GLR November-December 2023

as the Munich Action-Theater in 1967, which later became bet ter known as the Anti-Theater, a group he quickly took over, something he accomplished through the force of attraction and fascination that he exerted over its members. Some of Fassbinder’s negative traits started to emerge, such as the manipulation and the emotional abuse to which he fre quently subjected members of his entourage. At the director’s insistence, they all lived and ate together, a practice that lasted for many years. Fassbinder would reveal personal secrets about each particular member in front of the whole troupe, which con

two women and his friendship with another man. Due to its slow pacing and its robotic acting, the film got very poor reviews at the Berlin International Film Festival that year. But before pro duction was over, Fassbinder was already cast as the lead actor for Volker Schlöndorff’s Baal . Indeed, Fassbinder’s short ca reer was marked by obsessive productivity. He made up to four or five films a year, and by his death at age 37, he had 44 film credits to his name. He had his first national success with The Merchant of Four Seasons in 1972, but it was in 1974 that he made his breakout

film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, which was shot in fifteen days. It was only intended as a way to pass the time between two other projects, but it ended up winning the International Critics Prize at Cannes that year, and it in troduced Fassbinder to international audi ences for the first time. From then on, his films would be released internationally and

sisted of fifty people or more, just to get an emotional response out of them. He would cast his actors based on favors and personal closeness to him, so they were always trying to get on his good side to ensure a role in his next project. He created a tense workspace in which actors graded each other, so there was always a lot of jealousy and rivalry. As

Coming from very di ff erent backgrounds, Salem and Fassbinder met by chance, and their story together is one to rival a Greek tragedy.

the leader of the Anti-Theater, he directed many plays, notably his own Katzelmacher , which deals with the plight of foreign workers in postwar Germany. His directing style in the theater anticipated that of his earlier films, marked by robotic, stilted, emotionless delivery in melodramatic tales. While he had made a couple of earlier short films, Fass binder didn’t get to direct his first feature film until 1969. The filmwas Love Is Colder Than Death , a gangster movie that im itates similar films from Hollywood from the 1930s up to the 1950s, starring himself as a criminal torn between his love for

often won major awards. Eventually, movie theaters around the world would organize retrospectives of his work, and he be came a symbol of underground cinema everywhere. Fassbinder’s personal life was anything but a triumph and was always chaotic. Ever since his childhood, he had been out spokenly gay, though he had relations with a number of women. He was married for two years, to Ingrid Caven, who once said of him: “Rainer was a homosexual who also needed a woman. It’s that simple and that complex.” He also had many male lovers, something that West Germany wasn’t exactly thrilled by

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