Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the enfant terrible of the New German Cinema, wrote, directed, produced and starred in over 40 films in his short but prolific life, before passing away of a drugs overdose in 1982 aged just 37. Rainer Werner Fassbinder Vol. 2 Blu-ray boxset from Arrow Video brings together a collection of his key works from the mid-section of his career in high definition digital restorations prepared by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation.
Among Fassbinder’s best-loved works, Fear Eats the Soul sees the director paying homage to the classic melodramas of Douglas Sirk in its poignant portrayal of a relationship between a widowed cleaning lady in her sixties and a Moroccan immigrant in his thirties that causes an outrage with her family, friends and neighbours. Fassbinder’s long-gestating adaptation of Theodor Fontane’s classic German novel Effi Briest, his most expensive production to date as well as one of his most ambitious, tells the tale of a seventeen-year-old girl who is married off by her parents to a wealthy Baron more than twice her age.
Fassbinder himself plays the protagonist of Fox and His Friends, a sweet working class soul whose relationship with wealthy industrialist Eugen, he discovers, is based almost wholly on his unexpected lottery win. Chinese Roulette is a tense psychodrama set in an isolated house during a weekend break in which infidelities are revealed and families break down. Fassbinder’s international breakthrough film, The Marriage of Maria Braun charts the rise to prosperity of its tenacious and pragmatic central character across the post-war years as she holds out hope for the return of the young soldier she was married to for less than 24-hours before he was dispatched to the Russian front and later reported dead.
Arrow Video will release Rainer Werner Fassbinder Vol. 2 Blu-ray on 6th December 2021.
LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
• High definition digital transfers of all films prepared by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation
• High Definition (1080p) Blu-rayTM presentations of all films
• Original uncompressed PCM mono 1.0 sound for all films
• Optional English subtitles for all films
• Exclusive 140-page collectors booklet containing archive articles and new writing by Deborah Allison, Geoff Andrew, Margaret Deriaz and Travis Miles.
DISC ONE – FEAR EATS THE SOUL
• Audio commentary by critic and lecturer Mark Freeman
• My Name is Not Ali, Viola Shafik’s 2011 feature-length documentary on the life and death of El Hedi ben Salem, star of Fear Eats the Soul
• Interview with director of photography Jürgen Jürges
• Theatrical trailer
DISC TWO – EFFI BRIEST
• Audio commentary by Ken Moulden
• Interview with actor Ulli Lommel
• Interview with director of photography Jürgen Jürges
• Theatrical trailer
DISC THREE – FOX AND HIS FRIENDS & CHINESE ROULETTE
• Audio commentary by Hamish Ford on Fox and His Friends
• Interview with actor Ulli Lommel on Chinese Roulette
• Original theatrical trailers for both films
DISC FOUR – THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN
• Life, Love & Celluloid, a 1998 feature-length documentary on Fassbinder, written and directed by his regular editor, Juliane Lorenz
• Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1977, a candid 30-minute interview with the director
• The Fassbinder Family, featurette detailing the actors who worked with Fassbinder time and again throughout his career
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