A comprenhensive review of Fassbinder's life and career, introducing students and scholars to the controversial and prolific but brief career of a filmmaker hailed as one of the New German Cinema's most talented exponents. Combining a chronological survey with thematic exploration, the author reviews Fassbinder's artistic output, focusing specifically on 15 of the filmmaker's 38 feature-length works. Watson's interpretations of these films scrutinize the financial constraints, material conditions and script development involved in their production. Watson draws on an assortment of interviews with Fassbinder and on theoretical and critical approaches employed in the Frankfurt school, performance and reception theories, gay and lesbian film theory, and studies of melodrama and camp. Watson also incorporates his own interviews with Fassbinder's mother and with the woman who served as Fassbinder's film editor and companion during the final four years of his life.