Fiction
DVD
Availability
Details
PUBLISHED
©2006
DESCRIPTION
7 videodiscs (940 min.) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in
ISBN/ISSN
LANGUAGE
SERIES
Criterion collection #411
NOTES
Based on Alfred Doblin's novel, set in pre-Nazi Berlin
Story of Franz Biberkof, a former transportation worker. When we first see Franz, he has just been released from prison where he has served four years for an irrational act of violence. He returns to his Berlin neighborhood resolved to go straight but forces in his environment, the influences of his cronies, the grinding poverty, the decay of society overwhelm him and he begins his duel with fate
Features: 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 inteviews with the cast and crew (on disc six), 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 ; new and improved English subtitle translation ; plus a book featuring an essay by filmmaker Tom Tykwer, reflections from Fassbinder, an interview with Schwarzenberger, and German author Thomas Steinfeld on the novel
Writer and director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder ; cinematography, Xaver Schwarzenberger, Josef Vavra ; art director, Harry Baer ; editors, Julianne Lorenz ... [et al]
Günter Lamprecht (Franz Biberkopf), Hanna Schygulla (Eva), Barbara Sukowa (Mieze), Gottfried John (Reinhold), Ivan Desny (Pums)
Originally produced as motion picture for television in 1979-1980. Issued in 13 parts and an epilogue
DVD ; Dolby digital mono
In German with English subtitles