06/26/09 Forty Years Ago: RWF’s LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH
The film was booed after its Berlinale premiere at the Zoo Palast
A film about love and violence – this is how RWF summed-up his first feature film during the press conference held on June 26, 1969. Fassbinder also used the word anarchy. In a long conversation he had with the journalist Joachim von Mengershausen just before the film festival, RWF explained: “I want the audience that sees this film to examine their innermost feelings. Yes, that’s what I’m primarily concerned about in this film, with nothing else. To me that’s more political, or politically more aggressive and active than if I point out that the police are the great oppressors.”
COLDER THAN DEATH (which was the original title at the Berlinale premiere) was filmed during the month of April, 1969 in and around Munich in just twenty-four days. The production cost was 95,000 Deutschmarks. Filmmaker Jean-Marie Straub had made the striking trip on Landsberger Straße available. The German Movie Rating Board (FBW) rated the film as “wertvoll” (i.e. “valuable” or “worthwhile”). It opened in theaters on January 16, 1970.
