Gods of the Plague

Harry Baer plays a newly released ex-convict who slowly but surely finds his way back into the Munich criminal underworld. Meanwhile, his attentions are torn between two women (Hanna Schygulla and Margarethe von Trotta) and the friend (Günther Kaufmann) who shot his brother. This sensual, artfully composed film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder is a study of romantic and professional futility.

Germany
1969
92 minutes
Black & White
1.33:1
German

Available In

Collector's Set

Early Fassbinder

DVD Box Set

5 Discs

$55.96

Cast & Credits

Cast

Hanna Schygulla: Joanna Reiher
Margarethe von Trotta: Margarethe
Harry Baer: Franz Walsch
Günther Kaufmann: Günther
Carla Aulaulu: Carla
Ingrid Caven: Magdalena Fuller
Jan George: Cop
Lilo Pempeit: Mother
Marian Seidowski: Marian Walsch
Micha Cochina: Jo
Yaak Karsunke: Inspector
Hannes Gromball: Supermarket manager

Credits

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Screenplay: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cinematography: Dietrich Lohmann
Editors: Rainer Werner Fassbinder (as Franz Walsch)
Editors: Thea Eymèsz
Art direction: Kurt Raab
Music: Peer Raben

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Eclipse Series 39: Early Fassbinder

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Essays — Aug 26, 2013

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Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Writer, Director

Rainer Werner Fassbinder made an astonishing forty-four movies—theatrical features, television movies and miniseries, and shorts among them—in a career that spanned a mere sixteen years, ending with his death at thirty-seven in 1982. He is perhaps remembered best for his intense and exquisitely shabby social melodramas (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul)—heavily influenced by Hollywood films, especially the female-driven tearjerkers of Douglas Sirk, and featuring misfit characters that often reflected his own fluid sexuality and self-destructive tendencies. But his body of work runs the gamut from epic period pieces (Berlin Alexanderplatz, the BRD Trilogy) to dystopic science fiction (World on a Wire) as well. One particular fascination of Fassbinder’s was the way the ghosts of the past, specifically those of World War II, haunted contemporary German life—an interest that wedded him to many of the other artists of the New German Cinema movement, which began in the late 1960s.