz”
  • Phil Jutzi’s 1931 feature-length film of Alfred Döblin’s novel, from a screenplay cowritten by Döblin himself
  • Interview from 2007 with Peter Jelavich, author of “Berlin Alexanderplatz”: Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture
  • PLUS: An essay by filmmaker Tom Tykwer, reflections on the novel by Fassbinder and author Thomas Steinfeld, and an interview with Schwarzenberger

    Cover by Eric Skillman
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Cast
Günter Lamprecht
Franz Biberkopf
Gottfried John
Reinhold Hoffmann
Barbara Sukowa
Emilie "Mieze" Karsunke
Hanna Schygulla
Eva
Karin Baal
Minna
Annemarie Düringer
Cilly
Elisabeth Trissenaar
Lina
Helen Vita
Fränze
Barbara Valentin
Ida
Brigitte Mira
Frau Bast
Roger Fritz
Herbert
Ivan Desny
Pums
Buchrieser Franz
Gottfried Meck
Hark Bohm
Otto Lüders
Gerhard Zwerenz
Baumann
Peter Kollek
Nachum
Volker Spengler
Bruno
Credits
Director
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Written by
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
From the novel by
Alfred Döblin
Cinematography by
Xaver Schwarzenberger
Music by
Peer Raben
Costumes by
Barbara Baum
Edited by
Juliane Lorenz
Edited by
Walsch (Fassbinder) Franz
Produced by
Peter Märthesheimer

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Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Writer, Director

Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder made an astonishing forty-four movies—theatrical features, television movies and miniseries, and shorts among them—in a career that spanned a mere sixteen years, ending with his death at thirty-seven in 1982. He is perhaps remembered best for his intense and exquisitely shabby social melodramas (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul)—heavily influenced by Hollywood films, especially the female-driven tearjerkers of Douglas Sirk, and featuring misfit characters that often reflected his own fluid sexuality and self-destructive tendencies. But his body of work runs the gamut from epic period pieces (Berlin Alexanderplatz, the BRD Trilogy) to dystopic science fiction (World on a Wire) as well. One particular fascination of Fassbinder’s was the way the ghosts of the past, specifically those of World War II, haunted contemporary German life—an interest that wedded him to many of the other artists of the New German Cinema movement, which began in the late 1960s.