It’s epic in scope, and deeply textured in narrative. We’ve been watching Fassbinder’s masterpiece, Berlin Alexanderplatz, for the last ten days. The series was co-produced for German and Italian public television in 1980, and is comprised of thirteen one hour episodes, plus an epilogue. We’re currently at episode eleven. I’m sure we’ll finish watching the series this evening.
Berlin Alexanderplatz recounts the struggles of Franz Biberkopf, in Weimar Germany. I could go on endlessly about the film quality itself, the cinematography, acting, set design, script etc. No doubt there have been countless film student theses on this, so I won’t even go there. Suffice it to say, it’s like nothing else you’ve ever experienced cinematically. Especially in front of your own television, which it was produced for.
What strikes me instantly about Berlin Alexanderplatz is how contemporary it still feels, thirty years after it’s debut on German television. Yet, if one reads about the series, almost all of the series’ descriptions point to something akin to it being a story of “a common man in uncommon times”. Maybe so.
The problem is that what was so “uncommon” about the Weimar period seems all too common today. With a resurgent right reasserting itself in both Europe and the US, rampant unemployment and a hedonism that can only be a reflection of general desperation, is the social situation Fassbinder describes so different from that of today?
Last night, episode nine (or ten, I can’t remember) boasted some of the most intensely brilliant scenes I can recall ever seeing. Franz is with his girlfriend, Mieze. They are at the house of their dear friends, Eva and Herbert. Franz recollects a Communist Party meeting he attended earlier in the day, and spends the next five minutes delivering a monologue distilling the the finer points of historical materialism.
As Franz is discussing the enslavement of the work class, etc, you can hear a voice in the background growing louder and more intense. It comes and goes, ebbs and flows in direct contrast to Franz’s monologue. Only sometimes does one catch the exact remarks, in German, spewing forth from the radio. As Franz nears the end of his speech, you realize that the person in the background is Adolf Hitler.
Footnote: I found this sweet post on the design of the Berlin Alexanderplatz Criterion box set. Includes all the concepts explored before arriving at the final solution.
