DVD Cover Information

Actor: Adrian Hoven, Harry Baer, Karlheinz B?hm, Marquard Bohm, Peter Chatel
Brand: Genius
Primary Contributor: Karlheinz B?hm
Primary Contributor: Peter Chatel
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: German (Original Language); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Published)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 123 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-07-02
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Fox Lorber

Movie Reviews of Fox and His Friends

Movie Review: It's about class, not sexual orientation....
Summary: 5 Stars

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.

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Summary of Fox and His Friends

A down-and-out down-on-his-luck homosexual carnival worker wins the lottery and along with it some new friends. Unfortunately a charming scheming lover fleeces him of his newfound money. Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 06/19/2007 Run time: 123 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

The original German title, Faustrecht der Freiheit, which roughly translates as "Might Makes Right," describes rather bluntly the crux of this compelling drama, one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's most acclaimed films. Fassbinder takes a rare starring role as Franz--"Fox" to his friends--a gay carny thrown out of work when the cops close a fairground sideshow. Introduced to a group of cultivated homosexuals by an antique and art dealer (Karlheinz B?hm of Peeping Tom fame), he becomes involved with high-class dandy Eugen (Peter Chatel), who finds the naive, uneducated innocent easy prey when he unexpectedly wins 500 thousand marks in the lottery. Eugen alternately flatters and humiliates Fox, ridiculing his working-class manners and tastes while sponging off his fast-disappearing fortune. The story is partially autobiographical, inspired by Fassbinder's own relationship with an illiterate butcher, but the director casts himself as the victim in the cinematic incarnation and turns his tormentor into a veritable vampire. Biographical considerations aside, it remains one of Fassbinder's most affecting, accomplished, and personal films, and he delivers a sweet, wounded performance as the proletariat Fox in a den of cultured, upper-class hounds. His evocation of the affluent gay community is catty and brittle, but ultimately this powerful drama is less about sexual orientation than class, power, and sexual control. --Sean Axmaker

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