''The Merchant of Four Seasons'' (german: Händler der vier Jahreszeiten) is a 1971 West German film written and directed by
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (; 31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982), sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a German filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures and catalysts of the New German Cinema movement.
Fassbinder's main ...
, starring and
Irm Hermann
Irmgard Hermann (4 October 194226 May 2020) was a German actress. She worked in film, television, and the stage, appearing in over 160 film and television productions. She was discovered, without formal training, by Rainer Werner Fassbinder who c ...
. The plot follows the life of a fruit-peddler, living in 1950s
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
, who is driven over the edge by an uncaring society.
The title derives from the French expression for a fruit and vegetable seller, ''un marchand des quatre-saisons''. The film explores issues of class prejudices, domestic violence, infidelity, family discord, depression and self-destructive behavior.
Plot
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
, the 1950s. Hans Epp, an ordinary but likable man, returns home after spending several years in the
French Foreign Legion
The French Foreign Legion (french: Légion étrangère) is a corps of the French Army which comprises several specialties: infantry, Armoured Cavalry Arm, cavalry, Military engineering, engineers, Airborne forces, airborne troops. It was created ...
. He is berated by his mother ("The good die young, and people like you come back", she says after hearing about the death of the young friend Hans had taken to the army with him).
Hans works as a fruit peddler, calling out his products and diligently making his rounds through the residential streets. Short and stocky, he is married to the slim and taller Irmgard, who helps him with his work. They have a small daughter, Renate. One day Hans sells fruit to an attractive married woman in an apartment building. She asks him to deliver the pears in person and invites him in, but he refuses, saying "some other time." The woman is the great love of Hans's life since his youth. When the suspicious Irmgard questions why it took so long, he escapes her incessant complaints by abandoning his cart and going into a nearby bar. Soon, the sad ritual of his empty existence emerges: arguing with his wife, drinking excessively, lamenting lost personal and professional opportunities. While in the bar, Hans gets sentimental about his golden days as a policeman. In a flashback, he recalls how one day he brought a prostitute to the police station to take a statement, but she lured him into having oral sex. Caught by his superior, this incident got him fired.
Irmgard appears at the bar to fetch him, but a drunk Hans says he will come home when he wants to. When his wife does not leave fast enough, he throws a chair at her. Finally Hans comes home intoxicated. Irmgard calls him a pig and he beats her up in front of their little daughter. The next morning, Irmgard has disappeared and Hans is desperate.
Irmgard, fleeing with Renate, finds support with Hans' family. His contemptuous bourgeois mother has always disdained Hans, as she favors her obedient married daughter Heidi and tolerates her outspoken college student daughter Anna. When Hans once dreamed of being a mechanic, his mother demanded that he keep on studying and forbid him from taking a job that would get his hands dirty. Irmgard complains to her in-laws that Hans attacked her the night before. Heidi and her husband agree with the mother that Hans has always been good for nothing. Anna is the lone relative sympathetic to him, saying his family has always despised him and never gave him a proper chance. When Hans arrives, he tries to reconcile with his wife, but Irmgard retreats to a corner of the living room screaming in terror while the brother-in-law stands in front of her. The two men struggle while Irmgard phones a lawyer, saying she wants a divorce. When she puts down the receiver, Hans begins to sing his favorite tune: "Buona, buona notte, you can't have everything you want." Then he has a heart attack.
While Hans is recuperating in a hospital bed, his wife lets herself be picked up by a man in the street and takes him home to bed. But her little daughter catches them having sex, after which Irmgard sobs incessantly. At the hospital, Hans and his wife reconcile; she promises to stay with him. Once he is back home and as they are about to have sex, Irmgard explains that sometimes she finds him funny because he is much shorter than she is and that she only grew interested in him in the first place because he was so comical.
After his heart attack, Hans can neither work nor drink, so Irmgard takes a larger role in the business. No longer able to push the cart around, Hans hires a hard-working and honest assistant, Anzell. He is the same man with whom, unknown to Hans, Irmgard had the brief affair during his hospitalization. Fearing exposure of her indiscretion, she manipulates Anzell into overpricing the produce and afterwards sharing the extra earnings with her. He agrees, but Irmgard knows he will be found out because her husband spies on Anzell when he goes through the courtyards. It happens as planned and Anzell is fired in disgrace, but Hans knows of Irmgard's infidelity.
While dining with a friend, Hans is reunited with Harry, a close friend from his years in the Foreign Legion who now waits tables, and immediately offers him a job. Soon Hans suggests to his wife that Harry move in with them. She protests, but Hans insists. Harry proves to be an industrious worker who takes the cart through the streets and earns more than Hans did. Irmgard tends a fruit stand while Hans sulks with too much time on his hands. Though Harry's professionalism and dedication bring Hans' business profitability and success, they also render Hans obsolete in his own life, leading him further into isolation and despair.
In his depression, Hans revisits the great love of his life. In his youth, he courted her with an armful of red roses, but she turned him down because her parents did not want her to marry a fruit peddler. Though married to someone else, she undresses for casual sex, but he leaves. When Hans visits Anna, his favorite sister, she is busy with her studies and has no time for him.
The doctor says large quantities of alcohol would be fatal for Hans because of his bad heart, and in the end, Hans deliberately goes to his regular bar. While drinking, he remembers an incident when he was in the Foreign Legion in Morocco. Captured and tortured by an Arab, he was saved by his comrades at the last minute though he really wanted to die. Like then, Hans no longer wishes to live. At a grand dinner with his wife, Harry and his buddies, Hans downs a few dozen shots of liquor, which promptly kill him on the spot. After the funeral, Harry agrees to stay with Irmgard and takes up the life meant for Hans.
Cast
* as Hans Epp
*
Irm Hermann
Irmgard Hermann (4 October 194226 May 2020) was a German actress. She worked in film, television, and the stage, appearing in over 160 film and television productions. She was discovered, without formal training, by Rainer Werner Fassbinder who c ...
as Irmgard
*
Hanna Schygulla
Hanna Schygulla (; born 25 December 1943) is a German actress and chanson singer associated with the theater and film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. She first worked for Fassbinder in 1965 and became an active participant in the New German ...
as Anna
*
Klaus Löwitsch
Klaus Löwitsch (8 April 1936 – 3 December 2002) was a German actor, best known in Germany for his starring role in the television detective series ''Peter Strohm''.
He appeared in several films directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, beginn ...
as Harry
* Karl Scheydt as Anzell
* Andrea Schober as Renate, Hans's daughter
*
Kurt Raab
Kurt Raab (20 July 1941 – 28 June 1988) was a West German stage and film actor, as well as a screenwriter and playwright. Raab is best remembered for his work with German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, with whom he collaborated on 31 ...
as Kurt, Hans's brother-in-law
*
Ingrid Caven
Ingrid may refer to:
* Ingrid (given name)
* Ingrid (record label), and artist collective
* Ingrid Burley, rapper known mononymously as Ingrid
* Tropical Storm Ingrid, various cyclones
* 1026 Ingrid, an asteroid
* InGrid, the grid computing pr ...
as Hans's great love
* Gusti Kreissl as Hans's mother
* Heide Simon as Heide, Hans's married sister
Reception
''The Merchant of Four Seasons'' was a turning point in Fassbinder's career, marking his entry into the international film arena. It is considered by film critics to be one of Fassbinder's best films. At the
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
website it has a 92% 'fresh' rating.
DVD release
The film was released on
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
in the U.S. on July 9, 2002 in
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
with English subtitles.
References
External links
*
''The Merchant of Four Seasons: Downward Mobility in Munich''an essay by
Thomas Elsaesser
Thomas Elsaesser (22 June 1943 – 4 December 2019) was a German film historian and professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He was also the writer and director of ''The Sun Island'', a documentary essay film abou ...
at the
Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Merchant Of Four Seasons
1971 films
1971 drama films
German drama films
West German films
1970s German-language films
Films directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Films set in the 1950s
Films set in the 1960s
Films set in Munich
1972 drama films
1972 films
1970s German films