The first feature in the frantic career of Rainer Werner Fassbinder is, like Godard's debut Breathless, a nod to the traditional gangster movie. This time, however, the tough-guy attitudes are imparted to a trio of typical Fassbinder losers, slouching about in the drab underworld of Munich. They are played by Alain Delon lookalike Ulli Lommel (who poses in a trenchcoat and film noir fedora), Fassbinder himself, and the director's blond goddess Hanna Schygulla. The film works hard to subvert conventional notions of movie storytelling, with lots of loooong pauses and stylized gestures-and as such, feels more like a trial run than a full-blown Fassbinder meisterwork. But everywhere, in the insolent opening shot or the final thrilling cut from car interior to bleak landscape, you can sense the utter confidence that burbled out of this gifted German: he was only 23, and he was going places in a hurry. -Robert Horton.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid tribute to his mentor, Douglas Sirk, with this loose adaptation of All That Heaven Allows, the classic American soaper of a widow falling for younger man to the disapproval of family and friends. Fassbinder combines the Sirk melodrama with the story told in his own The American Soldier. An aging, lonely charwoman (sweet old Brigitte Mira) befriends a Moroccan guest worker (El Hedi ben Salem) at least 20 years her junior. Finding comfort and happiness in one another's company, they suddenly marry. Her kids are aghast, his friends appalled, and the neighborhood turns its back, so the two pull together for support. Their relationship ironically begins to unravel when the pressure of community prejudice eases and they must confront the gulf between them. Combining melodrama with social commentary, Fassbinder offers a sharp, incisive portrait of prejudice in modern Germany grounded in contemporary social conditions. Mira delivers a tender, vulnerable performance and Fassbinder molds Salem's stiffness into a distinctive character trait of a man ill at ease in German society. It's an assured and beautiful film, full of gliding camerawork and evocative images, and invested with intimacy and gentleness. Even Fassbinder's characteristically grim conclusion defies tragedy for a glimmer of hope, a welcome and affecting rarity in his career. [+]

Margarethe von Trotta, the most audible female voice of the New German Cinema, had acted for film, written screenplays, and even codirected (The Lost Honor of Katrina Blum with her former husband Volker Schlondorff) before finally embarking on her first solo project in 1977. The Second Awakening of Christa Klages, based on the true story of a social worker who robs a bank to fund a failing day-care center, is an uncompromising work that tackles politics and social issues with a radical fervor and feminist perspective unseen in the work of her contemporaries. Tina Engel plays Christina, a militant revolutionary who becomes a fugitive hunted as much for her politics as her crime, while the young woman she held hostage tries to track her down for her own personal reasons. Von Trotta brings an impassioned intensity to Christina's voyage of self-discovery, which pulls the film through slow passages, blunt political messages, and an occasionally clumsy style, creating a dramatically powerful work that builds to a climactic epiphany at the film's mesmerizing conclusion. After this remarkable debut, von Trotta built on her work in her stylistically assured second film, Sisters, or the Balance of Happiness. Be forewarned that the poor print source results in a muddy-looking tape well below the quality of most commercial tapes. -Sean Axmaker.

Almost certainly the wildest movie ever made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Satan's Brew is as unhinged as some of the director's masterpieces are rigorously controlled. A kind of gross-out comedy on art and fame, Satan's Brew takes as its hero a celebrated poet, played by longtime RWF cohort Kurt Raab, whose resemblance to Peter Lorre is uncanny. In the first of the film's many affronts to good taste, the poet kills his wealthy mistress in an S&M game, thus prompting a financial crisis-he may even be forced to start writing again. The movie careens from one jaw-dropping oddity to the next, inspiring the suspicion that Mike Myers may have seen it before inventing his "Dieter" character. This depraved three-ring circus is not the way to be introduced to Fassbinder, but the director's fans will be amused. To quote the movie itself: "An epic from the sordid depths of humanity!" -Robert Horton.