I put this one off for a while on my Netflix queue, but it turned out to be quite good. I've only seen a few Fassbinder films, The Marriage of Maria Braun, which I found well-made but a little pretentious (especially the over-the-top ending) and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, which nods to Douglas Sirk in much the same way Todd Haynes did with All That Heaven Allows (though not quite as blatantly). I have a few more Fassbinder films left, including the mammoth task that will be Berlin Alexanderplatz, so I was glad to enjoy this one as much as I did.
The movie is a kind of noir, following a washed-up film star and a journalist trying to get to the bottom of her morphine addiction while dealing with his own complicated feelings about her. The movie is set in post-war Germany, and holy shit does this movie feel like it was made in post-war Germany. Everything from the style of the film to its editing - complete with probably every kind of wipe available - would lead you to believe this film was set in its contemporary time, not made thirty years later in 1982.
The plot reminded me of Sunset Boulevard a bit, while the ending had a kind of "Forget about it, Jake, it's Chinatown" vibe to it. But the filmmaking itself is the real star here, and man is this movie beautiful. The lights during the film-set scenes pierce through the screen, while the interplay of dark and light in the cinematography makes for grand melodrama. Fassbinder is clearly a talented filmmaker, so it's easy to watch the movie even when the plot sags a little in the middle of the film.
This movie is actually the third film in the BRD trilogy, which are loosely connected films Fassbinder made about West Germany after the war. The Marriage of Maria Braun is the first, so now I only have to see Lola, which is based on The Blue Angel.
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