[Fassbinder] turns out movies the way other people shed dandruff, and is generally considered the new Godard or, at the very least, the Wunderkind of the German cinema. The main influences on him would seem to be Brecht and Warhol, the unendurably static Jean-Marie Straub and the souped-up second-rate American action directors, which shows that, if nothing else, he is catholic to the point of self-contradiction….

An aura of arrogance is everywhere, as if Fassbinder were saying, "I can slap movies together as fast and loose as I wish because I am a Wunderkind." The procedure, I am afraid, makes him into a bit of Blunderkind. He turns out, as I see it, two kinds of movies: bad ones and not-so-bad ones. [Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven] is one of the latter….

It is a perfectly serviceable story, but Fassbinder develops it with his customary mixture of...