The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972) - film review

Hans Epp is a man in his early thirties who makes a modest living by selling fruit from a barrow in the back streets of Munich.  His family are embarrassed by him and consider him a failure.  Hans’s downfall began when he was dismissed from the police force after being caught in an uncompromising position with a streetwalker.  A spell in the French foreign legion didn’t appear to do him any good either.  Not long after his wife walks out on him, Hans has a heart attack and is warned that he will die unless he leads a less physically strenuous life.  He employs another man to sell his fruit and manages to make a nice tidy profit.  This development delights his family, who are now glad that he has begun to make something of his life.  But Hans’s commercial success does not bring happiness.  Unable to find meaning in his life, Hans slips further and further into depression...

With half a dozen full-length films under his belt, Rainer Fassbinder had his first commercial success with The Merchant of Four Seasons, a poignant study of a man destined to fail that serves as a powerful indictment of the capitalist system and our increasingly materialistic society.  Not only is this Fassbinder’s most technically accomplished work up until this time, but it is also his most thoughtful and provocative, and it is easy to see why many consider it to be his masterpiece.

Here, Fassbinder’s trademark stylisation (which combines the technique of Brechtian distancing with Sirkian expressionism) works beautifully to draw us into the inner world of the central protagonist, skilfully portrayed by Hans Hirschmüller.  The character Hans Epp is a perpetual outcast who can never live up to the expectations of those who know him.  He is judged not by who he is but by how he lives his life and how much money he can earn.  It is only when he ceases to be a worker and becomes an employer that he wins the grudging respect of his kin.  Through Hans, we see the dehumanising influence and absurdity of the capitalist system, of a world where material wealth is the sole criterion by which men are judged.

Hans’s unwillingness or inability to submit to capitalism is what prevents him from having a meaningful identity in the world he lives in.  This sense of alienation is emphasised repeatedly by the unusual camerawork and the excessively artificial reactions of the other characters, all of which serve to make Hans appear to be the perpetual outsider.  Yet he is the only character we can identify with, the only one with any substance and truth.  He is a creature of instinct, not an automaton with a cash register constantly clicking in his mind.  When he tries to become like those around him, it is an admission of failure, and his descent into self-destruction is inevitable.  Man cannot live by bread alone.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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