I Only Want You To Love Me - Rainer Werner Fassbinder

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S E A R C H D V D B e a v e r

(aka 'I Only Want You To Love Me')

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Germany 1976

In one of his most personal films, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (The Marriage of Maria Braun) wrote and directed this true-crime story, which he adapted from the book “Life Sentence”. Having grown up in a small town with a domineering mother and a father who never believed in his worth, a young newlywed moves to the big city with his bride and starts anew. The pressures of work, family and finances become too much for him and he experiences a nervous breakdown. Cinematography by legendary DP, Michael Ballhaus (The Departed).

Poster

Television Premiere: March 23rd, 1976 - West Germany

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DVD Review: Olive Films - Region 1 - NTSC

DVD Box Cover		CLICK to order from:
Distribution	Olive Films - Region 1 - NTSC
Runtime	1:52:24
Video	1.33:1 Aspect Ratio Average Bitrate: 4.91 mb/s NTSC 720x480 29.97 f/s
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate:
Audio	German (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Subtitles	English (burned-in)
Features	Release Information: Studio: Olive Films Aspect Ratio: Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 Edition Details: • Of Love And Constraints: Speculations on Fassbinder’s “I Only Want You To love Me” (1:02:48) DVD Release Date: June 7th, 2011 Keep Case Chapters: 8

Comments:

Olive Films is handling another foreign-language film (as they did with Nicolo Donato's Brotherhood, Veiko Õunpuu's Estonian film The Temptation of St. Tony, Claudia Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow, and Fredrik Edfeldt's excellent The Girl.) Fassbinder fans are in for a treat with this 'made-for-TV' feature-length film about the evolution of modern desperation and desire to be accepted.

Like all Olive Film DVDs to date this is dual-layered and progressive. Aside from the first 30 seconds it looks excellent in the original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The image quality is far better than I was anticipated. Detail and contrast are excellent. There is no damage and many colors are surprisingly bright. I was very impressed with the transfer and it does a great job supporting the film's edgy visuals.

The unremarkable audio is mostly dialogue. It's flat but supports the film well enough. Unfortunately, the English subtitles are burned-in and I viewed this as a negative that hope this changes with Olive Films future foreign-language releases.

Nice to see that there is a rather length extra - 'Of Love And Constraints: Speculations on Fassbinder’s “I Only Want You To love Me”' by Robert Fischer running over an hour in German with English subtitles. There are a lot of Fassbinder colleagues discussing the importance of I Want You to Love Me in his overall body of work. It is described at the Fiction Factory website HERE as "In November and December of 1975, between the two shooting phases of SATAN’S BREW, Rainer Werner Fassbinder shot a film for television that, without a doubt, is one of his most personal works. This one-hour documentary was made during and immediately after its restoration in 2010. Even though this Fassbinder film is based on interviews with a convicted murderer, there is no other character in all of his films that Fassbinder indentified with more than the young construction worker Peter (Vitus Zeplichal). This film concentrates on the reasons why, or rather, the plausible reasons. So it is not just a belated ‘making of’ but a film about the human being Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his artistic motivation."

Like much of the director's work - this is searing and hard to forget. I have no complaints about the Olive Film's transfer aside from the burned-in subtitles. Even without my strong endorsement I suspect Fassbinder fans will be nabbing this package. Regardless, it is strongly recommended!