World on a Wire

As he did with 1979's Berlin Alexanderplatz, Rainer Werner Fassbinder made 1973's World on a Wire for German TV. Based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye, the futuristic scenario revolves around the artificial world of Simulacron. After its inventor, Dr. Vollmer, drops dead, Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch) takes over as technical director. But then Lause, head of security, vanishes without a trace, although both Siskins (Karl-Heinz Vosgerau), Lause's imperious boss, and voluptuous secretary Gloria (Barbara Valentin) insist that Lause never existed. Siskins has also been looking into a corporate merger, which goes against Stiller's principles. Meanwhile, Simulacron, which allows users to enter an alternate reality set 20 years in the future, starts to malfunction. The combination of these various events leads Stiller to believe that someone murdered Vollmer, lending the proceedings the air of an existential thriller. While trying to sort things out, Stiller falls in love with Vollmer's daughter, Eva (Mascha Rabben), who sports the glamorous look and inscrutable behavior of a femme fatale. Things become even stranger after that, in ways that anticipate sci-fi noirs such as Blade Runner and Dark City. Fassbinder's inventively-shot World on a Wire comes across as a sleek, paranoid melding of Chinatown by way of A Clockwork Orange, although the mood is more drily humorous (and Fleetwood Mac's elegiac "Albatross" provides the theme music). Bowing on DVD and Blu-ray, extras include a “making-of” documentary, an interview with film scholar Gerd Gemünden, and a booklet featuring an essay by film critic Ed Halter. Highly recommended. (K. Fennessy)