Acht Stunden sind kein Tag

What a shock. A mini-series from Fassbinder with many of his usual acting troupe but no murders, no sexual deviance, no head cases, no over the top acting, no cruelty. In fact, it's quite a happy and positive series that shows how people can come together and overcome problems at work and home. Yes, there's a racist in the factory and a nasty father who slaps his kid but they get put in their place and goodness prevails. It's a commitment, about 8 hours altogether. But worth it for the look at working class people in West Germany in the early 70s. Lots of smoking and drinking. Lots of ugly 70s fashion. But Grandma knows best and the guys at the factory will figure a way to get their rights without a strike. A pleasant surprise.

This is one of Fassbinder's most charming and, as someone else wrote here, positive series/films. While there are some dark moments, they are relatively few compared to his other work, and there are some downright lovely moments in the series. The main romance between Gottfried John and Hanna Schygulla is sweet and charming, and the tribulations of the workers are realistically done without being boring. There are lovely moments throughout, and you don't feel like you're being manipulated like you might in a Hollywood series. Fun fact about this series is that it's only five episodes. It was originally supposed to be eight, but the German government cut the funding due to resentments about the "controversial" Fassbinder. Ironically, the series ended up being 8 hours anyway. This was also Fassbinder's first series. He had made around 6 films or so at that point, and he wanted to get into TV because that's where most of the audience was in the 1970's. They were watching TV in West Germany instead of going to the pictures. Fassbinder knew the audiences for his films were enthusiastic but very small. He wanted a wider audience. TV was not looked down upon in 1970's Europe like it was in the US at the time, so many directors went there to make series.

This is a wonderful, charming series, and one of Fassbinder's most underrated and underappreciated shows.

Amongst R.W. Fassbinder's work (66 films, if short films and episodes are counted single) one finds all genres, including TV dramas and documentary, but no horror and no sex movies. This has a good reason: The German film after World War II. consisted mainly in "Crime and Sex". There were first he Lederhosen- and Heimatfilms, later those controversial elaborates like the "Schulmädchen-Reporte" on the one side and the Edgar Wallace and later Wallace-like thrillers which were almost all written by Herbert Reinecker and many of them directed by Alfred Vohrer, on the other side. This were the genres one intended to forget. And since TV stations (at least in the 60ies and 70ies in Germany) became technically capable of getting a competition for the cinemas, this possibility to reach a wider audience was used by the directors of the New German Cinema in order not to relapse again into the moor of Sodhom and Gomorrha. Fassbinder, at the time when the 5 parts of "Acht Stunden Sind Kein Tag" were broadcast (1972), only 26 years old, wanted to establish basically all those topics which were important for him in his films, also for TV. His only TV series (that got stopped although it was a big public success) gives insights in the everyday life of German lower-middle class couples or families. In the center are Jochen and Marion, the crew is the extended "Fassbinder family". Codetermination at the working places of the laborers, apartment rent usury and prejudices against foreign workers are in the center of this series, but also solidarity, comradeship and social engagement. The title "Eight hours are not a day" became proverbial, meaning that the sense of life cannot be exhausted by slaving for a company during 8 hours, but needs in addition the butter of a bread-and-butter-job.

Me and my brother used to watch this series when it was shown in Sweden back in the 70s. Especially we were very fond of lead actor Gottfried John, who's laid back, easy going style really made an impression to us as a role model. The series is about the family situations and the situation at work. How does an ordinary day of life go by in Germany? It starts of when Jochen (played by Gottfried) makes an improvement to the the machine he is working on at the factory which helps to speed up the production process. The drawback , however is that now fewer employees is needed to run the machines. He starts of as an rather unpopular workmate.

Also there was Hanna Schygulla who is a top actress who starred in many of Fassbinders films. I would really like to get my hands on the series on DVD because it's not only charming but also a great landmark of contemporary television because of its documentary drama style.

The characters are: Jochen, a worker in a toolmaking factory, his girlfriend Marion, his parents and his grandmother Oma = Granny in German (Oma does not seem old enough to be Jochen's grandmother). Other characters: Monika, Jochen's sister, married to petty tyrant Harald, Oma's new partner Gregor and Irmgard, who works with Marion in a newspaper ad office.

There is some good material here, such as a realistic description of Jochen's factory, with power plays that pit the workers against management and occasionally against each other. Some of these are the improvement of a production line with scarce financial benefit to the workers and the election of a foreman and relocation of the factory against their will. The relationship between Jochen and Marion is depicted warmly and realistically, without excess sentimentality. Unfortunately, there are also cliches, mostly in happenings involving Oma. Her hoodwinking of a park keeper requires an otherworldly naiveté from the latter, and we are asked to believe that children prefer being "educated" in an improvised, crowded nursery/kindergarten rather than playing on the street or in a park. There are some contrived scenes. such as a group of children hemmed in by four cars at an intersection, or that of the second grandmother in Episode 3. Some characters like Harald and Marion's brother are mostly built from cliches.

On the positive side acting is excellent all around (with special mention for Hanna Schygulla) and the lush, color saturated cinematography by Dietrich Lohmann suits the action and the emotional temperature..

All in all, an irregular miniseries that has good moments but shows the seal of mass production and "goes Hollywood" a few times. It may not justify eight hours of your time.