World on a Wire (#598)

World on a Wireis a gloriously paranoid, boundlessly inventive take on the future from German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, Fassbinder tells the noir-spiked tale of reluctant hero Fred Stiller (Klaus Lwitsch), a cybernetics engineer who uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy. At risk? (Virtual) reality as we know it. Originally made for German television, this recently rediscovered, three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the world of tomorrow from one of cinemas kinkiest geniuses.

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Film Info

• Germany
• 1973
• 212 minutes
• Color
• 1.33:1
• German
• Spine #598

Special Features

• New, restored digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Fassbinders World on a Wire: Looking Ahead to Today,a fifty-minute documentary about the making of the film by Juliane Lorenz
• New interview with German-film scholar Gerd Gemnden
• New English subtitles
• Trailer for the 2010 theatrical release
• PLUS: A new essay by film critic Ed Halter

  New cover by Sam Smith