Fear of Fear

Rainer Werner Fassbinder trades on the tricks of his Hollywood mentors, especially Douglas Sirk, in creating an always sunlit environment for his heroine, the “perfect” middle-class wife and mother, to go mad in. Soon after the birth of her child, Margot (Margit Carstensen) experiences a depression that is exacerbated by her fear that she is becoming schizophrenic. Disproving Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous axiom, Fear of Fear is more than an examination of free-floating anxiety; rather, as Vincent Canby noted, “it is about the autumn of materialism in the form of an intensely personal case history . . . everything is perfect for Margot, yet nothing works.”