A few months back the kind folks at the Criterion Collection, makers of some of the finest BluRay/DVD releases of intriguing national and foreign films, had a sale on their products.

I checked through their stuff and considered some films here and there but nothing stuck out.  As diverse as their listings are, for the most part I had the films I wanted and, while there were some that called out to me, they didn’t make me curious enough to outright buy them.

So I narrowed my search to “science fiction” titles and, in a few seconds, stumbled upon the listing for the 1973 2 Part German TV movie World on A Wire.  The description of the film, as presented in the Criterion listing, follows:

World on a Wire is a gloriously paranoid, boundlessly inventive take on the future from German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, Fassbinder tells the noir-spiked tale of reluctant hero Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch), a cybernetics engineer who uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy. At risk? (Virtual) reality as we know it. Originally made for German television, this recently rediscovered, three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the world of tomorrow from one of cinema’s kinkiest geniuses.

Huh, I thought.

I had never before heard of this film and had only the barest idea of who director Rainer Werner Fassbinder is/was.  Yet that description had me and I ordered the movie.  Before it arrived, I researched Mr. Fassbinder and found him to be a fascinating character.  He died in 1982 at the age of 37 from an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills…and left behind a mind-boggling legacy of 41 films made in a span of 13 years, many of which are considered classics of German cinema.

Incredible.

World on A Wire would be Mr. Fassbinder’s only science fiction film and, as stated in the Criterion description, it was essentially forgotten and lost (hence the need to be “rediscovered”) for many years.  No doubt this was due in part to the tremendous amount of work Mr. Fassbinder released.  As was stated in some of the supplemental materials on the BluRay, there is such a wealth of material Mr. Fassbinder left behind that much of it even today waits to be rediscovered.

Based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye, World on a Wire can rightfully be called one of the very first -if not THE first- film to deal with the concept of virtual reality, something explored to great effect in more recent years and in movies such as eXistenZ, The Matrix, Dark City, and The 13th Floor (itself also based on the novel Simulacron-3)  Virtual reality has also found its way into various TV shows, including the concept of the “Holodeck” in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Even I’ve explored the concept in my short story Virtual found in the short story collection Shadows at Dawn. (self promotion ends in 3…2…1…)

As I put the movie into my player, I frankly didn’t know what I’d get.  It is, after all, an older film and a TV movie to boot.  It’s long, consisting of two parts each of which run a little over an hour and a half.  It was a daunting task to find that much free time…

Still, that description had me.  I gave the film a go…

…and I couldn’t have been happier with what I saw.

World on a Wire is, paradoxically, an incredibly forward thinking work yet one whose luster is nonetheless -perhaps inevitably- somewhat dulled by the movies/TV shows I’ve mentioned above.  I imagine audiences in 1973 were floored with the cliffhanger revelation at the end of the first part of the film but modern audiences, I suspect, will have figured out that particular twist long before it is formally revealed.

The thing is, once that revelation is made, we’re left with the entire second part of the film and this is where we venture into “new” and unexplored territory.  To put it more clearly, part 1 of World on a Wire acts as a “rules of the game” presentation while part 2 gives us the story/resolution proper.  This very logical progression worked incredibly well and, in spite of my familiarity with the concepts, had me intrigued until the very end.

Those expecting to see a special effects extravaganza need look elsewhere.  Despite its science fictional trappings, World on a Wire is decidedly low tech and features almost no special effects.  Its tone is more in line with film noir mysteries, and indeed that works best for the mysterious story presented.  Our hero, Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch), as also noted in some of the extra material on the BluRay, is essentially a Humphrey Bogart detective-type, a man who is presented with an initial mystery involving a disappeared co-worker no one else but he remembers existed.  It is this initial mystery that leads him down dark paths and strange new experiences and tests his very sanity.

World on a Wire turned out to be a very pleasant surprise.  I so enjoy discovering older, fascinating works that put into perspective other works.  In the case of this film, it clearly is the granddaddy of many more famous, recognized virtual reality works, yet it stands out on its own.

Highly recommended.