946 Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

Discuss releases by Criterion and the films on them. Threads may contain spoilers!
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swo17
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Re: 946 Eight Hours and Twenty Minutes Don't Make a Day

#26 Post by swo17 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 10:29 pm

justeleblanc wrote:
Thu Oct 18, 2018 9:45 pm
This is all very helpful, thanks! I guess this means that my Criterion World on a Wire is also a bit longer than the German version. Still, it looks like I'll probably pick up the Criterion due to the price and -- most importantly -- so its spine matches my other Fassbinders.
My Arrow Eight Hours looks nice and Christmasy next to the big red Arrow set

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Yaanu
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Re: 946 Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

#27 Post by Yaanu » Sun Oct 21, 2018 12:26 pm

whaleallright wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 1:44 am
More like 8.33 hours don't make a day, right?
8.25 hours, or Eight Hours and Fifteen Minutes.

Unless you're adding five minutes to take a bathroom break, I suppose.

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MichaelB
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Re: 946 Eight Hours and Twenty Minutes Don't Make a Day

#28 Post by MichaelB » Sun Oct 21, 2018 4:57 pm

There will be absolutely no quality difference between 1080p24 and 1080i50 if the latter is used purely to get round the fact that the Blu-Ray spec doesn’t permit true 1080p25.

But to all practical intents and purposes that’s what you’re getting - although it’s notionally an interlaced format, there’s no visible interlacing because you’re effectively doubling up each frame.

Basically, it’s exactly how 25fps material should be encoded, and I’m delighted that the BFI (Alan Clarke, Ken Russell, Peter Watkins), Arrow (Fassbinder, Kieślowski) and Second Sight (Fassbinder, Reitz) have gone down that route.

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swo17
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Re: 946 Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

#29 Post by swo17 » Sun Oct 21, 2018 5:10 pm

Yaanu wrote:
Sun Oct 21, 2018 12:26 pm
whaleallright wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 1:44 am
More like 8.33 hours don't make a day, right?
8.25 hours, or Eight Hours and Fifteen Minutes.

Unless you're adding five minutes to take a bathroom break, I suppose.
8 x 25 / 24 = 8.3̅

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Yaanu
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Re: 946 Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

#30 Post by Yaanu » Mon Oct 22, 2018 3:39 pm

swo17 wrote:
Sun Oct 21, 2018 5:10 pm
Yaanu wrote:
Sun Oct 21, 2018 12:26 pm
whaleallright wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 1:44 am
More like 8.33 hours don't make a day, right?
8.25 hours, or Eight Hours and Fifteen Minutes.

Unless you're adding five minutes to take a bathroom break, I suppose.
8 x 25 / 24 = 8.3̅
Oh, I forgot about frame rate. I was going by the raw minute count on the website.
My bad!

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whaleallright
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Re: 946 Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

#31 Post by whaleallright » Mon Oct 22, 2018 5:32 pm

swo17 wrote:
Sun Oct 21, 2018 5:10 pm
Yaanu wrote:
Sun Oct 21, 2018 12:26 pm
whaleallright wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 1:44 am
More like 8.33 hours don't make a day, right?
8.25 hours, or Eight Hours and Fifteen Minutes.

Unless you're adding five minutes to take a bathroom break, I suppose.
8 x 25 / 24 = 8.3̅
I feel vindicated.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 946 Eight Hours and Twenty Minutes Don't Make a Day

#32 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Nov 08, 2019 12:53 am

And now for something completely different- or maybe not “completely.” This struck me as Fassbinder’s funniest and most optimistic work, yet still rooted in the reality of working class problems and social dynamics that populate the majority of his films. There’s hope around nearly every corner in spite of obstacles and systemic forces that should stunt any progress, kind of like magical realism in Fassbinder’s typical worldview. It’s refreshing to see a genuine camaraderie amongst so many odd groupings, together supporting one another in confronting oppressive powers- be them externally political or within the family unit- reverting to an inherent willingness to join instead of one to judge or retreat. I loved all the characters, but it’s the women who act as the most empathetic and selfless advocates, particularly Hanna Schygulla and the grandmother - who plays her part as both sly and innocent, hilariously becoming the best example of a young gohung social justice warrior but in the physical form of a little old lady.

This is a far cry from Fassbinder’s normative expositions of cutthroat socialization between any two people, isolation resulting from innate bigotry, and the view of a Hobbesian order of social destruction even amongst marginalized groups as the natural one. Ultimately this is a film that encourages one to take action and follow their conscience in life, rather than fearfully remain static, with the message constantly reinforced that “it’s better to do something than nothing at all,” and even stretching to more extreme polarized lengths in Jochen suggesting early on that “those who do things are always right.” A strange generalist statement that makes a call to arms, but an even greater proclamation that the only way to live is to participate fully and do the next right thing (it’s no coincidence that the most lifeless and unhappy characters are the parents who take no action and resign themselves to inactivity and inflexible perspectives - in the father’s case the loneliness causes repetitive resentments and angry fits).

Fassbinder’s fingerprints are still omnipresent in his attention to interpersonal details, classist musings, and a milieu based on systems theory with all individuals functioning as part of the whole (the ending of one story is bittersweet in a realization out of the ideal and back to the real but with a sense of acceptance of such systematic operations rather than depletion of hope or declaration of failure). The key difference is here Fassbinder champions the agents of change instead of nihilistically proclaiming inevitable stagnation, or worse, entropy.

I wonder what prompted Fassbinder to inhabit such a positive atmosphere here, and if his confidence in mankind is reflective of his personal life during these years. I suppose it’s worth considering that he ventured a bit deeper into cynical worldviews in the years to come and this is sandwiched between some social thematic entries as well as some experimental genre more balanced projects, so it’s not as if he suddenly decided to abandon a pessimistic-realist vision that would develop with security later. It’s also possible that, with three (?) more planned episodes in this series that was cut early by the network, who knows if it would have stayed as positive. As it stands, the endings are quite perfect and I genuinely enjoyed spending time with these characters for 8 hours (and twenty minutes). I feel like going into work tomorrow and confronting my administration with the code of ethics and striking services until they change, but I won’t. Magical realism indeed, but the kind we need, or at least the kind I want to see in the safe space of the magic of movies.

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Re: 946 Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

#33 Post by kubelkind » Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:41 pm

I'm sure I read an interview with RWF (maybe in the long out of print but pretty nice old yellow BFI book) where he addressed Eight Hours... essential optmism by (I'm paraphrasing here as I don't have the book to hand) explaining that it was a work for presumably prime time TV to be seen by a general (i.e working class) audience, as opposed to his work in cinema which was for a more specialised (i.e middle class) audience, and that he felt it would be both cruel and politically counter-productive to pile on the usual despair with this fact in mind.

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barryconvex
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Re: 946 Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

#34 Post by barryconvex » Tue Nov 12, 2019 1:45 am

I wonder what prompted Fassbinder to inhabit such a positive atmosphere here...
That was exactly what I was wondering. I watched all of this waiting for the other shoe to drop.
kubelkind wrote:
Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:41 pm
I'm sure I read an interview with RWF (maybe in the long out of print but pretty nice old yellow BFI book) where he addressed Eight Hours... essential optmism by (I'm paraphrasing here as I don't have the book to hand) explaining that it was a work for presumably prime time TV to be seen by a general (i.e working class) audience, as opposed to his work in cinema which was for a more specialised (i.e middle class) audience, and that he felt it would be both cruel and politically counter-productive to pile on the usual despair with this fact in mind.
I wonder how he would've explained Jailbait then? It was also made for tv and released the same year as Eight Hours... but is more in line with Fassbinder's bleaker works.

kubelkind
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Re: 946 Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

#35 Post by kubelkind » Tue Nov 12, 2019 6:50 am

RWF did plenty of bleak films for TV, but it would seem they were all late night one-offs whereas Eight Hours was a prime time serial, very much in the "Arbeiterfilm" (workers films) genre, see another rare BFI publication called "WDR and the Arbeiterfilm: Fassbinder, Ziewer and Others" by Richard Collins (which may actually be the source of the Fassbinder interview I semi-recalled in an earlier post).

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knives
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Re: 946 Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

#36 Post by knives » Tue Nov 12, 2019 1:03 pm

How does Berlin Alexanderplatz fit in with that?

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The Curious Sofa
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Re: 946 Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

#37 Post by The Curious Sofa » Tue Nov 12, 2019 1:43 pm

knives wrote:
Tue Nov 12, 2019 1:03 pm
How does Berlin Alexanderplatz fit in with that?
When Fassbinder made Eight Hours he wasn’t that well established. Most of the TV movies he made only were made for TV because that’s where he could get funding. He had to pitch something which would be perceived as relatively mainstream and Eight Hours was his take on a soap opera. In Germany he wasn’t respected till The Marriage of Maria Braun, which was his international breakthrough. Till then he worked with very low budgets, only Despair had a higher budget because it was shot in English with an international movie star. After Maria Braun he was able to get higher budgets and he was able to propose a project as ambitious as Berlin Alexanderplatz, which was his passion project.

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zedz
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Re: 946 Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

#38 Post by zedz » Tue Nov 12, 2019 3:43 pm

knives wrote:
Tue Nov 12, 2019 1:03 pm
How does Berlin Alexanderplatz fit in with that?
That was a long-cherished dream project that was completely in Fassbinder's (grim) wheelhouse. The fact that it ended up as a TV series rather than a film was simply because that's where the funding was.
'
I don't know why people are trying to play "gotcha!" with a dead man. I'm happy to take Fassbinder's rationale for the project at face value. He made a wide variety of films in different modes, with his primary aim to keep the work coming for himself and his collective.

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knives
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Re: 946 Eight Hours Don't Make a Day

#39 Post by knives » Tue Nov 12, 2019 4:07 pm

I wasn't trying to play gotcha. I was genuinely curious in light of that rational how that informed choices in his other films.

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