Fassbinder in Hollywood

Rainer Werner Fassbinder never made a Hollywood movie - which makes this an oddly tangential approach to his legacy. Too much time is wasted on pointless speculation about what an American Fassbinder movie might have looked like, and his old collaborator Ulli Lommel rather hijacks the documentary, as a kind of proxy. Once it settles down, Fischer's film does, however, have salient observations from cameraman Michael Ballhaus, actress Hana Schygulla and German director in Hollywood, Wim Wenders. Like almost every new wave film-maker, Fassbinder was hugely marked by Hollywood - especially émigré German director Douglas Sirk, whose influence led him away from thrillers towards the exploration of emotion. Nevertheless, the thesis is too reductive to do justice to a vital body of work.