“I’ve changed along with the characters in my films”: An Interview with Rainer Werner Fassbinder

"I've changedalong with the charactersin my films" An Interview with Rainer WernerFassbinder Thisyear marks the tenth anniversaryofthe death of Germanfilmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder Among the more than three-dozen films he made are: Fear Eats the Soul, The Marriage of Maria Braun, Berlin Alexanderplatz , Effi Briest, Despair, and Querelle. His interview with Hella Schlumbergerfirst appeared in the German edition of Playboy, April 1978. You're always criticizing the "provincialism"of Germany, but you're not in America yet. Why not? You can't draw any conclusions from the fact that I'm still here. Besides, I'm in Paris most of the time. I think Germany's well on its way to being a nation where people become more and more alike. And that means that individualists ... Like you ... You said it, not I . . . that people who react a little differently to reality have to ask themselves whether they can still afford to have opinions. Whether it's worth it. And that's where castration of the imagination begins. Couldyou seeyourself beingforced some day, like GunterGrass in Italy recently, to defend Germany againstthe chargeof being afascistic country ? I couldn't bring myself to defend Germany the way Herr Grass does. Besides, they really should find a new word instead of "fascism." So what does keep you here in the FederalRepublic? 1 Obviously the language first of all, which I grew up with and work in. Then my upbringing, my childhood, which of course left their tracesactually those are the reasons why I didn't leave a long, long time ago. But you always emphasize thatyou hardly had an upbringing. I didn't have an organized, painful upbringing, the kind you'd have to rebel against later on. But afterwards no one could ever get me to go along with anything I didn't accept. Not even in school? No, not even in the Steiner school. People say you're authoritarian. Is that true? I used to be authoritarian, because I didn't have so many options. Today I can afford to work without the authority that's usually reserved for a director. For that reason I prefer to work with professionals. Earlier, when people were trying to work non-hierarchically, the group would always look for a Daddy or Mommy when the going got tough. If I hadn't taken on that role, the group, I mean the various groups, would have collapsed much sooner. But professionals don't expect me to play a paternalistic role. Instead? They expect me to accept them as professionals, motivate them, and acknowledge the significance they have within the production. The better and more freely they can work, the less anxiety in the atmosphere. Essentiallyyou "dug up" some of the old professionalactors ... That's not true. Colleagues like Karlheinz B6hm and Brigitte Mira and Barbara Valentin were working all along. Karlheinz Bohm, for instance, regularly appeared on the stage; he had some big successes there after his time in the older German film. The fact that you work with good stage actors in the cinema isn't particularly held against you elsewhere. And the film crews--apparently no one's interested in what sort of human beings they are, how they live. People are only interested in the actors-how they live and sleep and that sort of thing. But not even the left-liberal journalists are interested in the film crews. Well, what sort ofpeople are they? 2 From the beginning I've tried to line up film crews who know their craft so well that they really enjoy learning new things. Not people who are just learning the ropes, but those who enjoy trying out something new. It was similar with the actors: the more I had real professionals-the kind who could still be motivated-the less anxiety I felt, and the more new forms could be tried out, because they had perfect command of what was normally expected of them. What sort of anxiety do you mean, what about? About failing, about not being validated. It's only while you're still learning your metier that you think you have to keep your eye on everything. Not later on...