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It’s not so much about the content – quite the opposite, in fact. When directors like Wim Wenders make a thriller, they take great pleasure in cutting out the key elements of the crime story. In doing so, he challenges us, because we don’t watch thrillers just for the plot, but at least as much for the atmosphere. New German Cinema of the 1970s and late 1960s thrives precisely on this: an atmosphere in which we are immersed. New German Cinema always came across as affected and strange (in which respect it resembled German Expressionism of the 1920s). The directors relied on garish lighting and colour effects and pushed their characters to the very limits of human behaviour. There is always a deliberately artificial dimension to it. Realism was of no interest to New German Cinema. Was that the reason why the audience always reacted so reservedly? Directors such as Fassbinder or Herzog made films that forced you to form an opinion. You couldn’t just sit back in your cinema seat.