Of the three major postwar German filmmakers — Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder — the latter presents the most fecund material for a biopic. A gay man in a time when it was dangerous and transgressive to be one, Fassbinder was also a drug addict, an alcoholic and a workaholic, completing more than 40 films, two television series and 24 plays in less … [Read more...]
The View From Home 82: Mizoguchi and Reed, Refn on fame, Fassbinder the cop, and Eastwood goes South
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum: Completed more than a decade before the string of masterpieces for which he’s most known, Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Criterion, $27.99 Blu-ray, $22.99 DVD) is a startlingly modern meditation on the give and take between art and life. Forecasting by at least two years the technical innovations of Orson Welles, this … [Read more...]