Trader of the four seasons

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Movie
Original title Trader of the four seasons
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1972
length 89 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder
script Rainer Werner Fassbinder
production Tango ( Ingrid Caven ,
Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
Michael Fengler )
music Archive music (including Rocco Granata )
camera Dietrich Lohmann
cut Thea Eymèsz
occupation

Dealer of the Four Seasons is a German fiction film by director Rainer Werner Fassbinder . The film title, a literal translation of the French name of a traveling fruit and vegetable seller (marchand des quatre-saisons) , was occasionally announced or described with a preceding article.

The film premiered on February 10, 1972 at the Cinémathèque française in Paris. The German premiere took place on March 10, 1972 at the Cinemonde in Munich; on the same day the film was also broadcast on ZDF .

action

The film takes place during the economic boom at the end of the 1950s. He describes the story of Hans Epp, entirely from his perspective. He and his wife Irmgard run a business as an outpatient fruit and vegetable trader. Flashbacks show that the business was a stopgap for him. Growing up in a fatherless household, he was dominated and humiliated by his loveless mother. She talked him out of his dream job as a mechanic; he should take up a job where you don't get your hands dirty. Hans reluctantly goes to high school . As an excuse, he signed up to the Foreign Legion . When he returns, his mother greets him sullenly with the words: "The best stay outside, someone like you comes back". Hans goes to the police . There he has to quit his job after being caught red-handed by his superior when he was seduced by the prostitute Marile Kosemund during an interrogation to fellatio . A woman who means "great love" for Hans does not want to marry him because he does not seem befitting of her family. She only accepts him as a lover. He marries Irmgard, with whom he has a daughter.

They now run the fruit trade together. Irmgard, however, shows little respect for Hans, is often grumpy, suspicious and incomprehensible. Hans finds more understanding with his intellectual sister Anna, who, however, has no time for him in a crucial situation. On the other hand, his second sister Heide and her careerist husband Kurt show no understanding. The unhappy marriage to Irmgard leads Hans to frequently get drunk. So drunk, he beats Irmgard in the marriage bed, in the presence of his daughter. In response to Irmgard's petition for divorce, Hans suffers a heart attack . During his hospital stay, Irmgard cheats on him with Anzell, a chance acquaintance. The couple found together again and the outpatient business was continued; in fact, it is thriving so much that a second sales cart can be purchased. Since Hans can no longer do any hard work due to the heart disease - for the same reason he has to stay away from alcohol - an assistant is hired. The choice falls on Anzell, Irmgard's ex-lover. This proves to be efficient, but he is bullied away with the help of an intrigue by Irmgard, who is embarrassed by the situation. Hans, who drives back to the pub, meets Harry, a good friend from his time as a Foreign Legionnaire. Harry takes on the position of assistant, moves in with Hans and his family and is also recognized by Irmgard and daughter Renate. With Harry's help, business flourishes, and for the first time Hans earns expressions of respect from neighbors, friends and relatives. Nonetheless, he feels increasingly superfluous and falls into depression. Finally he breaks his favorite record by Rocco Granata , who sang: “You can't have anything you want, buona notte”. After farewell visits to people who were important in his life, Hans goes to his local pub and purposefully drinks himself to death by drinking a schnapps on everyone present, on relatives, acquaintances, the school, the police and the Foreign Legion, until he collapses. Those present, including Irmgard and Harry, look on inactive and do not intervene. On the drive home from Hans' funeral , Irmgard offers Harry to take his place; and he spontaneously says "Okay".

backgrounds

Fassbinder said he wanted to show a “simple melodrama without any antics”, the story of a man who is destroyed by women. The film marked the beginning of the Fassbinder films about death and love.

“Der HÄNDLER came into being after a time in which I was very intensively involved with the melodramas by Douglas Sirk, and I have a few elements that I understood, which I also understood that the audience liked and interested in it, just got in there. "

- Corinna Brocher

Fassbinder's longtime close confidante and colleague Kurt Raab , according to Fassbinder's film, “is a cruelly honest monument” to his relatives. The fruit dealer Hans Epp, for the film scholar San-Joon Bae the “most weary of all the tired losers of Fassbinder”, was modeled after an uncle of Fassbinder, who was active as a hawker , “loved by the customers, but hated by the family, hated and humiliated and cut down ". Fassbinder himself, who was an outsider at an early age within his family complex, was already sensitized as a child to the problems of family and kinship as a "community in which [the] competition is fiercer than elsewhere, envy, resentment and contempt can be fatal , the mechanisms of oppression are mercilessly practiced and those who get nowhere stay at the bottom of the family and serve as a warning example for the successful. ” The more sensitive are the losers, the successful are the more callous who rely on status images orientate yourself, never lose sight of your personal advantage.

The film was originally supposed to be called The Fruit Trader, the French-based title was suggested by the Swiss filmmaker Daniel Schmid , who had recently joined the Fassbinder entourage with his partner. Schmid later became best known for the film adaptation of Fassbinder's controversial play Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod .

The film, which is not explicitly placed in a specific historical and social framework, is set in the (later) 1950s, according to the evidence of the clothes, hairstyles and room furnishings. As almost always, Hanna Schygulla played a special role, whose hairstyle and clothes refer to the previous Nazi era. On the other hand, some utensils, especially telephones and car numbers, refer to the time the film was made. Since at Fassbinder no little thing was left to chance, such stylistic inconsistencies must be seen as deliberate irritations.

The film recordings were partly shot in the private rented apartment (or the associated courtyard) of assistant director Harry Baer . Thereupon Baer received - after an uprising of other tenants - "because of the nocturnal tumultuous and then improperly cheeky behavior of several men and women" presented the dismissal.

The foreign legionnaire scene with El Hedi ben Salem as a tormentor was filmed near Munich on a Bundeswehr firing range on Ingolstädter Strasse. "It looks a bit like Morocco there," says Harry Baer, ​​who only suggests ("everyone can think what he wants") that with the change from the more submissive Günther Kaufmann to the sadistic, violent Salem, there is also one Change in Fassbinder's preferences had occurred.

The figure of the careerist brother-in-law portrayed by Kurt Raab has unmistakably similarities with Fassbinder's stepfather Wolff Eder. Raab's voice was dubbed by camera assistant Peter Gauhe in order to give "this guy" - according to Fassbinder - a slightly more human touch.

Marile Kosemund was the title of a poetic attempt by the locally well-known newspaper writer Sigi Sommer , who, in a column he wrote as a walker, had once judged Fassbinder that the only thing he could express was the pimples on his face.

Ingrid Fassbinder (= Ingrid Caven ) acted (formally?) As production manager, in fact Fassbinder and Fengler acted as producers. As Raab put it, Caven called herself “with lust” as “Frau Fassbinder” - against Fassbinder's will (“If she registers at the hotel as Frau Fassbinder, I'll get the rage”), in order to avoid her competitors Irm Hermann, Ursel Strätz and Hanna Schygulla take off. In particular, Irm Hermann, who had felt like the actual and designated “Frau Fassbinder”, as Fassbinder's “main wife”, was extremely annoyed by this. It is precisely this that may have driven her - Raab suspects - to top acting performance.

The jealous behavior of the film Irmgard corresponded with the behavior of the actress Irm Hermann, who admitted that she was morbidly jealous, to which Fassbinder reacted with aggression and outbursts of violence.

Dealer of the four seasons marks a significant turning point in Fassbinder's work. His previous nine films were elitist , not tailored to the viewing habits of a larger audience. As a result of the reception of Douglas Sirk's films , RWF began to develop a film language that was more oriented towards the wishes of the audience . He wanted to become more popular without betraying himself, without neglecting the message to be conveyed - according to the criticism, he has succeeded in this in the long term.

Michael Töteberg described Fassbinder's change of perspective on the basis of the changed view of people. Was he previously out to expose the petty bourgeoisie, exemplified above all in the film Why is Mr. R. running amok? , he now shows "people with love and sympathy" - "tenderness with the characters" is his new motto, borne by much accompanying grief, but without contempt.

Dealer of the Four Seasons was shot in August 1971 on eleven days in Munich. The production costs amounted to 178,000 German marks.

Reviews

The contemporary critics took note of the film with great enthusiasm and showered it with hymns of praise:

  • "The best German film since the war" ( Süddeutsche Zeitung )
  • "One of the most important German films for years" ( Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung )
  • "A perfect melodrama" (film review)
  • “The consistency with which Fassbinder concentrates on the essentials - the characters and their relationships - is still impressive today. The rigorous and confident reduction in the formal design creates clear and haunting images that do not need any decorative accessories [...]. History is not related to political or social events […]. The locations of the action are almost exclusively interiors or exteriors, which through the cinematic treatment become interiors […]. This creates an oppressive and strangely timeless hermetic space with no perspective or way out. "(Michael Niehaus)
  • “A realistic film novel about the German economic boom [...]. Fassbinder [...] thus provides an example of how one can use the methods of consumer cinema to drive this out over oneself. The trader of the four seasons is coherent on a level of direct observation of reality, but the characters also have a certain mythological dimension, situations and processes have that nuance of theatrical stylization that defines the essence of Fassbinder cinema. "( Ulrich Gregor )
  • The film scholar Thomas Elsaesser judged retrospectively: " Dealer of the four seasons can be cited as an example of a political cinema that reached a mass audience because its subtle and formally complex means are so artless and thus ensure precisely this accessibility."
  • The writer Rolf Dieter Brinkmann saw the film in a stoner round as "stupid, kitschy film ... how we laughed at the dull kitsch solemnly presented with the camera and arrangements, the dull German mentality that strides along and creates significance, how inanimate everything was, right kitsch, Loreroman, which had been dressed up incredibly ridiculously modern by the stylization ”.

Awards

The film received several awards at the German Film Prize in 1972 :

In particular, the performance of Irm Hermann received the highest praise (“very extraordinary” - Urs Jenny in the magazine Filmkritik).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Helmut Prinzler : data. In: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. (= Series film. 2). 4th, erg. U. exp. Edition. Hanser, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-446-13779-3 , p. 283.
  2. ↑ Hans-Michael Bock (Ed.): Cinegraphisches Lexikon zum Germansprachigen Film . Edition Text + Criticism, Munich (Losebl.werk, last subsequent delivery: 2004), ISBN 3-88377-764-1 , RWF, LG 38; B4f
  3. ↑ Interview with Corinna Brocher: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In: Brocher, Bronnen: The Filmmakers. Munich 1973.
  4. ^ Sang-Joon Bae: Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his film-aesthetic stylization. - Gardez !, Remscheid 2005, ISBN 3-89796-163-6 , p. 144.
  5. ↑ Kurt Raab, Karsten Peters: The longing of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. (= Goldmann Taschenbuch. 6642). Goldmann, Munich, 1983, ISBN 3-442-06642-5 , here: p. 52.
  6. ^ Sang-Joon Bae: Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his film-aesthetic stylization. Gardez !, Remscheid 2005, ISBN 3-89796-163-6 , p. 145.
  7. ↑ so Michael Niehaus: Dealer of the four seasons. In: Thomas Koebner u. a. (Ed.): Classic films, descriptions and commentaries. Volume 3: 1965-1981. (= Universal Library. 9418). Reclam, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-15-009418-6 , p. 269.
  8. ↑ Harry Baer and others: I can sleep when I'm dead. The breathless life of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. (= KiWi. 223). Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1982, ISBN 3-462-02055-2 , p. 85.
  9. ↑ Kurt Raab, Karsten Peters: The longing of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. (= Goldmann p. 6642). Goldmann, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-442-06642-5 , p. 33f.
  10. ↑ a b Kurt Raab, Karsten Peters: The longing of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. (= Goldmann p. 6642). Goldmann, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-442-06642-5 .
  11. ↑ Harry Baer et al. a .: I can sleep when I'm dead. The breathless life of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. (= KiWi. 223). Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1982, ISBN 3-462-02055-2 , p. 82.
  12. ^ Michael Töteberg: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. (= Rowohlt's monographs). Rowohlt, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-50458-8 , p. 76.
  13. ↑ Hans Helmut Prinzler: data. In: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. 4th edition. Hanser, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-446-13779-3 , p. 283.
  14. ^ Hans Günther Pflaum : In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. 1972, quoted here from: Robert Fischer, Joe Hembus: Der Neue Deutsche Film, 1960–1980. (= Citadel film books; = Goldmann Magnum. 10211). 2nd Edition. Goldmann, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-442-10211-1 , p. 68.
  15. ↑ Wilfried Wiegand, In: FAZ. quoted here from: Robert Fischer, Joe Hembus: Der Neue Deutsche Film, 1960–1980. (= Citadel film books; = Goldmann Magnum. 10211). 2nd Edition. Goldmann, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-442-10211-1 , p. 68.
  16. ↑ Urs Jenny, In: Filmkritik, quoted here from: Robert Fischer, Joe Hembus: Der Neue Deutsche Film, 1960–1980. (= Citadel film books; = Goldmann Magnum. 10211). 2nd Edition. Goldmann, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-442-10211-1 , p. 68.
  17. ↑ Michael Niehaus, H. d. v. J., In: Thomas Koebner et al. (Ed.): Classic films, descriptions and comments. Volume 3: 1965-1981. (= Universal Library. 9418). Reclam, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-15-009418-6 , p. 269.
  18. ^ Ulrich Gregor: History of the film from 1960. Bertelsmann, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-570-00816-9 , p. 149.
  19. ↑ Thomas Elsaesser: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-929470-79-9 , p. 76.
  20. ↑ here quoted from Michael Töteberg: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. (= Rowohlt's monographs). Rowohlt, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-50458-8 , p. 149.
  21. ↑ German Film Academy
  22. ↑ here quoted from: Robert Fischer, Joe Hembus: Der Neue Deutsche Film, 1960–1980. (= Citadel film books; = Goldmann Magnum. 10211). 2nd Edition. Goldmann, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-442-10211-1 , p. 68.