Release Date: February 12, 2019
Criterion: $79.76
Amazon: $69.87
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Writer: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Starring: Volker Spengler, Hanna Schygulla, Brigitte Mira, Roger Fritz, Gottfried John
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 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.
SPECIAL FEATURES
TRAILER (not representative of CC version):
Criterion: $79.76
Amazon: $69.87
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Writer: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Starring: Volker Spengler, Hanna Schygulla, Brigitte Mira, Roger Fritz, Gottfried John
- Germany
- 1980
- 902 minutes
- Color
- 1.37:1
- German
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 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.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- High-definition digital restoration by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation and Bavaria Media, supervised and approved by director of photography Xaver Schwarzenberger, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Two documentaries by Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation president Juliane Lorenz: one from 2007 featuring interviews with the cast and crew, the other from 2006 on the restoration
- Hans-Dieter Hartl’s 1980 documentary Notes on the Making of “Berlin Alexanderplatz”
- Phil Jutzi’s 1931 feature-length film of Alfred Döblin’s novel, from a screenplay cowritten by Döblin himself
- Interview from 2007 with Peter Jelavich, author of “Berlin Alexanderplatz”: Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture
- PLUS: A book featuring an essay by filmmaker Tom Tykwer, reflections on the novel by Fassbinder and author Thomas Steinfeld, and an interview with Schwarzenberger
TRAILER (not representative of CC version):
Last edited:
