| Berlin Alexanderplatz - Criterion Collection | 
| Actors: Guenter Lamprecht, Peter Kollek, Mechthild Grossmann, Hans Zander, Yaak Karsunke
Studio: Criterion Collection
Category: DVD
List Price: $124.95
Buy New: $88.76
You Save: $36.19 (29%)
Buy New/Used from $78.96
Avg. Customer Rating:   (23 reviews)
Sales Rank: 20911
Format: Box Set, Color, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Ntsc, Subtitled
Languages: German (Original Language), German (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 941 minutes
Number Of Items: 7
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.7 x 1.6
MPN: IMEDCC1719D
UPC: 715515026529
EAN: 0715515026529
ASIN: B000VARC2S
Release Date: November 13, 2007
Theatrical Release Date: August 10, 1983
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Rainer Werner Fassbinder s wildly controversial fifteen-hour-plus Berlin Alexanderplatz, based on Alfred Doeblin 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 available on DVD in this country for the first time, follows the hulking, violent, yet strangely childlike ex-convict Franz Biberkopf (Guenter Lamprecht) as he attempts to become an honest soul amidst 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.
Amazon.com
Rainer Werner Fassbinder?s epic adaptation of Alfred Doeblin?s German novel, written (and set) between two world wars in the 20th century, is still every bit the towering achievement it appeared to be upon the episodic, 15-hour film?s 1983 theatrical release in America. The story of a hapless lug buffeted by forces of discontent and disastrous change in Germany--following the country?s defeat at Versailles and during the rise of the Third Reich--Berlin Alexanderplatz is a roaming, hulking nightmare about people with no control over their destinies. The film opens with central character Franz Biberkopf (Gunter Lamprecht) struggling to reintegrate into the world after a four-year incarceration for murdering his girlfriend. Half-mad with guilt, sensory overload, sexual starvation and general disorientation, Franz goes in search of a plan for survival but finds the ground constantly shifting beneath his feet. Hooking up with the docile Lina (Elisabeth Trissenaar), Franz vows to straighten out his life and avoid his old tendencies toward petty thievery and pimping. But the alternatives are typically eclipsed by bad luck, unstoppable impulses, temptation and violent opposition between crime and order, Communists and fascists, dreamers and scoundrels. Over time, Franz becomes everything from shoelace salesman to Nazi sympathizer to pawn of a crime boss to victim of his fate. Along the way, he falls apart repeatedly, then picks himself up to see what might come next. Unfortunately, what comes next is generally another peek into the social and economic chaos of his time. Fassbinder, who died at age 36 before Berlin Alexanderplatz was released theatrically in America, found in Doeblin?s story something akin to the running theme of despair in his own, prolific output of 40 movies. Among his several masterpieces, Berlin Alexanderplatz is in a league of its own, not to be missed. --Tom Keogh
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 Keeps getting better! December 26, 2008
This movie is so good that amazon keeps raising the price...from $59 to $75 to $112!!!
I love Fassbinder, but jeez!
 One of Fassbinder's Best if Not the Best December 20, 2008
Fassbinder made so many films, it's virtually impossible to keep track of them all. Most were good, a few weren't, and several of them were great. This is one of the latter. I would give it five stars but the epilogue doesn't quite work for me; I find it a little dated. I also didn't appreciate the animal sacrifice, as others have mentioned, unnecessary in my opinion. But it's a nice little window into the chaos and hardship during Weimar Germany. Fassbinder said that Doblin's book was perhaps the most important book he ever read, or one of them, in any case. I believe that because he really puts everything he has into this production. He never judges his characters and never moralizes. From what I've read, he's very faithful to the source material---the interior monologues of Franz, newspaper headlines, the merging of the media with the metropolis, etc---but he added the character of Franz's landlady, which works quite well. The Criterion restoration is awesome. Berlin Alexanderplatz meanders here and there, which is fine because it's really a story about the dance of life and death, and so the plot takes a backseat at times. But that's not the reason to watch it, anyway.
Well Worth the Effort November 20, 2008
This German mini-series by the great Rainer Werner Fassbinder still resonates 20 years after I saw it. Fassbinder was quite a character in his day, and some people nicknamed him "the German Belushi" for his out of control lifestyle and tastes.
I viewed this many chaptered masterpiece, which some critics now see as the precursor to The Sopranos, when it was premiered on NYC's public Channel 13. I made a commitment to watch this series in its entirety, even with the burden of subtitles, and I was rewarded with a spellbinding, extremely psychological portrait of the Berlin of yesteryear.
Some startling memories: Fassbinder's own mother appears in vivid red as part of a crime syndicate, Franz, the lead character's arm being run over by a motor vehicle and what has to be one of the most bizarre scenarios I've ever witnessed on television: a hallucinatory vision of the afterlife to the tune of Janis Joplin.
All actors are outstanding, and most of them I had never seen before: Barbara Sukowa and Hannah Shygulla (sorry for misspelling) and the the actors who played Franz and Rheinhold.
I would love to watch this again, because I'm sure there are scenes that I missed and also to revisit something extraordinary.
See It November 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you like German cinema or just incredibly well-made films of any sort, watch this. This is the best made for tv production I have ever seen. It makes any mini-series American television has made look amatuerish by comparison. This is made with the professionalism and skill of a major studio movie.
Fassbinder and several of the actors had worked together before and it shows. The various professionals involved trust each other and I understand it was a quick, relatively painless shoot. The series functions as one long movie and I was never bored or weary.
Gunter Lamprecht, Gottfried Johns and Barbara Sukowa are particularly impressive. Lamprecht is in about 99% of the 15 1/2 hour running time. An incredible performance. Simply immerses himself in the role.
Fassbinder tends to run hot and cold for me but this is a tour de force. I've never seen anything like it anddon't expect to again. It combines the best of television's leisurely storytelling w the best of cinema's creativity and technical excellence.
This is it. This is how good film or tv can be. Try it.
Round One September 20, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I just finished parts 1 and 2 of this extraordinary project. At this length, it is not properly speaking a movie, but rather a TV series. It is to be compared to the very best American and British serials of this sort; "Lovesome Dove" comes to mind, perhaps there are others. This is a magnificent project and I can't wait to watch the next parts. The film has the look of a studio lot production. The lighting and so on are made to create a seedy realism and an artificiality, which could probably be traced back to Brecht and beyond. This is theatre; this is life. I happen to love this blend which is almost absent from American film-making. The acting is superb. The lead plays a classic sort of loser. We haven't been asked in this country to like someone like this for a very long time. There is a hint, though, of the 1940s throughout, so perhaps American studio stars of the period will come to mind. There's a bit of Willy Loman about this guy. He's a Nazi, but he could just as well have become a pharmacist, a trucker, a public school teacher, or a doorman. He fell in with the Nazis but who's to know why. It's the kind of thing that explains the lives of 80% of the human race. Fassbinder directs with great tenderness; clearly, he loves this guy and sees him as a man of honor or as a nobody. What's the difference?
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