The Merchant of Four Seasons

In Fassbinder's earlier films, his ideas sometimes surpased his ability to execute them. He was always a great writer, but it took him some time to get his style of camera work and storytelling down pat.

The Merchant of Four Seasons is one of Fassbinder's first movie to make great use of color, from the bright green pears in the merchant's cart to the bright red roses at the funeral (a funeral in a Fassbinder movie? who'd have thought).

His camera work was getting there too, but it was still fairly minimalist. The occasional zooms seem a bit uncomfortable at times and unnatural, but then again, Fassbinder was still coming out of his purely avant garde phase. This might be because Michael Ballhaus isn't behind the camera, but instead the slightly inferior Dietrich Lohmann.

Still, this is Fassbinder, and you get your fix here. Broken dreams shown so vividly and unflinchingly as to alienate audience and drive them into a depressed stupor. Just what the doctor ordered. An early classic that shows remarkable progression when compared to his first films released only 2 years prior.

About a man who lives life in a permanent crisis, don't we all these days - captured through portraits and pictures that could stand by themselves in any art gallery. A work of genius by a genius.

If I squint, I can see the influence of Douglas Sirk on this Rainer Werner Fassbinder soaper about fruitseller Hans Hirschmüller. He's cast as a failure, because he doesn't live up to the middle-class aspirations of his family. He runs away and joins the Foreign Legion. He returns and joins the police, but is kicked out for consorting with a prostitute. His one true love can't marry him because of his work, although she meets him for assignations. In between, he has a shrewish wife in Irm Hermann, in-laws who despise him, a heart attack, and his gradual erasure from his own life to contend with.

However, while Sirk's most famous work in the 1950s tinges his disapproval of the post-war middle class with sympathy and wonderment at peoples' refusal to admit what they want to to be happy, Fassbinder seems angry and contemptuous of his subjects. Hirschmüller is too passive, Miss Miss Hermann plays the victim card too aggressively, his family arrant, mealy-mouthed snobs, and so forth. There's no one to root for in this. There's nothing tragic about his inevitable destruction, only a sadistic, scolding examination of all that Fassbinder finds wrong with mainstream society.

The Merchant of Four Seasons received all major W German film awards for 1971 but it took a couple of more years for Fassbinder to break through internationally. TM4S is a fairly simple story but it can be difficult or painful to watch due to the subject matter: class prejudices, domestic violence, infidelity, family discord, depression and self-destructive behavior. In other words it presents a bleak view of the world and its human inhabitants. I believe there's an undercurrent of cutting humor throughout although it's interesting that no examples spring to mind and it's not campy. I saw TM4S in the mid-70s and in 2015 didn't remember much at all (other than not liking it), which suggests I repressed a lot that first time. I now think it's the first of a few masterpieces by a director whose importance will certainly endure.

The Merchant of Four Seasons is prolific, self destructive, German, writer, director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's first film that brought him international attention along with the movement called New German Cinema. Specializing in melodramas he managed to churn out 44 films before dying from a drug overdose at 37, Merchant being one of his finer efforts.

Hans Epp returns from a stint in the Foreign Legion to a cold mother and detached family. Once a proud policeman, drummed out of the force, he resorts to pedaling fruit from a cart and begins to make a reasonable living. Alcoholism, however dogs him and brings him to dark places.

Fassbinder was a follower of Hollywood director Douglas Sirk and the artifice contained in his colorful melodramas featuring Rock Hudson and a vivid palette. Fassbender does so as well here with some outstanding compositions that moodily jump out at you but his characters (played with a cornered desperation by Hans Hirshmuller and sullen resignation by Irm Hermann ) remain more complex in their take on matters made even more impenetrable by their stoicism.

Uncompromising in its dark viewpoint, a bleak but rewarding watch.