To Be-rlin Alexanderplatz or not to Be-rlin Alexanderplatz

Berlin Alexanderplatz is director Rainer Werner Fassbinder (pronounced fossbinder, fossssbinder if your a snake) epic climax to his career. This film could hardly ever be watched in any form for the past few decades. Recently, it was restored, cleaned, given the deluxe treatment and given a renewed theatrical run at select film houses and film forums. It was adapted from the acclaimed German novel, and is coming out via Criterion this November.

.....oh, yeah.

It's 15 hours long.
It's a 7 disc set.

So, the conundrum. This landmark of film, this milestone, how do we rent it, do we rent it? Is there going to be enough people to even break even on it?

We took the plunge as loyal criterion-ites and ordered it.

So again, the challenge of renting out a 15 hour movie.

So let us hear if you want to see this film, if you know of someone who might. Can we tempt you?

We are going to split it into 2-4 hour chunks, or renting it out by 1-2 discs at a time.

Check it out, and give us some feedback.



Here is a synopsis from Criterion's website:

"Rainer Werner Fassbinder's controversial, fifteen-hour-plus Berlin Alexanderplatz, based on Alfred Döblin's great modernist novel, was the crowning achievement of a prolific director who, at age thirty-four, had already made forty films. Fassbinder’s immersive epic, restored in 2006 and now available on DVD in this country for the first time, follows the hulking, childlike ex-convict Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) as he attempts to "become an honest soul" amid the corrosive urban landscape of Weimar-era Germany. With equal parts cynicism and humanity, Fassbinder details a mammoth portrait of a common man struggling to survive in a viciously uncommon time."

Plus, it comes with an entire second adaptation of the novel by another director.....

# New high-definition digital transfer from the 2006 restoration by the Fassbinder Foundation and Bavaria Media, supervised and approved by director of photography Xaver Schwarzenberger

# - Two new documentaries by Fassbinder Foundation president Juliane Lorenz: one featuring interviews with the cast and crew, the other on the restoration

# - Hans-Dieter Hartl's 1980 documentary Notes on the Making of "Berlin Alexanderplatz"

# - Phil Jutzi's 1931, ninety-minute film of Alfred Döblin’s novel, from a screenplay co-written by Döblin himself

# - New video interview with Peter Jelavich, author of Berlin Alexanderplatz: Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture