Written and direct by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1972 "Der Händler der vier Jahreszeiten" (The Merchant of Four Seasons) was, I think, intended as a critique of materialism and capitalism. Although "primitive capital accumulation" is central to the movie, it seems to me to be at least as much about depression, even if that condition is as much social as psychological for Fassbinder (as in the downward spirals of the working-class non-heroes in "Fox and His Friends" and In the Year of 13 Moons).

At the start of the movie, Hans Epp (Hans Hirschmuller) has a good voice (which he uses as a pushcart fruit peddler), a devoted mistress (the "great love of my life" played by Ingrid Caven), and a devoted, open-faced, blonde daughter (Renate (Andrea Schober)). On the other side of the balance, he has a wife he does not much care for (regarding her as nagging) and a family that looks down on him (like most everyone in "Fox and His Friends" looks down on Fox). His wife, Irmgard (Irm Hermann) literally looks down on him, being substantially taller then he is (he is built like a beer barrel and tries to be as full of beer as one). When Hans returned from a stint in the French Foreign Legion somewhere in Africa, his mother (Gusti Kreissl) commented, "The good die young, and people like you come back." (Whew!) His younger sister Anna (Hanna Schygulla) defends him... or at least criticizes their family for its attitude toward him for reasons of her own alienation.

After a very stylized incident of wife-beating (that goes on and on, though she is unbruised and unbloodied by it) and his passing out, he awakens to find that Irmgard has fled (to his mother's, where his family crowds around to protect her from him). This would seem to me a golden opportunity to move in with his mistress, but, Hans goes to his mother, struggles with his brother-in-law, and has a heart attack as Irmgard calls a divorce lawyer. (Sudsy? Very!)

Once fallen, Irmgard rallies and cancels her plans to divorce Hans. She takes a larger role in the fruit business. No longer able to push the cart around, Hans hires a hard-working and honest assistant Anzell (Karl Scheydt)—who tricked with Irmgard while Hans was in the hospital, so Irmgard conspires to get him fired. Hans encounters an army buddy, Harry (Klaus Lowitsch), who had saved his life in Africa, working as a waiter and hires him to do the street peddling (while Irmgard staffs a fruit stand).

Harry gradually renders Hans superfluous both in the business and in the household, helping Renate with her homework as Hans stares morosely out the window. Harry shows no sexual interest in Irmgard, but, then, neither does Hans. Hans becomes more and more depressed and finally goes on a binge that he and the onlookers know will kill him. In the final scene, Irmgard proposes that Harry stay around to run the business and help raise Renate (who sits, frozen, between them in the car).

OK, a contemptuous family of origin, lack of skills, and an inability to continue a job of heavy-lifting undermine any self-esteem Hans might have, and he takes out his frustrations on his wife and in the bottle. As he sinks deeper and deeper into depression and as Irmgard connives to get the first assistant fired, Hans becomes a bit more sympathetic, and Irmgard was never fully sympathetic. I greatly doubt that either would have been happy in socialist East Germany, either. Hans disintegrates when his business starts to do well and he gets some praise from his mother and wife. It is not that he has to sell his soul to do better. It's more like that he doesn't have one, or much of one. Ever practical, I think he had the opportunity to leave the business in the capable hands of Irmgard and Harry and spend more time with the supposed love of his life, but Fassbinder wanted to portray terminal depression... and did.

Hans Hirschmuller was very good as the pre-heart-attack brute and as the increasingly lost successful small-scale businessman. Hanna Schygulla (then emerging as Fassbinder's muse and as a movie star) has the most sympathetic (adult) role. I have to say that Gusti Kreissl is convincing in her very nasty role. And Irm Hermann put herself out there as a not-very-sympathetic character (and I presume Fassbinder is to blame for her frozen tears in the penultimate scene).

There are some dizzying zooms and lots of panning in rooms with multiple characters. Although moving quite a bit, the camera often stays back (that is, closeups and intercutting closeups in particular were used sparingly), keeping the audience distant from the soap opera (Brecht + Sirk = Fassbinder?) Dietrich Lohmann (who had shot The American Solider, "Katzelmacher"," Bremen Coffee," and "Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?" and would also shoot Effi Briest for Fassbinder) shot the film. The colors are less saturated than in many other New German Cinema ventures, but still are sometimes artificial.

Among the movies of Fassbinder's second phase (melodramas involving stunned working-class characters), I prefer the two with Brigitta Mira (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven) that I've seen (I haven't seen "Fear of Fear "or "Like a Bird on a Wire") and the grinding down of Fox by his exploitative cash-strapped upper-class lover in "Fox and His Friends," but "Merchant" is a typical example of the alienating examination of alienated lower-class characters on which Fassbinder made his international reputation in the early 1970s.




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age