Rainer Werner Fassbinder

The Criterion Shelf: Starring Anna Karina

born in Denmark and always in possession of a haunted Nordic beauty and that delicate accent when she worked in French, she brought a lack of specificity to his investigations of post-war Paris and its soulless commercialism with her roles in films Alphaville (her most iconic) and Made In USA; but in films like the Rivette film in this collection, she also displayed enormous depths of warmth and sensitivity, while showing off a canny intelligence in movies like Fassbinder’s Chinese Roulette.