Fox and His Friends
by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Adrian Hoven, Christiane Maybach, Karlheinz Böhm, Peter Chatel, Rainer Werner FassbinderDirector: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Brand: Genius
Producer: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Writer: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cinematographer: Michael Ballhaus
Editor: Thea Eymèsz
Writer: Christian Hohoff
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); German (Original Language); Spanish (Published)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 123 minutes
Published: 2002-07-01
DVD Release Date: 2002-07-02
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Fox Lorber
Product features:
- 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. At the time, Fassbinder called this "the most honest film I've made up to now." System Requirements: , Runninng Time 123 Min Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: FOREIGN Rating: NR Age: 720
Movie Reviews of Fox and His Friends
Movie Review: A Tale of Deceit, Power, and Victimization: Fassbinder at his Best!
Summary: 5 Stars
Rainer Werner Fassbinder has long been honored as the 'bad boy' in European cinema, a writer/director/actor who repeatedly has taken chances and because of his brutal honesty has succeeded in making a stream of important films. FOX AND HIS FRIENDS dates back to 1975 and remains one of Fassbinder's most successful films. As with all of his films, Fassbinder deals with the homosexual subculture in Germany but his main message goes far beyond the characters he creates: the examination of how people manipulate people for personal gain and the destruction that produces is a recurring problem and one that this film certainly explores.
'Fox' - a nickname of Franz Bieberkopf - (acted with consummate skill by Fassbinder himself) is a lower class gay carny kid whose lover is arrested, leaving the carnival to collapse and leaving Fox without support. Enter handsome Max (Karlheinz Böhm), a wealthy antiques dealer, who picks up Fox, helps him buy the requisite 'lottery ticket' on which Fox bases his hopes for financial survival (!) via manipulative means, and takes him home, introducing Fox to his gay friends who regard Fox as scum but show obvious physical attraction to his rawness. Surprisingly Fox wins the lottery and suddenly has 500,000 DMs and with his new money, Max's friends abruptly see a target for obtaining that money. One of the friends named Eugen (Peter Chatel) takes Fox in as a lover and talks him into investing in Eugen's family business of bookbinding. Eugen's father Wolf (Adrian Hoven) and mother (Ulla Jacobsson) tolerate their son's life with a low class wretch, ridiculing his manners and lack of culture and education, but willingly take his money to salvage their business.
With a lover and a business and a role model to make him suave, Fox dons fancy clothes, banters with his old friends in a tawdry club, and makes the pretenses that at last he is secure and happy. But in time Fox is blamed for problems at the business and when his funds have been depleted on expensive vacations and apartments by the smarmy self-centered Eugen, Fox realizes that now without money he has no 'fancy friends', no lover, no security and his life becomes unbearable: the ending to the film is a tragedy beyond description.
Some would say the film is mannered in ways that depict stereotypes of the gay world (effeminate men, transvestites, opportunists, hustlers, etc), but Fassbinder is completely honest in his attempt to recreate a subculture of a specific time in Germany. And the characters are well written and well acted allowing us to look at Fassbinder's greater picture of depravity between social class antipathies. In many ways this is a difficult film to watch, but Fassbinder wisely places the main character that he enacts in a place where his foibles and lack of higher-class knowledge can be at once very humorous as well as pitiable. FOX AND HIS FRIENDS has some minor flaws but it has already become a classic in gay cinema repertoire. In German with English subtitles. Grady Harp, August 06
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 FassbinderThe 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 Böhm 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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