Another trio of titles is ready to join the ranks of 4xblu’s online offerings. Today’s additions include Seijun Suzuki’s “Youth of the Beast,” “Bound” by the Wachowskis, and R.W. Fassbinder’s “Effi Briest.”
When he was just starting out, Fassbinder regarded filming an adaptation of Theodor Fontane’s novel “Effi Briest” his dream project. The subtitle he created for the movie, “Or many who have an idea of their possibilities and need nevertheless accept the prevailing order in the way they act, and thereby strengthen and confirm it absolutely,” seems to indicate why Fassbinder loved the subject matter so much. He saw “Effi Briest” as a way to assert the need for those (such as himself) whose brilliance put them at odds with society’s norms to defy convention. In fact, Fassbinder once said that he was drawn to Fontane because the author “rejected everybody and found everything alienating and yet fought all his life for recognition.”
Alas, lacking the budget and experience to realize his dream, the film would have to wait another three years before going into production, and even then there were issues. After filming about a third of the movie, shooting had to be halted when the husband of Hanna Schygulla (who played Effi) fell ill, only to be resumed two years later in 1974. By then numerous members of the cast and crew, including the film’s cinematographer, had been replaced. Upon the film’s completion there was a prolonged falling out between Fassbinder and Schygulla due to issues both personal (she objected to his treatment of those who worked on the picture) and professional (they disagreed bitterly on how to play a specific scene in the film, in which Effi — after speaking in a pleasant tone up to that point — rants angrily). After making more than a dozen films in the previous five years, they would not work together again until 1979’s “The Marriage of Maria Braun.”