Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a German screenwriter, dramatist, actor, and director. He was one of the driving forces of the New German Cinema. He reminds me a bit of Lou Reed as he was prolific in his art, a counter-cultural icon, and an absolute terror in his life. 

He is just as known for his incredible amount of output (in his short 37 years of life he wrote/directed some 40 films plus plays and television series) as for his bountiful drug use, alcohol consumption, and sexual liaisons. That’s not to mention his controlling, abusive relationships with just about everyone.

His films run the gamut from experimental art-house fare, to ribald comedies, and confrontational crime thrillers, but he is most known for a series of elegantly styled, incredibly tender melodramas made in the vein of those old Douglas Sirk films. It’s like how Lou Reed could make both Metal Machine Music and “Pale Blue Eyes.”

Not all of his films are great, or even particularly good. I’ve not seen all of them, only a small portion really, but I’ve seen most of his “important” works. I added to that stack just the other day with Fox and His Friends.

Fassbinder also stars in this one as Franz Bieberkopf an uneducated, working class gay man. He begins the film working as Fox the Talking Head in a low-rent circus. When the owner of the circus is arrested on charges of tax evasion Franze starts hustling. He picks up Karlheinz Böhm a wealthy, sophisticated art dealer. Before their tryst Franz makes Max stop off and purchase a lottery ticket. Franze buys a lottery ticket every week and he’s just sure he’ll win this time.

In fact he does win this time, a whopping 500,000 Deutche Marks. When Max’s friend Eugen (Peter Chatel) learns of this windfall he immediately goes from berating Max for introducting Franz into their group of friends to turning Franz into is lover.

Eugen is handsome, well educated, and sophisticated, but he’s also broke. His father’s paper company has hit hard times and if they don’t do something fast it will go bust.

Pretty quickly we realize (though Franz doesn’t) that Eugen is only interested in Franz for his money. He cajoles Franz into letting his company borrow 100,000 Marks, then gets him to buy an expensive apartment and furnish it with expensive things. Meanwhile when they go out in public Eugen is constnatly berating Franz for his lack of education and unsophistication.

You don’t have to have a crystal ball to know how it will all end. Fassbinder wasn’t a great actor, but he gives Franz a deep meloncholy. It is as if he knows that Eugen is taking advantage of him, but at first he doesn’t care because it is giving him access to something he’s never had before – status – and then he doesn’t know how to get out of it.

A couple of times Franz tries to assert himself, he thinks he has an ace in his hand, but always Eugen outsmarts him, and makes him feel even less.

All of this is good. But what I find fascinating about the film is it is a snapshot into a certain type of gay culture, specifically from 1970s Germany, but perhaps universally, that I don’t have access to. As a straight man who grew up in a rural, deeply conservative part of America that culture simply did not exist in my circles. There may have been a gay underground in Tulsa when I was growing up in the late 1980s/early 1990s but I certainly didn’t know about it.

Even now when my social circles have broadened, I’m not a part of any gay scene. I’m not really a part of any straight scene. Or any scene, really. I could use a friend.

So finding this scene detailed is interesting to me. Its like watching any old movie that has a lot of exteriors in a city. You get a snapshot of what was like at that specific time.

The characters are explicitly gay in the film, something surpriisng from a Germany film from the 1970s. It was controvesial at the time. It would be controversial if it was released in America today. But interestingly nobody inside the film makes a big deal about their sexuality. True, it mostly takes place inside gay bars, gay bathhouses and the like, but still there isn’t a hing of homophobia anywhere.

Fox and His Friends isn’t my favorite Fassbinder film, but it is an interesting one and a fascinating time capsule.