50 Fun Facts About Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Which make of sports car did Fassbinder buy four times in a single year for his lover, the actor Günther Kaufmann?

Lamborghini was the gift each time, and Kaufmann wrecked one and sold the others. Fassbinder kept casting him anyway, in 14 films.

Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun ends on the day West Germany beats Hungary to win which 1954 trophy?

The World Cup final of 1954 is being played as Maria's home blows up in a gas explosion. The film, Fassbinder's greatest success, treats her rise as a parable of West Germany's boom.

Lilo Pempeit, cast by Fassbinder in Effi Briest and many of his other films, was which relative of the director?

His mother, a translator, took the first of her many small parts in a 1967 short. After his death she set up the foundation that looks after his films.

Which cinematographer shot Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun before filming Goodfellas for Martin Scorsese?

Michael Ballhaus first worked with Fassbinder on the western Whity. His own small castle later served as the country estate in one of their films together.

Fassbinder's television special Like a Bird on a Wire borrows its title from a song by which Canadian singer-songwriter?

Leonard Cohen's song closes the programme, a forty-minute cabaret of ballads from the 1940s and 1950s. Fassbinder had already filled an earlier film with tracks from Cohen's first album.

Fassbinder said he hoped his films would add up to what, with some as cellars, others as walls or windows?

A house was his image for a body of work that passed forty films in about fifteen years. He often finished four or five a year by skipping rehearsals and keeping the first take.

Which Fassbinder film about a singer in Nazi Germany takes its title from the wartime song that makes her famous?

Lili Marleen is the song that turns the heroine into the darling of the armed forces. Fassbinder shot the big-budget international production in English.

Which British playwright wrote the script of Despair, Fassbinder's first English-language film, from a Nabokov novel?

Tom Stoppard wrote it for what was then Fassbinder's most expensive film, at $2.6 million. His earlier films had each cost under $300,000.

In Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, the cleaning lady Emmi marries a much younger guest worker from which country?

Morocco is Ali's homeland in the film, where he is played by El Hedi ben Salem, Fassbinder's partner at the time. Fassbinder planned the quick, low-budget shoot as an exercise between two bigger productions.

Which top prize of the Berlin Film Festival did Fassbinder finally win in 1982, a few months before his death?

The Golden Bear had eluded him in 1979, when he expected it for his biggest hit and saw his lead actress honoured instead. His winner was a drama about a fading, drug-dependent film star.

Fassbinder, Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders were leading directors of which film movement of the 1960s and 1970s?

New German Cinema grew from young directors' rejection of the commercial West German film industry. Fassbinder's death in 1982 is often treated as the end of the movement.

Fassbinder grew up, led his experimental theatre troupe and died at the age of 37 in which German city?

Munich was home from infancy, though he was born in the small town of Bad Wörishofen. He is buried in the city's Bogenhausen cemetery.

In Fassbinder's The Merchant of Four Seasons, what does the former Foreign Legionnaire Hans sell on his street rounds?

Fruit gives the film its title, the French expression for a street seller of fresh produce. It was Fassbinder's first commercial success at home.

Which actress, a Fassbinder regular since their drama-school days, won Berlin's best actress prize as Maria Braun?

Hanna Schygulla got the part only after talks with Romy Schneider broke down. It ended a rift of several years that had opened on the set of an earlier costume drama.

In Fox and His Friends, how does the out-of-work carnival performer played by Fassbinder himself suddenly become rich?

Fox wins the lottery, taking 500,000 marks that his elegant new lover then drains away. Fassbinder dedicated the film to his own partner, Armin Meier.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul won Fassbinder the international critics' prize at which film festival in 1974?

Cannes also gave the film its Ecumenical Jury prize. Shot on a very low budget, it became Fassbinder's first international success.

Fassbinder's static, stylised early films drew on the alienation effect devised by which German playwright?

Bertolt Brecht's theories shaped the austere, minimalist style of his first ten films. Audiences found them too demanding, and wider success came only once he turned to melodrama.

Which French New Wave director, whose star Anna Karina later acted for Fassbinder, strongly influenced his early films?

Jean-Luc Godard's influence was strongest on the austere films of 1969 to 1971. A leading New York critic later ranked Fassbinder as the most original filmmaker to emerge since the Frenchman.

In Rio das Mortes, Fassbinder plays a leather-jacketed youth as the heroine dances to a jukebox hit by which singer?

Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock plays on the jukebox in a scene that has nothing to do with the plot. It is the best-remembered moment of a slight comedy about a treasure hunt in Peru.

Which Hamburg-born director of Hollywood melodramas such as Imitation of Life became Fassbinder's model after 1971?

Douglas Sirk showed him that small people and their emotions could be big on screen. Fassbinder turned to the émigré's work during an eight-month break from filming.

What is the profession of the title character in Fassbinder's all-female drama The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant?

Fashion designer Petra never leaves her apartment in the film, which has no men in it at all. Fassbinder adapted it from his own stage play.

Fassbinder shot his western Whity in which country, on locations built for the films of Sergio Leone?

Spain's Almería region hosted a shoot that was traumatic for cast and crew. The film became his biggest flop and went all but unseen until the 1990s.

Which novelist wrote the 1929 book that Fassbinder turned into his 14-part television epic Berlin Alexanderplatz?

Alfred Döblin's novel was a book Fassbinder first read at 14 and said helped him survive puberty. His adaptation runs to about 15 hours.

In Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz, what does the ex-convict hero lose after his best friend Reinhold turns on him?

An arm is the price of the friendship, and Reinhold later murders the hero's girlfriend as well. Fassbinder set the bond between the two men against the rising tide of Nazism.

Fassbinder's Lola loosely adapts the Heinrich Mann novel that Josef von Sternberg had filmed in 1930 under which title?

The Blue Angel moves to post-war West Germany in his version, where an upright building commissioner falls for the mistress of a corrupt developer. It belongs to his BRD Trilogy.

Fassbinder died in 1982 beside his notes for a planned film about which Polish-German revolutionary socialist?

Rosa Luxemburg was to be the subject, and the notes lay next to him when his partner found him. He had gone to bed to read with the television on.

In Katzelmacher, Fassbinder plays the immigrant worker who unsettles an idle clique, a newcomer from which country?

Greece is home to Jorgos, whose arrival stirs curiosity in the women and hostility in the men. Fassbinder expanded the film from his own forty-minute play.

Which two-part television film about a computer-simulated reality was Fassbinder's only venture into science fiction?

World on a Wire was shot on 16 mm during a pause in another production. Its artificial people, who long to reach real life, anticipated Blade Runner.

Fassbinder spent two years filming Effi Briest, a tale of a ruined Prussian marriage by which 19th-century novelist?

Theodor Fontane's own words supply the dialogue and the narration, which Fassbinder read himself. He called it his dream film and gave it 58 shooting days, against his usual nine to twenty.

Which 1955 Hollywood melodrama, where a television set is a key symbol, inspired Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul?

All That Heaven Allows is echoed most openly when the heroine's son kicks in her television on learning of the marriage. Critics hailed Fassbinder's version as one of the best films of 1974.

Fassbinder's final film, Querelle, about a thieving and murderous sailor, adapts a 1947 novel by which French writer?

Jean Genet never saw the adaptation, remarking that a cinema would not let him smoke. Fassbinder did not see it released either, as it premiered shortly after his death.

Which British star of Visconti's films played the chocolate maker who plots to swap identities in Fassbinder's Despair?

Dirk Bogarde plays a Russian émigré whose descent into madness unfolds as the Nazis rise. The budget of six million marks topped the combined cost of Fassbinder's first fifteen films.

Which film about a morphine-addicted film star joins Lola and The Marriage of Maria Braun in Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy?

Veronika Voss was loosely based on the career of the actress Sybille Schmitz and influenced by Sunset Boulevard. It took the top prize at the Berlin festival months before Fassbinder died.

Which veteran actress won a German Film Award as the cleaning lady Emmi in Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul?

Brigitte Mira went on to sing cabaret songs and ballads in a forty-minute television special Fassbinder built around her. Her co-star in the film was the director's partner.

Which black-and-white gangster film of 1969, starring Fassbinder as a small-time pimp, was his first feature?

Love Is Colder Than Death was ill-received at its Berlin Film Festival premiere. Shot on a shoestring that April, it already dwelt on his lasting themes of loneliness and betrayal.

Which French star plays Madame Lysiane, who runs a bar and brothel for sailors, in Fassbinder's Querelle?

Jeanne Moreau also sings in the film, to a melody that sets words from Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol. She wrote the lyrics of another of its songs herself.

In Fassbinder's The Third Generation, an industrialist secretly funds what to sell more of his security computers?

A terrorist cell of middle-class leftists is being manipulated without knowing it, and its own leader is a double agent. Fassbinder also served as the film's cameraman.

Fassbinder's series Eight Hours Don't Make a Day follows working-class people in which city, his father's home?

Cologne was also where the teenage Fassbinder lived with his father for a couple of years. The series was cut from eight episodes to five after pressure from conservatives.

Which ex-convict, played by Günter Lamprecht, is the hero of Fassbinder's television epic Berlin Alexanderplatz?

Franz Biberkopf mattered so much to Fassbinder that he gave the name to heroes of his other films. He once played a character of that name himself.

Which actress and singer was married to Fassbinder from 1970 to 1972 and kept acting in his films afterwards?

Ingrid Caven's wedding reception was recycled as a scene in the film he was making at the time. She later became a muse of the couturier Yves Saint Laurent.

Which actress played the title role in Fassbinder's Lola and later portrayed the philosopher Hannah Arendt on screen?

Barbara Sukowa had risen to prominence a year earlier as Mieze in his Berlin Alexanderplatz. The title role then brought her a first German Film Award for best actress.

Fassbinder named which Luchino Visconti film, about a German steel dynasty under the Nazis, as his favourite?

The Damned loosely retells the story of the Krupp family, the steel barons who backed the Nazi regime. Fassbinder returned to that era in several of his own late films.

Which French director filmed Fassbinder plays as Water Drops on Burning Rocks and, with sexes switched, Peter von Kant?

François Ozon made the first from a play Fassbinder wrote at about twenty and never saw staged. The second turns his all-female chamber drama into a story about men.

Which Fassbinder thriller, set on a family's country estate, is named after the cruel truth-guessing game played in it?

Chinese Roulette is the game a disabled girl proposes after luring her parents and their lovers to the same weekend. The film was coldly received in West Germany.

Which Fassbinder film about a cast and crew unravelling in a hotel drew on the troubled shoot of his western Whity?

Beware of a Holy Whore ends with the crew ganging up on their egomaniacal director. It closed Fassbinder's avant-garde period, which had produced ten films in little more than a year.

Which omnibus film by Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge and others responded to the Red Army Faction's Schleyer kidnapping?

Germany in Autumn includes a segment in which Fassbinder talks through the prison deaths of the group's leaders with those closest to him. It offers a glimpse of his troubled life with Armin Meier.

When the small stage company Fassbinder led was wrecked by one of its founders in 1968, it re-formed under which name?

Anti-Theatre members lived and performed together, and Fassbinder directed twelve plays with them in eighteen months. Its actors became the stock company of his films.

Which bleak 1978 film did Fassbinder make within months of the suicide of his former lover Armin Meier?

In a Year of 13 Moons follows the last days of Elvira, a former butcher, as Meier himself had been. Fassbinder wrote, directed, shot, designed and edited it himself.

The surname of the pseudonym Fassbinder used as editor of his own films honoured which veteran Hollywood director?

Raoul Walsh's surname, usually respelt in the German manner, appears on the editing credits of many Fassbinder films. Fassbinder also played a character with the same alias on screen.

Fassbinder starred as a detective in a leopard suit in which futuristic thriller, released weeks after his death?

Kamikaze 1989 was directed by Wolf Gremm, who was staying at Fassbinder's apartment on the night he died. It was based on a 1964 novel by Per Wahlöö.