This movie follows the life of a young German woman, married to a soldier in the waning days of WWII. Fassbinder has tried to show the gritty life after the end of WWII and the turmoil of the people trapped in its wake.

Danzig in the 1920s-1930s. Oskar Matzerath, son of a local dealer, is a most unusual boy. Equipped with full intellect right from birth, he decides on his third birthday not to grow up as he sees the crazy world around him on the eve of World War II. He refuses to join society and his tin drum symbolizes his protest against the middle-class mentality of his family and neighbourhood, which stand for all passive people in Nazi Germany at the time. But (almost) nobody listens to him, so the catastrophe continues.

1979 film directed by Volker Schlöndorff

Three people rob a bank to help a daycare center that's in debt. Wolf is captured, Werner is identified, and police suspect that Christa is the third. She and Werner ask Hans, a clergyman, to launder the money and give it to the kindergarten; he refuses. They try Christa's friend Ingrid, who tries to help, but the school rejects the money. When tragedy strikes Werner, Hans helps Christa bolt to a collective in Portugal; when Ingrid visits her there, their relationship makes the collective nervous, so she returns to Germany and stops living in hiding. The police are still looking for her and so is a witness to the robbery: bank clerk Lena, whose interest brings Christa's second awakening.

Germany in Autumn has no typical plot; it mixes documentary footage with standard movie scenes to present the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The film covers 2 months in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped and murdered by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction). The businessman was kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the original leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF,

Tom Ripley has a sweet deal with an art forger. The forger creates the paintings; Tom sells them. But another criminal business associate wants Tom to go in for an even riskier enterprise: murder. Tom suggests his associate ask a local picture framer instead. That man has a fatal disease, or so it's rumored. More, he has a wife and kid that surely he wouldn't want to leave penniless. Let this picture framer be a hit man, and no one will suspect. The terminally ill craftsman may agree to the misdeed, and several more, but he'll end up needing Tom Ripley in a pinch.

Near the Eastern borders with West Germany, Bruno, a solitary, permanent citizen of the road and film projection equipment repairman, witnesses the sad sight of a VW beetle car storming straight into the River Elbe. After a while, however, the depressed driver, Robert, instinctively accepts an offer for a lift in Bruno's repair van, and just like that, an impromptu relationship begins. Now, against the backdrop of the German countryside, the new companions find themselves sharing the same need for freedom, visiting dilapidated movie theatres for maintenance, and getting to know each other one small town after another. But, no one knows, or cares, how long is the road that stretches out ahead of them. After all, the only thing that matters is one's commitment to a precious ideal. Have the kings of the road found life's true meaning?

Berlin, 1974. Grischa and Heinrich are actors, accidentally locked in the rehearsal hall one night. He tries to seduce her; she's puts him off. Later she dumps her husband and sleeps with Heinrich, who ups the ante by suggesting they have a child. She takes him seriously by initiating a journalistic project interviewing working mothers, asking how they balance work and family, delving into their sexual histories. Heinrich sulks when she spends evenings on the project, he's childish. Should she leave him? The story plays out against the backdrop of left-wing political agitation.

Beautiful young German maid Katharina Blum meets Ludwig and they fall in love immediately and spend the night together. In the morning the police burst into her flat looking for Ludwig: he is a terrorist. But he is no longer there. Katharina is arrested, humiliated, suspected of being a terrorist herself, dragged through the mud by the newspapers. This film is a plea for democracy and individual rights.

1975 film by Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta

Working class and middle-upper class worlds come together in this interesting look at class conflict within the gay world from the German director Reiner Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder plays Fox, he is working class, a former circus performer who wins the lottery of DM 500,000. His life starts to look up and doesn't have to struggle financially. Fox can now have the life and things that he has always wanted. He begins a new relationship with Eugen, creates a business partnership, and his life is looking bright. While he wants to climb up the social ladder, it isn't without turmoil, and being torn between his old working class roots, and the shiny new facade of middle class consciousness.

At a boarding school in the pre-war Austro-Hungarian Empire, a pair of students torture one of their fellow classmates, Basini, who has been caught stealing money from one of the two. The two decide that rather than turn Basini in to the school authorities, they will punish him themselves and proceed to torture, degrade, and humiliate the boy, with ever-increasing sadistic delight. As each day passes, the two boys are able to justify harsher treatment than previously given. Torless is a passive member of the group but observes rather than participates and frustrates the tormentors by dryly analyzing their behavior.

The film tells the story of Anita G., a young East German migrant to West Germany and her struggle to adjust to her new life.

German films, 1962 - 1982, born out of the Oberhausen Manifesto. Disillusionment with post-War Germany, rejection of mainstream German cinema and art, socially critical. Would go on to influence Italian Neorealism, Nouvelle Vague, and British New Wave

Neuer Deutscher Film

movie

Niko Aiello

I guess I’m more of an arthouse snob than I thought

1979 American war film directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Best of All Time

1987 American science fiction parody movie directed by Mel Brooks

Sci-Fi and/or Horror 

2014 film directed by John Michael McDonagh

Watchlist 2.0

Books to Read

Fellini = fantasy/baroque, Pasolini = sexuality, Rossellini = war, Visconti = decadence/decline of nobility

Italian Neorealism

1970s Italian crime/action films. Born out of the French gangster film resurgence of the late 1960s-1970s, as well as the cultural turmoil in Italy at the time. Violence, vigilantism, corruption, “greatness of the working class protagonist over the corrupt bureaucracy”

1973 poliziottesco film directed by Sergio Sollima

Poliziotteschi Films

Post-Colonialism, nostalgia, modernity and youth culture, and the ultimate cultural identity of Hong Kong

Hong Kong New Wave

Italian Comedies from the 1950s to 1970s: lots of satire, lots of "socially taboo" subjects, usually to the background of the working class with some sprinkles of social criticism

Commedia all'italiana

All the references and recommendations from the Director’s Commentary of Hot Fuzz, as well as those from their conversation on the Empire Film Podcast