The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971)

Highly Recommended

West Germany

Feature Film

Original Title: Händler der vier Jahreszeiten

Writer/Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Cinematographer: Dietrich Lohmann

Cast: Hans Hirschmüller, Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla, Andrea Schober, Gusti Kreissl, Klaus Löwitsch, Karl Scheydt, Ingrid Caven

A violent, hard-drinking Munich man returns from serving in the French Foreign Legion and, after an unhappy spell in the police force, becomes a street vendor, selling fruit to bored hausfraus; he marries, has a child, suffers a heart attack, gives up drinking, and slowly loses the will to live, in Fassbinder’s powerful, bleak, and thoroughly compelling melodrama, which paints a damning and decidedly unpleasant portrait of early ‘70s bourgeois life. Iain.Stott