Rainer Werner Fassbinder is a man who knows how to hate. More to the point—but very much connected with it—Fassbinder's films may have extended the language and method of film more than those of any young film-maker of his generation. (p. 2)

Melodramatic elements abound in Fassbinder's films. Why should Ali be stricken with the "immigrant's disease" at the end of Fear Eats the Soul just as Emmy so movingly forgives and accepts him? Why does Wildwechsel … need the coup de grâce of Hanni's being told by the gynecologist … that her baby was born dead and deformed? It's arguable that the remarkable thing is the extent to which. Fassbinder gets away with hitting home in this fashion; but it would be hard to argue that Fassbinder is not laying it on too thickly when he has Hanni, the sexually precocious child, react to the news by...