A Few Preliminary Words about.... (Patreon)

Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972)

At this point I've seen the first two of the series' five episodes, and wanted to jot down some thoughts.

-- This is by no means "early Fassbinder." After all, he produced this right after Petra von Kant, so his mature style was already well established. But in making this "family series" for WDF, Fassbinder reintroduces a kind of primitivism in both the writing and the overall look of the piece. His radical in-scene zooms and placement of internal spectators (through windows, across the street, etc.) are all unusually aggressive here, and I suspect this has to do with his didactic intentions. So many times, characters say something along the lines of "that's just how things are," and this bluntness about defeatism, together with the often discombobulated mise-en-scène, really achieve the synthesis of Brecht and Sirk that Fassbinder was always aiming for.

-- There is an intriguing balance of optimism and resignation here, and it would have been quite easy for Fassbinder to give over entirely to one or the other. The first episode, focused on tool-and-dye worker Jochen (Gottfried John), establishes right away that the relation between labor and capital is unavoidably antagonistic. But when Jochen's improvement of the production process results in the team being stripped of a promised completion bonus, Fassbinder first shows Jochen's coworkers blaming him for "sticking his nose in," only to come around and claim their power as workers: to disrupt the production process until they get what's theirs.

-- Thus far Fassbinder has focused on two couples, Jochen and Marion (Hanna Schygulla), and Grandma (Luise Ullrich) and her dim old boyfriend Gregor (Werner Finck). As we watch the two youngsters begin their relationship, and the elders attempt to strike out on their own on a fixed pension, there's a sense that couples can rely on each other, helping one another achieve their full potential. I'm assuming that some of the remaining three episodes focus on the other family members, many of whom are toxic domestic fascists. Smug, violent Harald (Kurt Raab) slaps his wife Monica (Renate Roland) and young daughter Sylvia (Chinese Roulette's Andrea Schober), while Jochen's father Wolf (Wolfried Lier) is just an Archie Bunker-type blowhard. I'm curious to see how Fassbinder adjusts his approach when dealing with such unsympathetic characters.

-- Maybe it's wish fulfillment, and maybe it's just Brechtian anti-realism, but it was refreshing to see Fassbinder insist, re: the kindergarten, that the working classes, with a little outside-the-box thinking, can literally fight city hall. But I suspect crushing defeats are right around the corner.