10 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE January 16, 2004

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The bitter tears of genius

Wexner has a retrospective of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's body of work

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Columbus-The Wexner Center starts the new year with a month-long extravaganza of the films of one of the most influential and seminal filmmakers of the last 50 or more years. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the gay German auteur, will receive a retrospective of some of his films with new 35mm prints running through January 30.

Vincent Canby, film critic of the New York Times, called Fassbinder "the most dazzling, talented, provocative, original, puzzling, prolific, and exhilarating filmmaker of his generation."

Fassbinder often dealt with homosexuality in his films in both direct and indirect ways. He was also perfectly game to create gay characters and personae which were complex, flawed and multi-layered. Here he was

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way ahead of his time, vis-à-vis the treatment of queer identity via cinema.

In fact, he was often criticized by the gay community for creating gay characters with many foibles. These critics thought that Fassbinder was playing into the hands of homophobes and people who saw gay people as more than just flawed.

Fassbinder (1945-1982) is very often regarded as one of cinema's most astonishing

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prodigies. He made 41 remarkable films in just 14 years, an astonishing accomplishment by any cinematic standard. Most importantly, he was a celluloid examiner of the very complex milieus of Germany in the troubled 20th century. He looks through his artistic and questioning lens at all his nation's political, cultural and sexual contradictions.

Fassbinder's approach and style to cinema and his subject matter has deeply influenced filmmakers such as Todd Haynes (Poison, Safe, Far From Heaven), one of queer cinema's most daring auteurs, and Lars Von Trier, who has created some of the most disturbing and seminal films of the last decade like Dancer in the Dark (with Björk) and Breaking the Waves.

In writing about the idiosyncratic and influential filmmaker, Luc Sante of Slate has said that Fassbinder "will probably end up dwarfing [the works] of virtually all of his contemporaries, no matter how long they

live."

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972) Saturday, January 17

Critic Molly Haskell described The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) as "a tragiccómic love story disguised as a lesbian slumber party in high-camp drag.” In the touching, slice-of-life 1972 melodrama The Merchant of Four Seasons, a working-class peddler watches his life disintegrate into drinking, violence, and despair.

Satan's Brew (1976)

Chinese Roulette (1976)

Preceded by The City Tramp

and The Little Chaos (both 1966) Thursday, January 22

One of Fassbinder's most perverse films, Satan's Brew focuses on a revolutionary poet whose delusions are grounded in misanthropy. A weekend in the country becomes a comic nightmare in Chinese Roulette when family members arrive with unexpected lovers and friends. Starting the night's program are the rare shorts The City Tramp and The Little Chaos.

Effi Briest (1974)

The American Soldier (1970) Saturday, January 24

Hanna Schygulla takes the title role in Effi Briest, Fassbinder's exquisite period piece based on Theodor Fontane's romantic 19thcentury novel. The American Soldier is Fassbinder's love-hate letter to hard-boiled Hollywood moviemaking.

Katzelmacher (1969)

Love is Colder than Death (1969)

Thursday, January 29

Fassbinder's genius for ensemble acting found early expression in Katzelmacher, which focuses on a group of Munich twentysomethings with nothing better to do than drink, hang out, and taunt immigrants. Fassbinder himself appears in that film and also in Love Is Colder than Death, where he plays a small-time pimp fending off two-bit gangsters.

Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) Gods of the Plague (1970) Friday, January 30

Set in a seaside resort, Beware of a Holy Whore is Fassbinder's comic exposé of moviemaking run amok. Time Out London praised Gods of the Plague, calling it "a witty, stylish meditation on American film noir, filtered through the dark and morbid sensibility of its director."

All screenings are at 7 pm in the Wexner Center Film/Video Theater, 1871 N. High St.; 614-292-3535 or www.wexarts.org.