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Led by these two young visionaries, the new German wave—Die Neue Welle —has emerged with astonishing speed and surprise. At the beginning of the decade, the Germans were producing virtually nothing but soft-core pornography and sentimental sludge called Heimatftl-men (literally, homeland films). Few of their movies were ever seen outside Germany, and as recently as 1971 the New York Times thought that the lack of news in German films was news in itself. "The persistently dismal situation of German film art is unique," said the Times. "A listing of new films comprises a greater proportion of trash than anywhere else."
In fact the wave was already breaking. Fassbinder, who shoots a movie in the time it takes most directors to set up their cameras, had already made ten films, and Herzog four. The critical time lag was perhaps excusable; the Germans themselves have often seemed unaware that, helped by small government subsidies, their national cinema had returned to life. "Until recently Germans did not have the confidence to speak out," says Volker Schlöndorff, 38, whose 1966 film Young Tör less started Die Neue Welle.
Americans were first exposed to the movement in 1972, when the Museum of Modern Art presented a series of new German films in Manhattan. Though New Yorker Films, a leading distributor of foreign movies, began showing them soon afterward, it was only in 1976 that there was any kind of breakthrough. The New Yorker Theater on upper Broadway began holding Fassbinder festivals, and local critics announced the arrival of a major new director. At the same time, Herzog was becoming a cult director among U.S. college students, who were captivated by his lush symbolism and his stories of heroic, mystical quests. Herzog is still more popular on the college circuit and in the art houses than is Fassbinder, who has yet to find much commercial acceptance outside Manhattan.
During the recurring Fassbinder festivals, there are New Yorkers who for weeks at a time fill their nights with nothing but his films. Wim Wenders, another of the movement''s leaders, made his own U.S. breakthrough last fall with a slick, existential thriller called The American Friend. Starring Dennis Hopper, the movie is fascinating but unsatisfying, with the most complicated and puzzling plot since Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep. It is perhaps a tantalizing harbinger of major work to come.
The other German directors are even less well known in the U.S. The films of Alexander Kluge, 46, and Schlöndorff (who has co-directed many of his movies with his Actress Wife Margarethe von Trotta) are shown periodically to respectful and occasionally enthusiastic reviews. So far neither man has demonstrated the extravagant talents of Herzog and Fassbinder, however, or even the clear potential of Wenders. Others, like Jean-Marie Straub and Reinhard Hauff, have yet to make any impact at all in the U.S.