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Despair

Country: Germany, Language: English, 119 mins

  • Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
  • Writer: Vladimir Nabokov; Tom Stoppard
  • Producer: Lutz Hengst; Peter Märthesheimer

CGiii Comment

Despair...indeed.

It may have been about committing the perfect murder...

It most definitely is not about making the perfect film...and, it's not as clever as Herr Fassbinder thinks it is.

Ooooh film students and academics are screeching uncontrollably. Hey, watch it again...Ferréol's performance is a travesty of incompetence.

2 hours of utter hardship.


Trailer...

 

The(ir) Blurb...

In early-1930s Berlin during the Weimar Republic and the Nazis' rise to power, the elegant Russian émigré and eccentric chocolatier, Hermann Hermann, leads a petite bourgeois life with his voluptuous and frivolous wife, Lydia. Troubled about his Jewish roots, Hermann convinces himself that he has seen his doppelgänger in the person of the unemployed vagabond, Felix, going as far as to hatch a murderous plan, intent on trading his very existence for an entirely new one. Now, Hermann's desire for transcendence is gnawing at him. Will he get over the full-blown mental breakdown, and the profound despair?

Cast & Characters

Dirk Bogarde as Hermann Hermann;
Andréa Ferréol as Lydia Hermann;
Klaus Löwitsch as Felix Weber;
Volker Spengler as Ardalion;
Peter Kern as Muller;
Alexander Allerson as Mayer;
Gottfried John as Perebrodov;
Hark Bohm as Doctor;
Bernhard Wicki as Orlovius;
Adrian Hoven as Inspector Schelling;
Roger Fritz as Inspector Braun;
Y Sa Lo as Elsie;
Armin Meier as 1st and 2nd Twin and Foreman;
Ingrid Caven as Hotel receptionist;
Voli Geiler as Madam