The Merchant of Four Seasons
(Der Händler der vier Jahreszeiten)

Screening on Film

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
With Hans Hirschmüller, Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla.
West Germany, 1971, 35mm, color, 89 min.
German with English subtitles.

The first Fassbinder film to garner broad praise in Germany and acclaim abroad, this color-saturated family drama with social overtones is set during the “economic miracle” years of the 1950s. The film’s protagonist has returned from a stint in the French Foreign Legion and has just been fired from his job in the police force for consorting with a streetwalker. His bourgeois family is horrified when he begins to peddle fruits and vegetables from a pushcart, and his socially conscious girlfriend leaves him. Settling for a loveless marriage with a manipulative wife, he sinks into increasing depression until the ultimate Fassbinderian resolution. An amalgam of high melodrama, street-smart action, and black comedy, the film remains a moral tale of unusual potency.