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Cinema

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films verge on the incomprehensible — but that doesn’t stop him being a genius

The German director’s animating rage was the misery of almost everyone’s life. And he used this to turn out several films a year that, on his 70th anniversary, continue to enthral

3 October 2015

8:00 AM

3 October 2015

8:00 AM

London’s Goethe-Institut has a two-month season of films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (whose 70th anniversary it’s celebrating), but only five movies, each one alternating with a film influenced by him from another country. Considering that Fassbinder created about 60 films, it seems rather a slim effort. Still, half of his output is available on DVD, at no vast cost, and, having revisited many of the films in the past few days, I am more struck than ever by how great he was, and how, thanks to innumerable kinds of pressure, he only intermittently did justice to his phenomenal creativity and...

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Fassbinder and European Cinema is at the Goethe-Institut until 4 December.

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