#946: FASSBINDER, Rainer Werner: Eight Hours Don't Make A Day (1972-73)

FASSBINDER, Rainer Werner (Germany)
Eight Hours Don't Make A Day[1972-73]
Spine #946
Blu-ray

Commissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany from a critical — yet far from cynical — perspective. Over the course of five episodes, the sprawling story tracks the everyday triumphs and travails of the young toolmaker Jochen (Gottfried John) and many of the people populating his world, including the woman he loves (Hanna Schygulla), his eccentric family, and his fellow workers, with whom he bands together to improve conditions on the factory floor. Rarely screened since its popular but controversial initial broadcast, Eight Hours Don't Make a Day rates as a true discovery, one of Fassbinder's earliest and most tender experiments with the possibilities of melodrama.

495 minutes

Color
Monaural
in German
1:37:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2018

Director/Writer

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was 27-28 when he wrote and directed Eight Hours Don't Make a Day.

Other Fassbinder films in the Collection:

Eclipse Series 39: Love Is Colder Than Death (1969)
Eclipse Series 39: Katzelmacher (1969)
Eclipse Series 39: Gods Of The Plague (1969)
Eclipse Series 39: The American Soldier (1970)

Eclipse Series 39: Beware Of A Holy Whore (1970)
#758: The Merchant Of Four Seasons (1971)

#740: The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant (1972)
#598: World On A Wire (1973)
#198: Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (1974)
#851: Fox And His Friends (1975)
#204: The Marriage Of Maria Braun (1978)
#411: Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)
#206: Lola (1981)
#205: Veronika Voss (1982)
#1221: Querelle (1982)

The Film

495 minutes and just the opposite of a tedious slog — this early 70’s West German television series is a complete joy.

**

Episode One: Jochen and Marion

Four generations of the Epp family are celebrating Grandma (Luise Ullrich)’s 60th birthday. When Jochen (Gottfried John) opens the champagne, it spills onto Aunt Klara (Christine Oesterlein)’s dress. She slaps Jochen, and little Sylvia (Andrea Schober) laughs, who gets slapped by her discipline-obsessed father, Harald (Kurt Raab).

Jochen is asked to go get some more champagne, which you can apparently buy from vending machines. As he is about to drop his marks into the slot, he hears a loud banging coming from another dispenser, where a pretty young woman is apparently enraged that her purchase isn’t forthcoming.

She is Marion (Hanna Schygulla) and is trying to buy some pickles. Jochen comes to the rescue and calmly gets the machine to open up the slot and pulls out a jar of pickles. Marion keeps banging and finally is rewarded with a second jar of pickles.

They hit it off, and Jochen is escorting her back to Oma’s party. Only he is so distracted by Marion that he forgets to buy the champagne.

**

And we’re off on a nearly eight-hour marathon of an early 70’s West German television series.

A liberal climate engulfed the country at that time, and the public broadcaster WDR commissioned Fassbinder to make this flagship “worker/family” film. The title implies that work isn’t everything — and RWF spends about equal time showing the “family” drama, as well.

**

The acting (John, Schygulla and Ullrich, in particular) is superb throughout the series, and Fassbinder’s camera is never at a loss for a creative angle.

Episode Two: Grandma and Gregor

We already know headstrong Grandma — but when she picks up Gregor (Werner Finck) on a park bench (reading Lady Chatterly’s Lover!), the viewer is immediately charmed at the affair, which takes off like a Chaplin short, as the dominating Grandma — always brimming with some new idea of some sort — pulls the unassuming Gregor along for the ride. Their relationship props up the entire series with a feeling of delight.

Episode Three: Franz (Wolfgang Schenck) and Ernst (Peter Gauhe)

Franz is one of Jochen’s co-workers, hoping to become the group’s new foreman. Ernst is hired as the new foreman before Franz gets a chance to pass the exam. The interaction between the two (and the group) is as unexpected and surprising as it is hilarious.

Episode Four: Harald (Raab) and Monika (a gorgeous Renate Roland)

Monika can’t take Harald’s crap any longer.

Episode Five: Irmgard (Irm Hermann, Fassbinder’s girlfriend at the time) and Rolf (Rudolf Waldemar Brem)

Irmgard Erlkönig. I had to ask my German correspondent if this could actually be a real last name. It could not. Click on the link to read about the Goethe poem.

**

There are some spectacular moments — from both the POV of the auteur and the scenario and acting — in this excellent series — and truly, never a dull moment.

Give it a watch if you haven’t already!

Film Rating (0-60):

57

The Extras

The Booklet

Twelve-page wraparound featuring an essay by scholar Moira Weigel.

The Utopia Channel

“As an American [in 2018], I find it impossible to watch Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day without longing for more stories like it, for us, here and now. If Fassbinder was preoccupied with how Germans’ lives had been distorted by their failure to reckon with their country’s fascist history, the United States is currently being confronted by its own failures to see the past clearly. The repressed authoritarian tendencies that Theodor Adorno and Philip K. Dick warned our parents and grandparents about are rearing their ugly heads. As right- and left-wing movements worldwide battle over new media channels, and centrist calls to revive old forms of objectivity and civility fall flat, the issues that WDR was attempting to address with the worker film feel increasingly urgent. How do we define pluralism and liberalism, and how must media be organized in order to foster these values? What are revolutionary aesthetics, and who decides? Can an artist speak to a broad audience both inventively and democratically, estranging things as they are without coercing others into accepting his or her vision?”

Commentary

None.

A Series Becomes a Family Reunion

2017 documentary directed by Juliane Lorenz, featuring interviews with actors Schygulla, Hermann, Schenck, and Hirschmüller.

A great look back by the actors still living, and some great old footage of Fassbinder directing and being interviewed — exclaiming “what a stupid question!” to a journalist trying to provoke him about his portrayal of the working class.

Interview

With film scholar Jane Shattuc.

A Fassbinder expert. She discusses the series in relation to the early-70’s era …

Extras Rating (0-40):

35

57 + 35 =

92

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