“The Punishment Begins”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1980 • Germany
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s controversial, fifteen-hour BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, based on Alfred Döblin’s great modernist novel, was the crowning achievement of a prolific director who, at age thirty-four, had already made over thirty films. Fassbinder’s immersive epic follows the hulking, childlike ex-convict Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) as he attempts to “become an honest soul” amid the corrosive urban landscape of Weimar-era Germany. With equal parts cynicism and humanity, Fassbinder details a mammoth portrait of a common man struggling to survive in a viciously uncommon time.
Up Next in Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
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BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ: Part 2
“How Is One to Live If One Doesn’t Want to Die?”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1980 • GermanyRainer Werner Fassbinder’s controversial, fifteen-hour BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, based on Alfred Döblin’s great modernist novel, was the crowning achievement of a prolific director who, at age ...
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BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ: Part 3
“A Hammer Blow to the Head Can Injure the Soul”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1980 • GermanyRainer Werner Fassbinder’s controversial, fifteen-hour BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, based on Alfred Döblin’s great modernist novel, was the crowning achievement of a prolific director who, at age t...
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BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ: Part 4
“A Handful of People in the Depths of Silence”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1980 • GermanyRainer Werner Fassbinder’s controversial, fifteen-hour BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, based on Alfred Döblin’s great modernist novel, was the crowning achievement of a prolific director who, at age th...
