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Berlin Alexanderplatz

1980

Seasons & Episodes

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EP1 The Punishment Begins Oct 12, 1980

In 1928 Berlin, Franz Biberkopf is released after serving four years in Tegel prison for killing his girlfriend Ida. After settling into his old apartment he visits Minna, Ida’s sister. Minna succumbs to his forceful advances. In a flashback we see Franz kill Ida with a cream whip after suspecting she was going to leave him. Franz later runs into his old friend Meck and has a drink with him in Max’s bar, a local place. There he meets a young Polish woman named Lina who moves in with him.

EP2 How is One to Live if One Doesn’t Want to Die? Oct 13, 1980

Franz employs himself by hocking tie holders on the street but has trouble making enough money. He is talked into selling the fascist newspaper Völkischer Beobachter and wearing a swastika armband. At Max’s bar, Franz is confronted by an old acquaintance named Dreske. Dreske and his friends sing “The Internationale” to provoke Franz. They nearly come to blows before Franz collapses in a fit.

EP3 A Hammer Blow to the Head Can Injure the Soul Oct 20, 1980

Lina is troubled by the shady nature of the jobs Franz is getting and has him meet a family friend, Otto Lüders, who has Franz join him selling shoelaces door-to-door. In one apartment, Franz encounters a woman whose deceased husband he closely resembles. He has sex with the widow and later tells Otto. Otto goes to the widow’s flat and attempts to seduce her, but she rejects him. Otto extorts money and steals from her in response. When Franz goes back to the widow, happily expecting another tryst, she angrily rejects him. Distraught, Franz runs away to live at a boarding-house while Meck and Lina search for him.

EP4 A Handful of People in the Depths of Silence Oct 27, 1980

Franz goes on an alcohol binge as a former medical orderly looks over him. He runs into Meck on the street one day. Meck had been living with Lina until she left him.

EP5 A Reaper with the Power of Our Lord Nov 03, 1980

Franz becomes re-acquainted with Eva, for whom he used to be a pimp and who feels a deep affection for him. At Max’s, Meck introduces Franz to Pums, the ringleader of an illegal enterprise. He also meets Reinhold, one of Pums’s men. Reinhold is tired of his woman, Fränze, and wants Franz to take her off his hands. Franz has her come over and makes love with her. She returns to him after she can’t find Reinhold. Reinhold then employs the same plan with his current woman, Cilly, whom Franz accommodates after getting rid of Fränze.

EP6 Love Has Its Price Nov 10, 1980

Reinhold is desperate to get rid of his current woman, Trude, but Franz won’t take her and wants to stick with Cilly. Franz gets sucked into Pums’s gang when he is drafted for a job as a last-minute replacement for Bruno, who gets beaten in the street. Franz ends up as a lookout as Pums, Reinhold, and Meck pull a robbery. In the getaway truck, Reinhold becomes suspicious of Franz because of a car that seems to be following them. Reinhold throws Franz out of the back of the truck.

EP7 Remember—An Oath can be Amputated Nov 17, 1980

Franz has survived the car accident, but his right arm has been amputated. He recuperates for a time with Eva and Eva’s lover Herbert. Herbert agitates against Pums’s syndicate, so the boss decides to take up a collection to help with Franz’s medical costs. Franz goes to a red light street and encounters a pimp who offers him a woman he calls the whore of Babylon.

EP8 The Sun Warms the Skin, but Burns it Sometimes Too Nov 24, 1980

Franz gets involved in an illegal enterprise with Willy, whom he met at a cabaret. Eva and Herbert drop by to see Franz and bring a young woman they offer as a new lover. Franz and the tender-hearted woman, whom he names Mieze, fall for each other. However, their spell of love is broken when Franz finds a love letter from another man.

EP9 About the Eternities Between the Many and the Few Dec 01, 1980

Eva explain to Franz that Mieze just wants to work to support him as Franz cannot do so due to his missing arm. He reconciles with Mieze. Franz goes to Reinhold’s and tells him how he has become a pimp. Reinhold is disgusted by Franz’s stump of an arm. Franz is inspired by a Communist rally and spouts his newly learned rhetoric to Eva and Herbert, which upsets Eva.

EP10 Loneliness Tears Cracks of Madness Even in Walls Dec 08, 1980

As Mieze cannot have children, Eva tells her she will have a child with Franz that Mieze can then raise. Mieze is delighted. Eva also tells Mieze she’s concerned that Franz is concerting with Willy and Communists. Mieze gets him to agree to stay out of politics. After Mieze describes the agreement made with Eva for Franz’s baby, Franz is horrified as he thinks Mieze wants to be rid of him. Mieze pleads that she loves him. The two get drunk and are happy until Mieze’s rich client arrives. Franz only finds out then that she is going away with him for three days and weeps in despair.

EP11 Knowledge is Power and the Early Bird Catches the Worm Dec 15, 1980

Franz goes to Reinhold and tells him he wants to get involved with Pums again. Reinhold still has his suspicions but Franz is allowed to assist the gang with a job. Mieze is upset that Franz is earning money because she thinks Franz wants to be independent of her, but Franz reassures her. Franz brags to Reinhold about Mieze’s devotion and decides to show him what a fine woman she is. In the apartment, Franz has Reinhold hide in the bed when Mieze arrives. She reveals she is in love with another man. Franz is angered and beats her cruelly, but Reinhold saves her and throws Franz out. Mieze goes out to Franz and the two reconcile, though she has been bloodied by him. Franz and Mieze take a trip outside Berlin, where he explains to her he simply wanted Reinhold to see a true woman.

EP12 The Serpent in the Soul of the Serpent Dec 22, 1980

Franz introduces Mieze to Meck. Reinhold blackmails Meck to set up a meeting for him with Mieze. Meck takes Mieze on a drive to Freienwalde and delivers her to Reinhold. Reinhold takes her for a walk in the woods, where she resists his advances. Mieze wants to know more about Franz, and Reinhold reveals it is because of him that Franz lost his arm. Mieze is horrified at this revelation. Reinhold strangles her and leaves her in the woods.

EP13 The Outside and the Inside and the Secret of Fear of the Secret Dec 29, 1980

Franz tells Eva that Mieze has left him. Eva reassures him, though she is a bit concerned herself. A robbery pulled off by Pums’s gang goes wrong and Meck burns himself with a welding torch. Franz takes Meck to his apartment to bandage his wound. Meck tells Franz that Reinhold is a bad guy, but Franz claims he has a good heart. Meck takes the police out into the woods and helps them find Mieze’s strangled body, telling them he helped to bury her. Eva brings Franz a newspaper that relates Mieze’s murder. Franz lapses into demented laughter, claiming he is pleased that at least Mieze did not leave him as he had thought.

EP14 My Dream of the Dream of Franz Biberkopf by Alfred Döblin, An Epilogue Dec 29, 1980

In a fantasy sequence, Franz walks along a street of the dead with two angels. He finds Mieze, but she disappears from his arms. Reinhold is in prison for the crimes committed by a man whose identity he has acquired. He is anguished that his cellmate and lover is being released. Franz is taken to an asylum. Much of the rest of the episode takes place in his imagination. Franz’s being run over by the car is re-enacted with different characters taking on the roles of victim and driver. In a striking sequence, Franz and Mieze are treated like animals being slaughtered in an abattoir. On a nativity set Franz is raised on a cross as the other characters watch. An atom bomb goes off in the background and the angels clear the dead. The surreal imagery ceases suddenly and Franz is at Reinhold’s trial testifying to his good character. Reinhold is given ten years for manslaughter. Eva tells Franz she has lost the baby. The film concludes with Franz as an assistant gatekeeper at a factory. He is alert to his job but not to what is going on in the world as war is on the horizon.
8.4| 0h30m| NR| en
Synopsis

In late 1920s Berlin, Franz Biberkopf is released from prison and vows to go straight. However, he soon finds himself embroiled in the city’s criminal underworld.

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Reviews

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic
Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.
bunko-paniczny Easy! Or, it was for me. The first time I saw this film, was in New York, before the DVD was released. I was enchanted and mesmerized from the first reel! Admittedly, I am a Fassbinder fanatic, but I don't think the film requires the viewer to be one? However, in my opinion, it is a bit like watching a 16 hour amalgam of every Fassbinder film rolled into one gigantic series (there are bits reminiscent of his early work, Katzelmacher, etc. The mid period Sirk inspired "sturmdramas" The Merchant of Four Seasons, Fear Eats the Soul and even a hint at what his last film Querelle would be like. It's all there!). When they played the full series in Manhattan (I think you could watch two hours of it at a time?)...it played a few weeks w/other Fassbinder films...but I was there to watch THIS! I could have watched eight hours of it a day! The first day I went with my girlfriend at the time and a friend of mine. After the first part, my girlfriend dropped out (we broke up about a week after, I don't know if this filmic marathon (& my Fassbinder obsession) played a part? If it did?...Fassbinder won! and I'd do it again?). Naturally, she refused to go with me to the second part-but my friend hung in there-so we went. It was about an hour and a half into this viewing that my friend dropped out...people were dropping like flies, at the mercy of this magnum opus! I was still enchanted and could have watched another full eight hours! Well, my friends, I sat in that theater alone and watched the rest of the movie all by myself. I never found the film boring or dull, lagging or drab in any way. I simply watched, could not STOP watching; mesmerized and absorbed in the brilliance of this work. I even cried at the end...poor, poor Franz Biberkopf. I only mention the above because: this is clearly NOT a film for everyone. Hardly... I was elated when I heard Criterion was going to release this cinematic marvel to DVD. Like a sick junkie I was: shaking, sweating and fidgety while I anticipated the release of this new restoration of the original 16mm print(!), the drool fell and hung from my lips as I waited for "the day". Finally, it was released...it had a steep price tag, but like any junkie I was willing to rob and steal to get my 'fix'! Folks, it did NOT disappoint! Criterion did a brilliant, monumental...a miraculous job of restoring this film. In fact, I barely recognized it as the film I watched in the theater...it looked THAT much better! The one I saw was gray, washed out and kinda muddy looking. But this...wow! The colors actually pop...the focus is crystal clear...it's never TOO dark (as I remember parts were), it is miraculous what they have done! And you should ALL consider yourselves VERY lucky to have this re-shined gem to view and review. I highly doubt there will be a Fassbinder retrospective anytime soon? This is the next best thing! For those who like film and novels, this may be just the 'fix' you're looking for? Because, to me anyway, I always felt this the best combination of the two art forms. It is a film, a TV series, certainly and doesn't cheat you out of a cinematic experience and yet you can get just as absorbed and involved in the characters and their lives as you would a really fine novel. This is just plain brilliant film making! Not a wrong note or shot or performance in the whole thing: IN ALL 16 hours! That alone boggles the mind, but that Fassbinder (a mere man-?) was also able to create, construct and organize this masterpiece; on a television budget, at break-neck speed and on 16mm no less is enough to blow what's left of that mind! To me, there is no question: if there are geniuses of modern cinema? Fassbinder (or his 'spirit'anyway?) sits at the top of the pile! So...Do yourselves a favor and watch this film...whether you get as 'hooked' on it as I did. Gobbling the thing up, biting, ripping off and eating whole parts as you drool from your lips like some obese monster at Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas; or throw the whole thing into a tuna can like Billie Holiday, cook it up, suck it up in a giant syringe and inject the full series directly into your veins, like a sick slobbering junkie drooling over his fix in a shooting gallery; watching it in one sitting...or whether you slowly savor every nuance, brilliant shot,camera movement, Fassbinder's hypnotic narration, the spellbinding story and brilliant top notch acting: like a gourmet food critic or sniffing, swilling and looking at it through the sun like some high brow fine wine taster. No matter how you watch it...watch it! It's well worth the time and money... I'm telling you you're not gonna find anything this good on TV or the cinema these days...not a chance!
jazzy11 Watching Berlin Alexanderplatz was the pursuit of a week and a half, after which I read James Joyce's "Ulysses," all the Psalms, a selected portion of "War and Peace," and a biography of Robert Wiene (who directed "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"), all of which heavily inform this cinematic novel, a true German gem.While you may have been told that this is a love story, it is more apt to say that it is a "curiosity story," stressing the classic dichotomoy of Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies in art. Fassbinder's narrative bristles with the dissonance of a Schoenberg composition, jumbling Franz and Reinhold's investigation of love with an undermentioned aspect of this film, its subtle portrayal of the roots of the German Brutalist ascetic.With almost 100 roles, "Berlin Alexanderplatz" is like a confession from Fassbinder to the world, showing us how many ways the human experience can unfold.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU Nothing can be more melodramatic than German melodrama, particularly that of the beginning of the 20th century. Franz Biberkopf's story is such a deep, thick and sickening melodrama and Fassbinder makes it so dense, so heavy that we are totally overwhelmed by this hardening cast-plaster, a melodrama contained between Biberkopf's release from the prison where he has spent four years for killing his girlfriend, Ida, to the end of his life as a concierge in some factory after the trial in which he is a witness against the accused, his friend Reinhold who had assassinated Franz's last girl friend Mieze, after he was released from the mental institution to which he had been committed after the crime. Biberkopf is the perfect victim who is ready to do anything he is asked to do by the people he considers his friends at the moment of the request. He is totally dependent on women and at the same time reveals he is very particular about them and actually loves only very few. Eva of course, his permanent love who lives with a rich Herbert and carries his child for a few months. Ida, who he killed out of rage one morning. And Wieze who will be killed by Reinhold. The second characteristic of Franz Biberkopf is that he has the brain of a beaver, as his name implies. He is not very swift but he is faithful and he can suffer anything from his friends, though at times he may be taken, over by a fit of rage that makes him blind and murderous, though he can easily be stopped. But to survive in Germany in 1928-29 he is doing what he can, anything he comes across: selling newspapers, including the Nazi newspaper, selling erotic literature, selling shoelaces, being part of a gang of thieves, and being a pimp. Then the whole story is nothing but details of a sad ,life that can only be sad. Fassbinder makes it so dense, so packed with hefty details and events that we don't see the thirteen episode flying by. And yet the masterpiece of this long series is the epiloque. Then Fassbinder describes what is happening in Biberkopf's mind after his seizure of insanity when he realizes his Mieze was killed by his supposedly best friend who had caused him to lose an arm when this Reinhold had tried to kill him, the infamous Reinhold. In this epilogue, Fassbinder becomes the most baroque, or even rococo, of all screen artists you can imagine. He brings Biberkopf down into the deranged world of his insanity. He is cruder than Bosh, crueler than Goya, and he depicts the physical dereliction to which Biberkopf is reduced in that mental institution, the haughty condescending carelessness of doctors and personnel, and the haunted mind of his. And in this haunted nightmare he experiences, Fassbinder shows how he is tortured by Reinhold and a few others who have used him in life, how he is tortured by both his lubricity and his refusal to acknowledge it, how he is physically tormented in all kinds of cruel physical punishments repeated ad eternam, a vision of hell borrowed from Dante of course. The point here is that Biberkopf will come out of the institution when he reaches some personal peace in that insanity, in no way the consciousness of his own victimization, but a dull taming of his inner world into a senseless, meaningless and emotionless routine that will transform him into a faithful and reliable concierge looking after cars, lost and abandoned forever in his blessed solitude of the body and the soul. This epilogue is luxuriant and so dense that we just wonder how it could go on like that, over and over again, each situation of victimization opening onto another as naturally as a door you push open and drop closed behind you. Sickening and thickening at the same time, so that you feel totally buried in that grossness and in that cruelty. You are becoming Biberkopf and at the same time the torturing insanity because Biberkopf appears to you as deserving his fate, his insanity, hence your scourges and your violence. It is amazing at this moment to see how Fassbinder manages to make you be a double voyeur and transport you both into Biberkopf himself who cannot rebel in spite of you inhabiting him with the justification to rebel, and thus into the torturing insanity to punish him for not rebelling or to incite him to rebel. The only film-maker Fassbinder can compete with in this perverse mediatic transfer is Clive Barker in his early films or in his Hellraiser series, except that Fassbinder adds an ancient Greek dimension to that delirium that is vital since it will lead Biberkopf to surviving in a mixture of the International, patriotic sings and emerging Nazi military rites, rituals and marching beating tempos.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
littlesiddie ************ SPOILERS ************I don't know that this review will really contain any spoilers or not, because I don't really think there's much to spoil. The structure of the story is very episodic and repetitive and nothing much happens. Instead, a lot of figurative cud chewing is done on what little does concretely happen. In any event, I'm not going to hold back in this review, so I might conceivably spoil something.This story is about a guy named Franz. The story is: 1) he gets out of prison (for murdering his girlfriend in a stupid drunken rage), 2) he bums around on the street and gets drunk a lot, 3) he meets a guy named Reinhold, 4) he joins a gang of petty gangsters, 5) his best buddy Reinhold pushes him out of the back of a moving car and he loses his arm when another car runs over it, 6) he bums around and gets drunk some more, 7) he goes mad and hallucinates for a long time in a mental hospital. And there's a closing scene in a courtroom where Franz (supposedly recovered from his mental illness) gives testimony that gets his best buddy Reinhold off with a light sentence for killing one of Reinhold's girlfriends.This is the plot as near as I can make it out. I apologize if it's not completely accurate. Fatigue and disgust prevent me from viewing another minute of this interminable nausea-fest.Maybe I should say at this juncture that I've never really "gotten" any of Fassbinder's films. Perhaps I'm just too locked into a breeder mentality, I don't know. Also, there might be a lot of historical and cultural information encoded here that's specific to Germany between the wars that I can't appreciate.Anyway, the relationship between Franz and Reinhold is the key feature of the story, everything else revolves around it. Franz is kind of a happy, dim-witted Homer Simpson type guy. And Reinhold is kind of a twisted, compulsive, neurotic guy given to spasms of intense misogyny.So the whole thing, to me, was just one long, dreary, alcoholic, ugly, perverse circus of horrors. There was no particular plot, the characters were merely repellent, and not in the least engaging. And the dialog seemed fairly dull and pedestrian. Franz was prone to loud, expansive public orations, but they just seemed to be the rantings of a dim-witted drunkard.It's not clear what the film maker (or the novelist, Alfred Doblin) were trying to show here. That drunken petty criminals had a hard time on the streets of Berlin during the period between the wars? I have a feeling that what was being reached for was a lot more evident in the novel. But I'm not sure I'll take the time to investigate it, though.And the misogyny in this mini-series is just totally grotesque and sickening. One memorable sequence is when Reinhold is trying to rid himself of his latest girlfriend (that's one of his problems, you see, he compulsively goes after women, and then, as soon as he gets one, he immediately detests her), and he hurls verbal abuse at her out of the blue and starts beating her and telling her to leave. When he finally succeeds in driving her out, he's frothing at the mouth. And then he says to another friend who has witnessed his performance: "Franz would be so proud of me!" He says this because prior to this, Reinhold had convinced Franz to take his ex-girlfriends off his hands. This is a key element of the plot, Reinhold's girlfriend problems. Real believable, easily empathizable stuff, huh?And on a different note: I thought it was quaint, in a very jarring way, to have 60's and 70's pop music playing in the background on the soundtrack during some of the hallucination sequences. A couple of the songs I recognized where by the Velvet Underground, "Candy Says", for example. Since the story takes place in the late 1920's, I believe, this was very disorienting to me. Also, we are treated to Fassbinder himself leering at Franz, and into the camera, for a few minutes, standing beside the two angels (dressed like Roman legionnaires, for some reason) that are visiting Franz during one of his hallucinations.Here's another little tidbit. At the end of a number of scenes, random news items and medical health items are read in voice over. These tend to be very bland and cold and impersonal. How this reflects on the story, I'm not completely sure. Those were cold, hard times in Berlin to be suffering through during that era? Modernity does have its downsides, that's for sure.The general overall feel of this mini-series was like a combination of old Eliot Ness "Untouchables" TV shows combined with boring out-takes from David Lynch's "Blue Velvet".I wouldn't recommend this mini-series to anyone. The amount of time I spent studying it, I feel, was completely wasted.