Synopsis
The Merchant of Four Seasons (Händler der vier Jahreszeiten, 1972) is a West German drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Hans is a former Foreign Legion soldier who returns to Munich and finds no place waiting for him.
His mother tells him to his face she wishes he hadn't come back. He washes out of the police, sells fruit from a cart, marries a woman he doesn't love who returns the favor. The woman he actually wanted wouldn't tie herself to a street vendor. A heart attack nearly takes him; drinking does the rest more slowly. Everyone around him causes harm without quite meaning to — a steady, quiet pressure from every side.
Fassbinder shot this in weeks, drawing on Douglas Sirk's melodramas — the same cool framing, the same clinical detachment while watching someone get ground down. Hans Hirschmüller carries the whole film without a single self-pitying moment. One of Fassbinder's tightest works and a key document of 1970s West German cinema. Watch The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972) online on iFILM.
Starring
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