Le marchand des quatre saisons

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.

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.

What kind I say about this movie. well for starters, I thought that this film was okay, not the greatest not worst. I said this cause I thought that the script was great and original, really different and refreshing. Now I wouldn't say that it's the greatest film that I've seeing cause of the acting. The actors that played each role, seems that they played them without emotions, as if they took the life out of them. When the wife laughed or cried, this didn't look real to me for some reason, that's just an example, but sincerely all the characters didn't act real at all. I wish I could say more positive things about this film so you guys can see it at least once but how can I do that since I know that I'm not going to see this movie again. I rented this film from the library of my school, without hearing anything about the film itself or the director. I took a chance because the story that was describe on the back sounded really interesting and it really was.

I didn't find this film as accessible as 'Fox & his Friends' but it was a moving portrayal of a typical Fassbinder victim figure, the eponymous barrow-boy, Hans Epp, whose hopes and dreams are eventually crushed by stultifying conformity (family & society). Some of the scenes are exaggerated (the family confrontations) but I particularly liked the sequence where Hans is desperately searching for meaning & comfort; he tries to find some peace in natural surroundings, goes back to his first lost love in order to recapture past feelings (she's only interested in a quick fling before her husband returns) and visits his sister, perhaps the only person who has any degree of sympathy for him, only to find she's too busy with work.

A poignant story of a vulnerable inarticulate man crushed by his mundane surroundings and bourgeoise, middle-class German values obsessed with economic success and a upward mobility that conveniently papers over the cracks of its more disturbing past.

I rented the movie at the local library, since I had years earlier seen Angst Essen Die Seele Auf, and liked it. It started very interesting with Hans Epp returning from a spell with the Foreign Legion, but the first thing his mother told him was how he was a failure and always would be. "Was ist traurig VorMittag ist noch traurig NachMittag" But I found the actors in this movie to be like zombies. It might be that they just depicted a dreary every day life, but I felt midways into the film that I don`t need to have these pictures inside my head, so I pressed the stop button and in stead put on the other film I had rented at the library, an episode of Star Trek Voyager.

Not that this is a bad movie, it was just tragic to watch at the time.