Passion on Sale
Added 10/15/2009
A sad movie of going riches and back of a working class lad spent his lottery win on a lover is quite typical for cinematography if not so frequently pictured between same gender lovers.
It is a very educative story for everyone regardless of sexual preferences and surely controversy-provocative in the seventieth.
This is a first disk of a Fassbinder Foundation three disc set (other pictures included: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, A Year of 13 Moons), which costs a hand-and-a-leg price in Australia.
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It's about class, not sexual orientation....
Added 11/29/2007
This is one of Fassbinder's best films, a really incisive, sad, and pointed commentary on class differences and exploitation. Fox, wonderfully played by Fassbinder himself, is a lower class carnival worker who wins the lottery, and is welcomed (or seduced) into the upper class gay culture. He naively and sadly believes that they genuinely like him, but they are just using him for his money. He essentially is used by the upper class until his money runs out. They jettison him, like an abattoir does with the carcases of cows.
Many have made hay of the fact that the main character here is homosexual. There weren't too many films at the time about homosexuality, but the strange thing is that Fox's sexual orientation really doesn't matter here. The film is about class and class exploitation, not sexual orientation. It never becomes a "gay" film. It is a human film, showing that (shock!) homosexuals can succumb to greed, cruelty, coldness, and indifference like everyone else can. I always find films that show "minorities" (for lack of a better term) as deeply human and flawed, because it shows that they are just as human as the so-called "majorities" are. It is the polar opposite of political correctness, which serves to dumb us down and makes us all the same. I prefer the polar opposite. It is refreshing and much more though provoking than bland, PC portrayals.
This is a very sad film. Even in high school (when I first saw this), I was really moved by it. I adore Fassbinder. I think he's one of the greatest directors that Germany ever produced. It's a shame he died, but his films still amaze people even today.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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A Fassbinder favorite: Fox and his "friends."
Added 11/28/2007
Among his 33 films, Fassbinder considered his 1974 film, Fox and His Friends (Faustrecht der Freiheit), one of his personal favorites. It tells the compelling story of Franz Bieberkopf, a.k.a. Fox (Fassbinder himself in the leading role), a working-class young man who, after losing his carnival job, wins 500 thousand marks playing the lottery. Fox celebrates in Munich by mingling with an older gay man (Karlheinz Böhm) and his cultivated gay friends. By contrast, Fox has no polish or savoir-vivre. He is portrayed as an innocent, and the portrayal is poignant. After spending the night with one of the men, Eugen (Peter Chatel), Fox goes into a slow downward spiral, squandering most of his lottery winnings in the company of Eugen and his gay friends by investing in Eugen's company, buying furniture and clothing, vacationing in Marrakech, and spending what he has left on prostitutes and flowers. Ultimately, Fassbinder is not as interested in the sexual orientation of Fox and "his friends," as he is in their values, obsession with money, and exploitation of Fox. By the end of the movie, it is clear that without money, Fox really has no friends. Highly recommended.
G. Merritt
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Another Memorable Fassbinder's film
Added 9/2/2007
In "Fox and His Friends" (1975) which Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote and directed, he played a main character, Franz Bieberkopf alias "Fox" a lower class, uneducated circus worker who loses his job when his lover, the circus owner is arrested and sent to prison for tax fraud. Fox believes in his luck and strikes it rich by winning 500,000 marks in the lottery and very soon attracts the attention of an elegant, posh, and sophisticated Eugen who knows very well how to make Fox pay for his expensive habits and how to make him invest a lot of money in his father business that is not very successful to say the least. What fascinated me the most - how convincingly Fassbinder - one man production company who came up with the idea, wrote the screenplay and directed the movie- played seemingly tough but as it turned, confused and vulnerable Fox. Another interesting aspect of the movie is the way Fassbinder describes the gay community in Germany of the early 70s. He does not make any excuses and he does not make his characters complete villains or innocent victims. The story he tells could've happened in any community.
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A GAY CLASSIC
Added 12/18/2006
"FOX AND HIS FRIENDS"
A Gay Classic
Amos Lassen and Cinema Pride
"Fox and His Friends" (Wellspring Video) caused a great deal of controversy when it was first released in 1975. Many thought that the story of a gay sideshow worker who won the lottery and was then exploited by his upper class lover was homophobic. Fassbinder, the famed gay German director even said that the movie could have been about a heterosexual couple but it would not have been as clear. Fassbinder also plays the central character, Fox, and his street skills and humor do not reach full potential because of his naiveté as his snobbish boyfriend scams him out of his lottery winnings. As Fox becomes more and more demoralized the movie moves along to its inevitable conclusion. What sounds so depressing here is really quite the opposite as this is a film filled with subtle humor.
What the movie is really a character study of a not-too-smart circus worker who suddenly finds himself wealthy and is a touching film with a great performance from Fassbinder. It is also a strong examination of the German class system and gay relationships in Germany in the 1970s. It is an unsentimental and even guileless film most of the time as well as droll and melodramatic as well as poignant and tragic,
Fox knows before he even enters the lottery that he is going to win so on his way to buy a ticket, he allows himself enough time to have sex in a local public toilet. As he revels over his win in a gay bar, he becomes involved with a pretentious and arrogant character that is already in a relationship but pretends to love Fox as he scams him out of his winnings.
The film is also a good study in how to make a really good movie as it is an example of a movie that never loses its focus. It is a study of sexual and political issues that were relevant in the 70s and still relevant today. Whenever I see a Fassbinder movie I am literally blown away. He challenges all that I know and in his own way forces the viewer to have an experience he has never had before. The movie is full of cliché but Fassbinder is conventional like this for a reason He is truth and he makes movies about truth and as we know, truth is not always easy to take. Fassbinder is known for wallowing in the less fortunate but he does it with grace and compassion. His films are usually focused on the barriers between classes and this movie is a noir film about a gay relationship.
Fassbinder was very brave to cast himself in the role of Fox, a role that is unromantic and unflattering. We see that Fassbinder is not content with the gays that are fixated on money and looks but his own film as a great deal of male nudity and these are the kind of men that Fox finds attractive. This is a movie that can be watched again and again and understood differently every time. It never becomes stale and the tongue-in-cheek quality of the movie makes it completely captivating. There are intelligent observations on the motivation of society, political aspirations and above all else on human nature. It is an example of human manipulation. This is really a film that set the way for many films that were follow in the genre known as gay cinema and should be a valuable addition to all libraries.
0 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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Passion on Sale
Added 10/15/2009
A sad movie of going riches and back of a working class lad spent his lottery win on a lover is quite typical for cinematography if not so frequently pictured between same gender lovers.
It is a very educative story for everyone regardless of sexual preferences and surely controversy-provocative in the seventieth.
This is a first disk of a Fassbinder Foundation three disc set (other pictures included: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, A Year of 13 Moons), which costs a hand-and-a-leg price in Australia.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
It's about class, not sexual orientation....
Added 11/29/2007
This is one of Fassbinder's best films, a really incisive, sad, and pointed commentary on class differences and exploitation. Fox, wonderfully played by Fassbinder himself, is a lower class carnival worker who wins the lottery, and is welcomed (or seduced) into the upper class gay culture. He naively and sadly believes that they genuinely like him, but they are just using him for his money. He essentially is used by the upper class until his money runs out. They jettison him, like an abattoir does with the carcases of cows.
Many have made hay of the fact that the main character here is homosexual. There weren't too many films at the time about homosexuality, but the strange thing is that Fox's sexual orientation really doesn't matter here. The film is about class and class exploitation, not sexual orientation. It never becomes a "gay" film. It is a human film, showing that (shock!) homosexuals can succumb to greed, cruelty, coldness, and indifference like everyone else can. I always find films that show "minorities" (for lack of a better term) as deeply human and flawed, because it shows that they are just as human as the so-called "majorities" are. It is the polar opposite of political correctness, which serves to dumb us down and makes us all the same. I prefer the polar opposite. It is refreshing and much more though provoking than bland, PC portrayals.
This is a very sad film. Even in high school (when I first saw this), I was really moved by it. I adore Fassbinder. I think he's one of the greatest directors that Germany ever produced. It's a shame he died, but his films still amaze people even today.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
|
A Fassbinder favorite: Fox and his "friends."
Added 11/28/2007
Among his 33 films, Fassbinder considered his 1974 film, Fox and His Friends (Faustrecht der Freiheit), one of his personal favorites. It tells the compelling story of Franz Bieberkopf, a.k.a. Fox (Fassbinder himself in the leading role), a working-class young man who, after losing his carnival job, wins 500 thousand marks playing the lottery. Fox celebrates in Munich by mingling with an older gay man (Karlheinz Böhm) and his cultivated gay friends. By contrast, Fox has no polish or savoir-vivre. He is portrayed as an innocent, and the portrayal is poignant. After spending the night with one of the men, Eugen (Peter Chatel), Fox goes into a slow downward spiral, squandering most of his lottery winnings in the company of Eugen and his gay friends by investing in Eugen's company, buying furniture and clothing, vacationing in Marrakech, and spending what he has left on prostitutes and flowers. Ultimately, Fassbinder is not as interested in the sexual orientation of Fox and "his friends," as he is in their values, obsession with money, and exploitation of Fox. By the end of the movie, it is clear that without money, Fox really has no friends. Highly recommended.
G. Merritt
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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