Terms of Dismemberment: The Body in/and/of Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)

Abstract

Any attempt to sketch a topography of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's expansive and complex Berlin Alexanderplatz has a vast territory to cover. First of all, one must take into account the film's textual basis, Alfred D6blin's many-voiced urban epic of 1929, as well as PhilJutzi's 1930 rendering of the novel starring Heinrich George, an underworld drama with many documentary shots.' Second, Fassbinder's reception of the novel demands consideration. The filmmaker's lifelong obsession with D6blin's book proved to be a dynamic relationship, one which Fassbinder depicted in a lengthy essay.2 In the passionate article, the director openly admitted just how crucial Berlin Alexanderplatz had been for his own development, how the novel had left decisive marks on his impressionable young mind, and how these traces are to be found throughout his entire oeuvre. Finally, the most sizable challenge remains Fassbinder's mammoth adaptation of the novel, a work of fifteen hours and twenty-one minutes. Accounting for the terms of this personal rendering of a work privileged by the auteur remains a strikingly imposing task, in 1984, two years after the filmmaker's death, four years since the film's controversy-ridden premiere on West German television,3 a year following its resoundingly success-