A Companion to Rainer Werner Fassbinder is the first of its kind to engage with this important figure. Twenty-eight essays by an international group of scholars consider this controversial director's contribution to German cinema, German history, gender studies, and auteurship. A fresh collection of original research providing diverse perspectives on Fassbinder's work in films, television, poetry, and underground theatre. Rainer Werner Fassbinder remains the preeminent filmmaker of the New German Cinema whose brief but prolific body of work spans from the latter half of the 1960s to the artist's death in 1982. Interrogates Fassbinder's influence on the seminal ideas of his time: auteurship, identity, race, queer studies, and the cataclysmic events of German twentieth century history Contributions from internationally diverse scholars specializing in film, culture, and German studies. Includes coverage of his key films including: Gods of the Plague (1970), Beware of a Holy Whore (1971), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Martha (1973) (TV), World on a Wire (1973), Effi Briest (1974), Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Fox and His Friends (1975), Fear of Fear (1975), Chinese Roulette (1976), In a Year With 13 Moons (1978), Despair (1978), The Third Generation (1979), Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) (TV), and Querelle (1982).

• Notes on Contributors viii Acknowledgments xiv Introduction 1 Brigitte Peucker Part I Life and Work 15 1 The Other Planet Fassbinder 17 Juliane Lorenz 2 R. W. Fassbinder: Prodigal Son, Not Reconciled? 45 Thomas Elsaesser 3 Rainer "Maria" Fassbinder: Cinema between Literature and Life 53 Leo A. Lensing 4 Five Fassbinder Scenes 67 Wayne Koestenbaum Part II Genre
• Influence
• Aesthetics 77 5 Imitation, Seriality, Cinema: Early Fassbinder and Godard 79 Laura McMahon 6 Exposed Bodies
• Evacuated Identities 101 Claire Kaiser 7 Redressing the Inaccessible through the Re-Inscribed Body: In a Year with 13 Moons and Almodovar's Bad Education 118 Victor Fan 8 Nudity and the Question: Chinese Roulette 142 Eugenie Brinkema 9 Color, Melodrama, and the Problem of Interiority 159 Brian Price 10 Fassbinder's Work : Style, Sirk, and Queer Labor 181 John David Rhodes 11 A Nagging Physical Discomfort: Fassbinder and Martha 204 Joe McElhaney 12 Beyond the Woman's Film: Reflecting Difference in the Fassbinder Melodrama 226 Nadine Schwakopf 13 Through the Looking Glass: Fassbinder's World on a Wire 245 Brad Prager Part III Other Texts
• Other Media 267 14 Violently Oscillating: Science, Repetition, and Affective Transmutation in Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz 269 Elena del Rio 15 In Despair : Performance, Citation, Identity 290 Brigitte Peucker 16 Declined Invitations: Repetition in Fassbinder's Queer "Monomusical" 313 Caryl Flinn 17 Fassbinder's France: Genet's Miseen Scene in Fassbinder's Films 333 Olga Solovieva 18 Un-framing the Image: Theatricality and the Art World of Bitter Tears 352 Brigitte Peucker 19 A Novel Film: Fassbinder's Fontane Effi Briest 372 Elke Siegel 20 Swearing and Forswearing Fidelity in Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz 398 Paul Coates Part IV History
• Ideology
• Politics 421 21 "There Are Many Ways to Fight a Battle": Young Fassbinder and the Myths of 1968 423 Eric Rentschler 22 A Generation Later and Still Unrepresentable?: Fassbinder and the Red Army Faction 441 Frances Guerin 23 Two Kinds of Excess: Fassbinder and Veit Harlan 461 Laura J. Heins 24 Jolie Laide: Fassbinder, Anti-Semitism, and the Jewish Image 485 Rosalind Galt 25 Impossible, Impolitic: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Fassbinder's Asynchronous Bodies 502 Elena Gorfinkel 26 "So Much Tenderness": Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Gunther Kaufmann, and the Ambivalences of Interracial Desire 516 Tobias Nagl and Janelle Blankenship 27 Rainer, Rosa, and Werner: New Gay Film as Counter-Public 542 Randall Halle 28 Fassbinder's Fox and His Friends and Gay Politics in the 1970s 564 Ronald Gregg 29 Querelle's Finality 579 Roy Grundmann Selected Bibliography 604 Index 623