Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day
7 Episodes
Criterion Collection Edition #946
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • Germany
Starring Gottfried John, Hanna Schygulla
Commissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany from a critical—yet far from cynical—perspective. Over the course of five episodes, the sprawling story tracks the everyday triumphs and travails of the young toolmaker Jochen (Gottfried John) and many of the people populating his world, including the woman he loves (Hanna Schygulla), his eccentric family, and his fellow workers, with whom he bands together to improve conditions on the factory floor. Rarely screened since its popular but controversial initial broadcast, EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY rates as a true discovery, one of Fassbinder’s earliest and most tender experiments with the possibilities of melodrama.
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EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY: Episode 1
Episode 1
“Jochen and Marion”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • GermanyCommissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany fr...
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EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY: Episode 2
Episode 2
“Grandma and Gregor”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • GermanyCommissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany f...
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EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY: Episode 3
Episode 3
“Franz and Ernst”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • GermanyCommissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany from...
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EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY: Episode 4
Episode 4
“Harald and Monika”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • GermanyCommissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany fr...
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EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY: Episode 5
Episode 5
“Irmgard and Rolf”
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • GermanyCommissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany fro...
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EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY: A Series Becomes a Family Reunion
Episode 6
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation president Juliane Lorenz, this 2017 documentary features interviews with actor Hanna Schygulla, Irm Hermann, Wolfgang Schenck, and Hans Hirschmüller, along with archival footage of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder and producer Peter Märthesheimer.
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Jane Shattuc on EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY
Episode 7
The following interview with Jane Shattuc, professor of visual and media arts at Emerson College and author of “Television, Tabloids, and Tears: Fassbinder and Popular Culture,” was conducted in June 2018.
