The Third Generation

In West Germany a group of middle-class people forms a secret cell: a secretary, a teacher, a musician, a housewife. They believe they are making a revolution. In fact they do not know what they are doing; their slogans are memorised, their plans are absurd, and the relations among them keep collapsing. Meanwhile the head of a computer company is steering them from a distance; the state needs harsher laws, and terrorism is required for that. Rainer Werner Fassbinder made the film immediately after the German Autumn, through his own production company. The narrative neither defends nor attacks left-wing terror; it shows that the third generation does not even know what it is fighting for, and says directly how the state profits from it. The sound design is deliberately suffocating, with radio, television and music constantly overlapping. Eddie Constantine, Hanna Schygulla and Margit Carstensen are in the cast. Who it's for: Viewers who like Fassbinder, political satire, and German cinema of the 1970s. Who it's not for: The layered sound makes it hard to watch and none of the characters is likeable. The narrative is also closed to anyone without the political context of the period.