Olive Films to Release Two Rare Fassbinder Films on DVD

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the most prolific filmmakers in history, making something like 40 movies -- including the 15-hour Berlin Alexanderplatz -- in the space of about 20 years, and died at the age of 37. It's an unwieldy filmography, filled with TV movies, TV mini-series, short films, and feature films, and it's hard to keep track of them all. Many of them have been released on DVD in the United States, but many more are still missing, and so it's great news that Olive Films has announced two more titles.

The first is Despair (1978), an intriguing-sounding English language film starring Dirk Bogarde. Adapted by Tom Stoppard from a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, it tells the story of Hermann Hermann, a chocolate magnate living in 1930s Germany who comes up with a cockamamie plan to improve his station. The second film is I Only Want You to Love Me (1976), one of Fassbinder's TV movies, a harrowing, German-language tale of a modern man and his modern troubles.

Both DVDs street June 7 and retail for $24.95.