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The Merchant of Four Seasons



New German Cinema icon Rainer Werner Fassbinder kicked off a new phase of his young career when he made the startling The Merchant of Four Seasons. In this despairing yet mordantly funny film, Fassbinder charts the decline of a self-destructive former policeman and war veteran struggling to make ends meet for his family by working as a fruit vendor. Fassbinder had skyrocketed to renown on the acclaim of a series of trenchant, quickly made early films, but for this one he took more time and forged a new style—featuring a more complexly woven script and narrative structure and more sophisticated use of the camera, and influenced by the work of his recently discovered idol, Douglas Sirk. The result is a meticulously made, unforgiving social satire.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary featuring filmmaker Wim Wenders
• New interviews with actors Irm Hermann and Hans Hirschmüller
• New interview with film scholar Eric Rentschler
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Thomas Elsaesser

This is guy pushing the cart from the New Year's drawing

New Fassbinder is always welcome, but I'm especially excited about a Win Wenders commentary, especially when so few new releases have commentaries to begin with.

Wow. I just watched this for the first time on Hulu earlier today, just on a whim. Kind of stunned. (Also, has Wim Wenders done a commentary on a Fassbinder film before? Or talked about Fassbinder in a documentary? I'm just curious if they knew each other well and if we can expect him to reminisce about Fassbinder or the making of the film, or if it will just be a more general talk about the place and the time period?)

mizoguchi5354 wrote:Wow. I just watched this for the first time on Hulu earlier today, just on a whim. Kind of stunned. (Also, has Wim Wenders done a commentary on a Fassbinder film before? Or talked about Fassbinder in a documentary? I'm just curious if they knew each other well and if we can expect him to reminisce about Fassbinder or the making of the film, or if it will just be a more general talk about the place and the time period?)

Pretty sure this is the same commentary from the Wellspring dvd I have. He discusses all things Fassbinder, not just this film. Great listen.

Edit: He also believes this is Fassbinder's masterpiece.

Edit: Thanks for the info.

goblinfootballs wrote:New Fassbinder is always welcome, but I'm especially excited about a Win Wenders commentary, especially when so few new releases have commentaries to begin with.

I think the Wenders commentary is ported over from the old Wellspring DVD (I know he provided commentaries for one or two of those), and if I recall correctly it's pretty poor. Not as poor as Wenders' commentaries on his own films tend to be, but offering very little information of interest.

EDIT: I see we have a difference of opinion! Well, you can be the judge.

Edit: He also believes this is Fassbinder's masterpiece.

i do too....although i love several of his movies almost as much, Merchant is one of the best movies of the 70s and pretty much a perfect film. looking very forward to this one...

This was one of the direst of the old Wellspring transfers -- it had that weird defect where the fruit in the merchant's cart appeared to be wiggling slightly, like the figures in one of Linklater's animated film. It'll be great to get a watchable release at last.

mizoguchi5354 wrote:Also, has Wim Wenders done a commentary on a Fassbinder film before? Or talked about Fassbinder in a documentary?

Criterion's "The Marriage of Maria Braun" also has a Wim Wenders commentary.

Towards the end, the young girl Renate reads aloud at the table something from her homework. What she recites is the beginning of "The Frog-King, or Iron John", from the Grimm's Fairy Tales, a story I'm guessing might have been instantly recognizable to German audiences of the time. I can't really explain why, but the story seems to resonate with the film. If you're a fan of the film, the fairy tale might be of interest.

I really do wish that Criterion provided a proper summary for this as the sparse use of intercutting seriously threw me for much of the film particularly in relation to Han's lover. A fairly basic summary would have cleared this up greatly. Beyond that it's quite the impressive film, though not among the best Fassbinder I've seen, mixing the visual aesthetic he'd be rolling with later with that Melvillian acting that makes his early films so fascinating. This is also one of the most morally frustrating of his films with everyone being so nasty that sympathies shift downward yet there's always something likable about the main pair despite them being genuinely awful human beings. Fassbinder doesn't even seem to try to make a Whity or Biberkopf like character whose horribleness can be explained by the unique placement they are in within a certain social confine. He almost threatens to do that with Han's sister and the casting of Schygulla certainly lends an assumption of decency to her. Instead though with the dinner scene Fassbinder seems to emphasize that she merely sees the corruption and moral degradation of the situation; not that she is innocent of it.