Ronald Hayman: Fassbinder: Film Maker (1984)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was simultaneously a maker of films and a man who ‘played with people’: the forty-three films he directed before his early death at the age of thirty-seven in 1982 were products of a convoluted game of emotions between him and a close-knit group of versatile actors. He wielded astonishing power over his artists, but though he was an oppressor, he made passionate cinematic statements about liberty in such productions as The Marriage of Maria Braun, Despair and Veronika Voss.

The films could not have been what they were if Fassbinder had not been what he was – the product of a lonely childchood, moody, impatient, jealous, vengeful, a drug addict, generous, brutal, and most vicious of all towards himself.

Aided by film stills and photographs from the private collections of those who knew him most intimately, Ronald Hayman presents a fascinating insight into the relationship between this obsessional, explosive personality and the unique films he created.

Publisher Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1984
ISBN 297784471
164 pages

google books

PDF (no OCR)