I Only Want You to Love Me · reception & legacy

1976 · Rainer Werner Fassbinder

How I Only Want You to Love Me has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Made quickly for West German television in Fassbinder's insanely prolific mid-70s stretch, it went almost unseen outside Germany for decades — and has since been reappraised, via retrospectives and restoration, as one of his most tender and underrated films.

What's debated

The perennial Fassbinder-head debate: is this a minor TV quickie or secretly top-five Fassbinder — the 'deep cut that outshines the famous ones' argument in miniature.

Its footprint

Cinephiles love pointing out that the plaintive title reads like a thesis statement for Fassbinder's entire filmography — forty-odd films about people begging for love and getting a transaction instead.

Where it stands

A deep-cut sleeper in the Fassbinder canon — the one completists press on newcomers with 'nobody talks about this one and it wrecked me.'

★ Did you know? The story was drawn from a real case in 'Lebenslänglich,' a book of interviews with convicted prisoners by Klaus Antes and Christiane Ehrhardt — Fassbinder built the film around one inmate's life story.