Rainer Werner Fassbinder (German: [ˈʁaɪ̯nɐ ˈvɛɐ̯nɐ ˈfasˌbɪndɐ]; 31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982), sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a West German filmmaker, actor, playwright, theatre director, composer, cinematographer, editor, and essayist. He is widely regarded as a prominent figure and catalyst of the New German Cinema movement. Success was not immediate for Fassbinder. His first feature-length film, a gangster movie called Love Is Colder Than Death (1969), was met with mixed reviews at the Berlin Film Festival. His next piece, Katzelmacher (1969), was a minor critical success, garnering five prizes after its debut at Mannheim. In subsequent years, he made such controversial films as Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1971) and Whity (1971), which dealt with human savagery, before scoring his first domestic commercial success with The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972), and his first international success Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), both of which are considered masterpieces by contemporary critics. Big budget projects followed, such as Despair (1978), Lili Marleen (1981), and Lola (1981). His greatest success came with The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), chronicling the rise and fall of a German woman in the wake of World War II. Other notable films include The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Fox and His Friends (1975), Satan's Brew (1976), and Querelle (1982), all of which focused on gay and lesbian themes. Fassbinder died on 10 June 1982, at the age of 37, from a lethal cocktail of cocaine and barbiturates. Although Fassbinder's career lasted less than two decades, he was extremely prolific; by the time of his death, Fassbinder had completed over forty feature films, two television series, three short films, four video productions, and twenty-four plays.