The Merchant of Four Seasons

Made before Fear Eats the Soul, which it resembles in many respects, this deceptively muted melodrama chronicles the 'rubbing out' of a character found oddly irrelevant by those around him: a man who dreamed of being an engineer, but had to settle for a fruit and vegetable stall, his aspirations constantly frustrated by his social circumstances. The film builds with remarkable power towards a concluding scene in which the process of Hans' destruction is revealed to be blindly self-perpetuating. Fassbinder's regular ensemble perform with enormous precision, and there's a remarkable dinner party scene in which, in a kind of mesmeric shorthand, the mechanics of destruction are revealed, working like clockwork.