Berlin Alexanderplatz (television)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Berlin Alexanderplatz | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster for Berlin Alexanderplatz: Remastered (2007). |
|
| Directed by | Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
| Produced by | Peter Märthesheimer Günter Rohrbach Gunther Witte |
| Written by | Rainer Werner Fassbinder Alfred Döblin (novel) |
| Narrated by | Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
| Starring | Günter Lamprecht Hanna Schygulla Barbara Sukowa Elisabeth Trissenaar Gottfried John |
| Music by | Peer Raben |
| Cinematography | Xaver Schwarzenberger |
| Editing by | Juliane Lorenz |
| Distributed by | TeleCulture |
| Release date(s) | October 12, 1980 (West Germany) August 10, 1983 (US) |
| Running time | 894 min (West Germany) 931 min (US) |
| Country | Italy / West Germany |
| Language | German |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Berlin Alexanderplatz, originally broadcast in 1980, is a 14-part television series adapted and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from the Alfred Döblin novel of the same name, and stars Günter Lamprecht, Hanna Schygulla, Barbara Sukowa, Elisabeth Trissenaar and Gottfried John. The complete series is 15½ hours long.
Contents |
[edit] Production
Production of the series took nearly a year. In 1983, it was released theatrically in the United States, where a theatre would show two or three episodes per night. It garnered a cult following. Subsequently, it was released on VHS and broadcast on PBS and then Bravo.
Director Fassbinder dreamed of making a "parallel" film specifically for theatrical distribution after the completion of this film. The cast list he made included Gérard Depardieu as Franz Biberkopf and Isabelle Adjani as Mieze.
[edit] Episodes
| Episode Guide | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nr. | Title | Premiere (DE) | Running Time | ||
| 1 | The punishment begins. | 3.10. 1980 | 82 | ||
| 2 | How one should live if one does not want to die. | 12.10. 1980 | 59 | ||
| 3 | A hammer on the head can injure the soul. | 20.10. 1980 | 59 | ||
| 4 | A handful of people in the depths of silence. | 27.10. 1980 | 59 | ||
| 5 | A mower with the violence of the dear Lord. | 3.11. 1980 | 59 | ||
| 6 | A love, that costs so much. | 10.11. 1980 | 58 | ||
| 7 | Remember: You can amputate a tumour. | 17.11. 1980 | 58 | ||
| 8 | The sun warms the skin that it sometimes burns. | 24.11. 1980 | 58 | ||
| 9 | From eternity, between the many and the few. | 1.12. 1980 | 59 | ||
| 10 | Loneliness tears also cracks of insanity in walls. | 8.12. 1980 | 59 | ||
| 11 | Knowledge is power and the early bird that catches the worm has gold in its mouth. | 15.12. 1980 | 59 | ||
| 12 | The snake in the soul of the snake. | 22.12. 1980 | 59 | ||
| 13 | The external, the internal, and the secret of fearing the secret. | 29.12. 1980 | 58 | ||
| 14 | My dream from the dream of Franz Biberkopf von Alfred Doeblin: An Epilogue | 29.12. 1980 | 112 | ||
[edit] Cast
- Günter Lamprecht as Franz Biberkopf
- Barbara Sukowa as Emilie "Mietze" Karsunke
- Gottfried John as Reinhold Hoffmann
- Hanna Schygulla as Eva
- Elisabeth Trissenaar as Lina
- Karin Baal as Minna
- Franz Buchrieser as Meck
- Roger Fritz as Herbert
- Brigitte Mira as Frau Bast
- Barbara Valentin as Ida
- Ivan Desny as Pums
- Annemarie Düringer as Cilly
- Volker Spengler as Bruno
- Günther Kaufmann as Theo
- Vitus Zeplichal as Rudi
- Claus Holm as Wirt
- Hans Michael Rehberg as Kommissar
- Lilo Pempeit as Frau Pums
- Elma Karlowa as Frau Greiner
[edit] Restoration
In 2005, the German Cultural Institute, having completed the reconstruction and restoration of Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin, decided to restore Berlin Alexanderplatz, saying that the original film negative was in "catastrophic physical condition" and that it "must be restored."
Beginning in 2006, the series underwent restoration and remastering. Berlin Alexanderplatz: Remastered received its world premiere on February 9, 2007 at the Berlin International Film Festival for which episodes 1 and 2 were shown. The restoration was completed in early 2007, exactly 25 years after Fassbinder's death. The entire series ran on February 11 in five installments.[1]
The re-release was accompanied by a book that includes the original screenplay for Berlin Alexanderplatz, original drawings, selections from Döblin's novel, as well as selected reviews of the film.
A DVD set containing additional material was released in Germany on February 10,[2] and was released in America through The Criterion Collection in November 2007.
Time magazine's Richard Corliss named it one of the Top 10 DVDs of 2007, ranking it at #9.[3]
[edit] Impact
The film has made an impact on several well-known artists and critics. Susan Sontag wrote an appreciation in a September 1983 issue of Vanity Fair. Also in the 1980s: Performance artist/musician Laurie Anderson wrote a song called "White Lily" ("What Fassbinder film is it? The one-armed man comes into the flower shop...") on the album of her concert film, Home of the Brave. Director John Waters, writing on fellow cult director Russ Meyer, opined that Meyer's projected autobiographical magnum opus should be titled Berlin Alexandertitz. And actress/performance artist Ann Magnuson recounts being "really bummed out" by the film while watching it on PBS during a bad drug trip in her lyrics to "Folk Song" from the Bongwater album, The Power of Pussy. In the 1990s, film director Todd Haynes appropriated imagery from the film's notorious, phantasmagorical epilogue for a sequence in his Velvet Goldmine. The film has also been mentioned in the cult series The Critic.
[edit] References
- ^ Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz Remastered. Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation (2007-01-31). Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
- ^ Berger, Sebastian (2007-01-16). Berlin Alexanderplatz – Remastered exklusiv in der SZ-Cinemathek (German). Süddeutscher Verlag. Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
- ^ Corliss, Richard; Top 10 DVDs; time.com
[edit] External links
- Berlin Alexanderplatz at the Fassbinder Foundation
- Berlin Alexanderplatz: Remastered at the Fassbinder Foundation
- Berlin Alexanderplatz: Remastered at Bavaria Film International
- Berlin Alexanderplatz at The Criterion Collection
- Berlin Alexanderplatz at Rotten Tomatoes
- Berlin Alexanderplatz at Allmovie
- Berlin Alexanderplatz at the Internet Movie Database
|
|||||||||||||||||
