Fassbinder’s first masterpiece. The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is a bleak kitchen sink realism domestic social drama about a working class couple raising a young daughter who operate a fresh produce cart. Along with its anti-corporate street vendor, throw in a similarly anti-corporate brand of cinema, and add an anti-institutional attack on marriage that endorses casual cheating, and you get something like a free market Fassbinder ethos.
The Merchant of Four Seasons is Fassbinder’s first grown up film. If his prior films have this youthful rebelliousness about them, this one shows what happens when you’re faced with responsibilities. And its moral is once you get to that point you might as well kill yourself. HANS (Hirschmüller) goes from miserable belligerent fuck my life in Act I, to losing his family because he beat his wife and desperately trying to win her back, succeeding, and blissful in Act II, to depressed suicidal because after that what other reason is there to live?
Even though it sometimes borders on disconcerting how many zooms there are (this must be the first time Fassbinder had access to a zoom lens), The Merchant of Four Seasons feels as fresh as the pears the Epps are slangin. How can I prove my point here? I can’t. You just watch it and everything about it has this gravitas. This simplicity. This cohesion of Fassbinder’s vision. Material perfectly suited to his talents. Peer Raben’s tranquil soft unsentimental theme. And you almost think maybe for a little while that it’s romantic because it shows a grounded setting where real people who normally go unnoticed, undervalued by their closeminded family and society, as underdogs persevere and get to have their own life.
But Fassbinder scornfully obliterates that existence. These people like to get drunk and fuck randos. Claiming what society offers them turns out to be a false bill of sale. No one gets Hans. The only person who cares about him and seems to get him is his sister ANNA (Schygulla). But when the family is making it and the business is running smoothly, Hans tells Anna he thinks too much with his newfound spare time and it torments him. And she doesn’t get him. She’s too busy with her own work. She’s his only defender against their parents, in-laws, and relatives. When she calls them out for despising Hans then only faking tolerating him because he’s bringing in enough bread to earn their acceptance she calls them on it. And this leads to him drinking himself to death. It's like the line in the Woody Allen movie: the unexamined life isn't worth living, but the examined one is no bargain.
This movie empathizes with suicide as the only thing left to do. And not because its protagonist Hans is mentally ill. Or unbalanced. He isn’t depicted as other. He’s depicted as average working class. He doesn’t lose it all, which used to be a motivation for suicidal characters in Hollywood. He gets to where everything he wanted is his. Gets his wife back. Earns a livable wage for his family and himself. Gains the acceptance of his family. And that sucks the will to live out of him.
The flashback at the end of the film however, tells us Hans gave up wanting to live long ago. When IRMGARD (Irm Hermann) tells their daughter RENATE that “he’s going to leave if he wants to. People haven’t always been kind to your father,” it prefigures his losing the will to live. But was it because of how others treated Hans? The film doesn’t lend much weight to this being an easy conclusion.
Because as far as we can tell when he was a cop Hans was fired for getting a blowjob out in the open in an office in the precinct. And when he was nearly killed in the Foreign Legion in Morrocco his fellow soldiers came to his rescue and saved his life. And the woman he lusts for is made available to him. Also his wife cheats too (and if that’s eating at him it’s no excuse because Irmgard gets Anzell fired out of what would appear to be her own remorse and renewed dedication to the fidelity of their marriage), so going back to the free market accessibility, what’s so wrong that Hans loses his soul? Is the true tragedy that life isn’t enough for him? Or is life not enough for anyone? Is the film challenging what you live for? What are your values based on? And are you truly living or just another hypocrite playing at an imitation of life?
Even though it sometimes borders on disconcerting how many zooms there are (this must be the first time Fassbinder had access to a zoom lens), The Merchant of Four Seasons feels as fresh as the pears the Epps are slangin. How can I prove my point here? I can’t. You just watch it and everything about it has this gravitas. This simplicity. This cohesion of Fassbinder’s vision. Material perfectly suited to his talents. Peer Raben’s tranquil soft unsentimental theme. And you almost think maybe for a little while that it’s romantic because it shows a grounded setting where real people who normally go unnoticed, undervalued by their closeminded family and society, as underdogs persevere and get to have their own life.
But Fassbinder scornfully obliterates that existence. These people like to get drunk and fuck randos. Claiming what society offers them turns out to be a false bill of sale. No one gets Hans. The only person who cares about him and seems to get him is his sister ANNA (Schygulla). But when the family is making it and the business is running smoothly, Hans tells Anna he thinks too much with his newfound spare time and it torments him. And she doesn’t get him. She’s too busy with her own work. She’s his only defender against their parents, in-laws, and relatives. When she calls them out for despising Hans then only faking tolerating him because he’s bringing in enough bread to earn their acceptance she calls them on it. And this leads to him drinking himself to death. It's like the line in the Woody Allen movie: the unexamined life isn't worth living, but the examined one is no bargain.
This movie empathizes with suicide as the only thing left to do. And not because its protagonist Hans is mentally ill. Or unbalanced. He isn’t depicted as other. He’s depicted as average working class. He doesn’t lose it all, which used to be a motivation for suicidal characters in Hollywood. He gets to where everything he wanted is his. Gets his wife back. Earns a livable wage for his family and himself. Gains the acceptance of his family. And that sucks the will to live out of him.
The flashback at the end of the film however, tells us Hans gave up wanting to live long ago. When IRMGARD (Irm Hermann) tells their daughter RENATE that “he’s going to leave if he wants to. People haven’t always been kind to your father,” it prefigures his losing the will to live. But was it because of how others treated Hans? The film doesn’t lend much weight to this being an easy conclusion.
Because as far as we can tell when he was a cop Hans was fired for getting a blowjob out in the open in an office in the precinct. And when he was nearly killed in the Foreign Legion in Morrocco his fellow soldiers came to his rescue and saved his life. And the woman he lusts for is made available to him. Also his wife cheats too (and if that’s eating at him it’s no excuse because Irmgard gets Anzell fired out of what would appear to be her own remorse and renewed dedication to the fidelity of their marriage), so going back to the free market accessibility, what’s so wrong that Hans loses his soul? Is the true tragedy that life isn’t enough for him? Or is life not enough for anyone? Is the film challenging what you live for? What are your values based on? And are you truly living or just another hypocrite playing at an imitation of life?
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