"A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country", German feuilleton feature pages remarked even in April, when the great Fassbinder Exhibition and Retrospective opened at the Centre Pompidou. But come the director’s 60th birthday on May 31, German creatives in film, film critics, and intellectuals were heaping praise on Fassbinder in the very same papers, unanimously lauding his work’s importance to them, to German film history, and to the present. All commentators agreed that Fassbinder is post-war Germany’s most important director.
Anything written about Rainer Werner Fassbinder usually deals with the "gesamtkunstwerk", the unified or total work of art, created by Fassbinder the film director, the theater producer, the author, and, of course, the overall workaholic, who shot more than forty films in thirteen years, who was "ablaze with all ends burning" (Günter Rohrbach), who consumed drugs haphazardly, who was an emotional monster that "bled people white", yet by tormenting them also leading them to their best achievements. And then, of course, Fassbinder the auteur, whose work is pervaded by recurring themes, motifs, and strategies, and whose life was intertwined with his oeuvre in many ways.
But what is commonly overlooked is that he himself sharply separated his theater and cinema work from his television plays and series: "I believe it is imperative to make more relevant films for television, more socially relevant films than those for cinema", Fassbinder declared in a 1972 interview. When asked in another conversation in the same year whether films could have a political impact, he replied: "Definitely not in cinema, but I believe they can on television. I strongly believe in the political relevance of television."
His answer was implicitly referring to his then recently completed five installments of the WDR series "Acht Stunden sind kein Tag", in which he meshed the popular genre of the middle-class family series with themes and settings of the so-called worker film – in the parlance of the times, his TV network editor, producer and screenwriter Peter Märthesheimer called this the "occupation of a bourgeois genre". In contrast to Fassbinder’s often eventually tragic melodramas, which turn inward to scrutinize interpersonal exploitation in human relationships, in this series Fassbinder actually suggests solutions not only to problems within the family, but also to those in the workplace. He was determined to set a new landmark amidst many worker films that he considered too depressing, and was committed to promote "aesthetics of hope" instead. Whereas his films for cinema and his stage plays were targeting an intellectual audience, and thus could well be pessimistic, he deemed television series in the same vein reactionary in light of their huge and diverse audience – after all, "Acht Stunden sind kein Tag" achieved ratings of over 40%.
Fassbinder shot more than half of his twenty television projects for the WDR, including his two only series. The stylistic and thematic scope of his work for this TV station is also impressive, ranging from the family series "Acht Stunden sind kein Tag" to the two-part science fiction film "Welt am Draht", on to his opus magnum, the adaptation of Alfred Döblin’s "Berlin Alexanderplatz" for the screen in 13 installments, and finally on to "Martha" and "Angst vor der Angst", more "trademark Fassbinder" melodramas about women.
"Angst vor der Angst" is good evidence of Fassbinder’s made-for-television work acknowledging the conditions that are specific to this medium, even in cases where it appears close to his films for cinema in terms of structure and subject matter. For a start, there are formal differences, like a stronger emphasis on close-ups instead of long shots, and a preference of zooms over dolly or tracking shots, in part owing to the smaller format, but also to the smaller budgets of television productions.
"Television work is much more straightforward, plain impact, feelings right away, laughter right away, whereas cinema work entails more of a build-up of atmosphere", Fassbinder pointed out in an interview in 1973. Hence his television plays might best reflect his handling of Hollywood conventions such as the clear attribution of cause and effect, the "invisible" cut, and the concentration on a single lead protagonist with a fixed set of characteristics and goals. As is the case in Hollywood melodrama, all cinematic means are used to convey inner states: the emotions of main characters are put on the screen through colors, set design and decoration, and music, which Peer Raben often reduced to only a few poignant themes for these television plays. Fassbinder’s literary adaptations for TV were much more faithful to the original works than were his stage productions.
Not all of the differences mentioned are found in every single one of Fassbinder’s television works, but he clearly considered television a medium in its own right – with its own creative potential and limitations. In this anniversary year for Fassbinder, the Cologne Conference and WDR’s selection of some of his television works for the WDR allows for a look at an aspect of his oeuvre that is rarely singled out for special recognition, but was crucial for establishing Fassbinder not only as an intellectual elite’s universally revered figure, but also an enfant terrible of popular culture, whose "Berlin Alexanderplatz" or "Acht Stunden sind kein Tag" were the subject of heated debates in living rooms, classrooms, and bar rooms across the country.
The Cologne Conference would like to thank the WDR, Gebhard Henke, the Filmstiftung NRW, Michael Schmid-Ospach, and the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation, Juliane Lorenz und Annemarie Abel, for the kind support.