The R. W. Fassbinder Early Works

The Early Works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder brings together all of the German director’s surviving works from the 1960s plus a documentary portrait examining his earliest days as a filmmaker.In the two short films, The City Tramp and The Little Chaos (heavily influenced by Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande à part), we find Fassbinder in search of an identity. In the two features, Love is Colder Than Death and Katzelmacher, he begins to discover it.Dedicated to Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer, Jean-Marie Straub and the main characters from Spaghetti Western A Bullet for the General, Love is Colder Than Death is a playful crime picture, heavily indebted to the nouvelle vague. Katzelmacher is more in line with Fassbinder’s stage efforts, a character study and mini-melodrama in which the dynamic between a group of friends is radically altered by the arrival of an immigrant worker.SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS • Brand new 4K restoration of the films from original camera negatives• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentations• Original uncompressed PCM mono audio• Optional English subtitles• Two early short films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from 1966, The Little Chaos and The City Tramp• Newly-filmed interview with actor Ulli Lommel on Love is Colder Than Death• End of the Commune?, Joachim von Mengershausen’s 1970 documentary portrait of Fassbinder and his troupe including rare footage of his actors rehearsing and Love is Colder Than Death’s premiere at the 1969 Berlin Film Festival• Original theatrical trailer for Katzelmacher