Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the most prominent and most prolific of the filmmakers of the New German Cinema, a revival of the once-vital German film industry after the first version had been destroyed by World War II. His films addressed social issues in a way that helped open the cinema to new examinations of homosexuality, feminism, and similar concerns. From his earliest works, Fassbinder's writing and directing were intensely personal statements, and a sense of desperate loneliness, clearly derived from his childhood, infuses much of his work.
Films were made in Germany after World War II, but they were films associated with American companies or British companies and were primarily programmers, imitations of American melodramas, horror pictures, or British mysteries. A serious German cinema simply did not exist in any degree that could capture the attention of the world market. In the 1960s, young filmmakers felt the need for a change and issued the Oberhausen Manifesto, generally regarded as the beginning of the New German Cinema, though of the 26 signatories only one, Alexander Kluge, would later achieve world prominence.
In 1965, a body was set up to help subsidize new films by young directors, and a breakthrough occurred in 1966, when a film produced by Alexander Kluge received eight awards at the Venice Biennale and several other films by young filmmakers achieved prominence as well. Opposition from the established film community, however, brought about legislation that scotched the new movement, or at least set it back, until the Film/Television Agreement of 1974, which provided for grants for the realization of promising filmscripts (Sandford 13-16). The New German Cinema was now a reality, and Fassbinder would become one of its most prolific and prominent representatives.
He performed as an actor and wrote the scripts for nearly all his films as well as directing them. He was also a playwrig...