The Austin Film Society screened Fassbinder's The Merchant of Four Seasons at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas (Tuesday, September 29, 1998). Here are some impressions. (Others are also welcome to submit theirs. See page bottom). [these "impressions" were originally written on 09-29-98 immediately after seeing the film in Austin. They have been very  lightly revised on 04-23-04 in Los Angeles, CA]

I see this film as the work of a filmmaker still looking for his voice, his language, his signature trademark. The iconography, the symbolism, the development are too intentionally mockish, too affected, too green. Too many melodramatic poses and fade-outs (after seeing five Fassbinder films, a pattern of recurring images begins to emerge: mannequins, doctors and hospitals... If I ever become a film-maker, please remind me not to fall for a pattern of recurring imagery :) And then there's what I call the "echoing bookending": Hans stands alone holding flowers after the love-of-his-life's rejection; she stands alone holding flowers at his funneral near the end: oh, man, please!)... 

As Irmgard walks down the street, a man, taking her for a prostitute, calls out for her price. She looks startled, behind her there is a shopping window with a mannequin dressed in a bridal gown on display (we see mannequins again later in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant), the next window has a living room on display (an obvious family life backdrop). Melodramatic pose-fade-out. 

Having decided to prostitute herself after her husband falls ill, Irmgard takes a customer home for sex. Her daughter opens her bedroom door and catches them in the act. Irmgard bursts into tears and runs for the window. As she stands there huddled with the drapes, a too obviously and strategically placed crucifix adorns the corner (an obvious religious symbol backdrop). Melodramatic pose-fade-out. 

In a foggy flashback, Hans tells the first sister he is joining the Foreign Legion, gives her some money and leaves. She pursues him and stumbles. The book she was holding lies on the foreground as she herself, wearing a flashy night gown and having fainted, also lies on the floor in the background stylishly posed (an obvious Hollywood backdrop?). Melodramatic pose-fade-out. 

Hans goes to see his lover. She undresses and lies on the bed. He doesn't and sits on the bed with his back towards her. She invites him to undress and come lie beside her. He says he doesn't feel like it (uh-oh, lack of interest in sex is the tip-off that depression, the self-destructive kind in this case, has set in and the will to live is slipping away). He buttons his shirt back up and leaves. She remains naked on the bed and turns over on her stomach apparently to cry. Melodramatic pose-fade-out. 

And so on and so forth... 

Fassbinder's movies have a kind of repressed nervous energy about them. This one in particular seems an exercise in repressed affectation. This would have been a far better and more effective movie had the whole film been a conversation between the two opposing camps (mother, Kurt & wife vs. Hans, Irmgard, daughter) in a dinner table face-off with the first sister in the middle as the partial referee shooting her poisonous darts at mother and Kurt and dispensing sharp-witted remarks all around as each participant has the appropriate flashbacks that tell the story. In my opinion (others may disagree), Fassbinder squandered too much precious film and time telling Hans's struggle as a fallen-from-grace policeman turned Foreign Legionaire and then fruit peddler on his return, who was rejected by his mother and the love of his life for his fall from grace and the ensuing struggle to rise above his lowly occupation (hard to get the story straight).

If this movie has any message at all, it is 1) that oral sex in the workplace can get you into a lot of trouble (if Bill Clinton never saw this film, he should have! How very ironic to see this film after the release of the Starr Report!) and 2) that nothing runs deeper than rejection by women, starting with one's mother (Hillary may yet exact her revenge). 

If John Lennon had seen this film, he would have found it unbearable and would have had a fit! (Lennon never got over what he perceived as his mother's rejection: no fame and fortune, no sex, no drugs, no meditation, no primal scream therapy, nothing seemed to help, except perhaps having become a father towards the end of his life). Fassbinder chose the wrong soundtrack for this movie. It should have been John Lennon's "Mother" released the previous year ("Mother, you had me, but I never had you/ I needed you but you didn't need me...), specially the gut-wrenching "momma, don't go!/daddy, come home!" chant at the end of the song. Or Pink Floyd's The Wall, released unfortunately almost a decade later: "...he could not break free/and the wall sank into his brain". Hans's love-of-his-life's rejection because her father would never allow her to marry a fruit peddler is simply an echo of the mother's rejection: a pattern of rejection by women... If this film is autobiographical at all, hmmmmmmm... I'll leave that one for Freudians to have fun with... 

This character Hans, whether remotely autobiographical or not, is a fine piece of work: he's got the short man complex, the rejected vet from Foreign Wars complex, the rejected lover complex, the rejected child complex. The only thing Fassbinder forgot was the bald man complex à la Seinfeld's George: Man alive! This guy is a walking caricature of a man! If this is dark humor, then this is dark humor to the point of cruelty, to the point of caricature.

In Fassbinder's world, if there is a God, he is the devil, indeed. And the devil is Fassbinder himself. It would have been a lot more interesting (in my opinion) to explore WHY when you have a man with all these complexes/problems, sometimes you get a Hans (self-pitying, self-destructive dejection), sometimes you get a Hitler (rejection becoming genocidal despotic megalomania), sometimes you get a Napoleaon (shortness of height becoming imperial despotic megalomania), sometimes you get a Woody Allen ("I can't express anger. I internalize it. I grow a tumor instead") or even a John Lennon (sad, angry creative genius). In other words, for those who saw that EXCELLENT documentary "Human Remains" during Cinematexas, WHY--not that anyone can come up with a clear answer--do problems like these create men (or women) who EXTERNALIZE their inner demons on the rest of humanity (Hitler, Stalin, Moussolini, Franco, Mao), and WHY do the same or similar problems also create men who INTERNALIZE the same demons and self-destruct. (Hans, etc.) OR WHY do the same or similar problems also create men like Lennon, Woody Allen and even Fassbinder himself who channel the same demons to SUPREME HEIGHTS OF CREATIVITY (oh, if somebody had only given Hitler the chance to become the next Van Gogh and take his anger and frustration out on a canvas!). Or as I said above, this film would have been far more interesting work as a true STUDY of Jean-Paul Sartre's words: "Hell is other people" (there's a quote for ya, Mr. Linklater! :). 

If you are wondering why I am reacting so strongly to this movie, the answer is simple. Like everyone else, I have my own demons to wrestle with, and I reject outright Fassbinder's answer for the common man or woman--as expressed in this movie.

It's only a movie you might say [these comments were also in part a very strong reaction on my part to what I perceived as Richard Linklater's rather sycophantic introduction of this film at the Alamo back in '98]. Well, yes and no. It contains a certain philosophy, and it reflects certain philosophies that people carry around in their heads. We look at one another, we examine one another, the same way Fassbinder has examined this character Hans and we come to certain conclusions about them. Some of those conclusions are precisely what Hans's family and Fassbinder came to think about him. Has someone ever looked at you in a way that you can tell in that person's eyes that he/she thought you were a "loser"? Or something worse? Well, I don't know about you, but I can see that perverse look in Fassbinder's eyes as he looks at Hans. It is NOT a compassionate look. It is a perverse look, and one with a sadistic glint in his eye as he puts him through all this ordeal. It is a perverse answer because Fassbinder himself went the other way, and the fact that he made this movie is proof of that: he became an artist, a filmmaker, he became something regardless of the fact that he led an excessive and self-destructive life than ended up in a drug overdose and early death.

This is a cruel and perverse caricaturization of the "loser". I'd take a FUNNY caricaturization of the "loser" á la Woody Allen, á la Seinfeld's George ANY DAY rather than this Portrait of The Loser As a Middle-Aged Man by Fassbinder (even James Joyce has done it better in one of his short stories, "Little Chandler"). Hitler himself was a "loser" who really went the other way and look what happened. If anybody deserves a cruel and perverse caricaturization, it is him, not a common man, not a poor hard-wordking man, not a fruit peddler. "Life is what you make it", I am told. If this is the story of someone who couldn't quite make it because people are cruel, that's one thing. If this is a gleeful, perverse caricaturization of a poor, rejected working man, then that's another. Not my thing. Yours? Give me Woody Allen or Seinfeld's George anytime. At least they're funny. This is just plain pathetic... 

This is not about "political corrected-ness" or "sacred cows". I believe no subject is off-limits for the artist. This is about something else. I myself don't want to end up like those--Hitler, Stalin, serial killers, you name them--who externalize their demons on humanity. I don't want to end up like those who internalize their demons on themselves either (Hans, suicides, you name them). I want to end up like those who channel their demons to supreme heights of creativity. Like John Lennon, like Woody Allen, like Van Gogh, like Fellini, like Fassbinder himself, for me, the answer is ART: cinema, writing, painting, music...(a friend of mine jokingly calls me an "übermensch wannabe" because of this...oh, well...so be it! I'd rather be an "übermensch wannabe" than a Hans type loser)... 

... Or all else failing, hey, there's nothing wrong with fruit peddling: a lot of men and women did it during the 1930's depression in these very now affluent United States of America, and it's been done today in this very same country by many an immigrant (anyone saw the documentaries on the Mexican/Central American immigrant street peddlers in California?) and many an American (or the white Xmas tree sellers in New York) during the Cinematexas Film Festival? There is no shame in honest work; there is no shame in our common humanity... When will we ever learn that? If this movie has any redeeming value at all, that must be it... 

I ain't no film critic [these were supposed to be visceral reactions to these films written right after seeing them without having read any film criticism or film theory beforehand and with as little academic-sounding pontification as possible], nor do I really want to become one [I'd much rather make a film or two myself à la Godard].

When compared to other good Fassbinder films ("Ali: Fear Eats the Soul", etc.), this film is the kind of film that tempts one to reach for the "star rating system"--much as I hate it--and slap it with the few stars it deserves (I'd give it two maximum!). It had the potential--mind you. I guess when one is one of the most prolific filmmakers of all time, one can't hit a homerun every time (ask Mark McGuire)... 

Again, thanks to the AFS and the Alamo for the screening! (I'm kind of broke right now [back in the fall of '98!], but I promise to join the AFS, pig out and tip BIG come December 15th!! :) Promise!!!) 

More comments anyone? 

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nan(d:o)