PARTIAL FILM ADAPTATIONS OF ALFRED DÖBLIN’S NOVEL “BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ” IN RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER’S EARLY FILMS

The film “Berlin Alexanderplatz” by Rainer Werner Fassbinder is considered to be one of the most famous literary fi lm adaptations in the fi lm history. Extensive research literature has been devoted to its study. Much less researched is the infl uence of Döblin’s novel on other works of the fi lmmaker. Th e article deals with taking over the elements of the novel “Berlin Alexanderplatz” into Fassbinder’s early fi lms. Fassbinder has borrowed constellations, plots, topoi especially those dealing with gender issues from the novel by Döblin for his fi lms “Love Is Colder Th an Death” (1969), “Gods of the Plague” (1970) and “Rio das Mortes” (1971). In the aforementioned fi lms, as in Döblin’s novel, triangular relationships are represented, the women exchange is practiced, the misogynistic protagonists exert violence against the female characters, and the woman appears as a festive link, as a copula between the men. In these fi lms, ‘Mannerbund’ in the form of criminal organizations plays an important role. Quotations and borrowings from Döblin’s novel in Fassbinder’s fi lms create a special kind of intermediality relations that diff er from fi lm adaptation in the narrow sense of the word. Following Achim von Haag the term “partial adaptation” is used here as an intensive reception of narrative structures of the literary text on the one hand and their strong modifi cation on the other.