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Despair (1978)

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

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From Time Out Film Guide

This generally ill-received assault (in both senses) on the art house market, filmed in English, toys perversely with its signifiers of 'class' (Nabokov novel, Stoppard script, Bogarde performance) to both plainly outrageous and oddly hermetic effect. The novel's surprises are merrily given away half way through (when distressed chocolate manufacturer Hermann Hermann decides to opt out of proto-Nazi Germany by murdering a 'double' who in fact looks nothing like him), and Fassbinder increasingly aligns the material with his more personal studies in schizophrenia like Satan's Brew or World on a Wire, while matching his own concerns with illusionism to Nabokov's with delusion. Bold, garish and obsessive, but more than a little irritating.

Author: PT 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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Cast & crew

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Producer: Peter Märthesheimer

Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Andrea Ferreol, Volker Spengler, Klaus Löwitsch, Alexander Allerson, Bernhard Wicki full cast

Duration: 119 mins


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