Mario Adorf

Lola

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Lola bathed in red and orange light

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s BRD Trilogy isn’t really meant to be a trilogy and is, in any case, in the wrong order. Take 1981’s Lola. Second of the “trilogy” to be released, it’s marked as BRD3 quite clearly in the opening titles. Veronika Voss, last of the three, was marked BRD2. Only the first one, The Marriage of Maria Braun, seems to be the right film in the right place. Here, BRD stands for Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany). As to the trilogy not really being a trio. It was never meant to be one, it’s just that Fassbinder died before he could make any more, in 1982. So who knows how many … Read more

The Tin Drum

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Oskar bangs his drum

The Tin Drum won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980, as well as the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1979. Not everyone was enamoured, though. While the Los Angeles Times thought it “a masterwork of cinema” and the New York Times slightly less effusively reported that it “compels attention,” Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times took against it, doling out only two (out of four stars) in a review that expressed bafflement at other critics’ admiration of the film. The years have tended to vindicate Ebert. The movie, like the original Günter Grass book on which it was based, has been steadily rerated downwards over the decades, not least since … Read more