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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
in a way, i was going to say earlier, he reminds me of peckinpah. because he's another one who doesn't flinch from horror-- real horror, not horror porn. he stares at what's fucked up and keeps staring. like when hans beats up his wife-- it's ugly and very uncomfortable but hans keeps beating and beating and beating and fassbinder makes us watch. "let's not pretend this shit doesn't happen."
is that cruel? sure, but-- life is cruel when you're fucked up-- and these people are fucked up and cruel to each other. is that how post-war germany was? is that how the economic miracle operated? i wasn't there but he seems to be saying so.
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He seemed obsessed with control, power and, while I do think he was making broader social points with that, it also seemed to reflect aspects of his personal life and his relations with his inner circle. His films are a bit like Warhol's screen tests in that respect, but whereas Warhol set up a one-on-one power relationship between the camera and the sitter, Fassbinder played it out through a narrative (closer in that sense to some of Warhol's Paul Morrissey films). You could say Hanna Schygulla, Margit Carstenson, etc., were his equivalent 'superstars'. Had Fassbinder himself not made such a thing of his interest in Sirk, I think critics might've more readily connected him with Warhol. Conceptually anyway, a film like Petra Von Kant could've easily come out of the Factory.