Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other businessmen; until he meets Felix, a vagrant, who seems to be physically identical to him; a disconcerting fact that leads Hermann Hermann to plot a particular way out of a fake world he actually hates.
Direction
Fassbinder's Brechtian alienation weaponized against bourgeois despair
Acting
Dirk Bogarde's unraveling is grotesque theater at its finest
Cinematography
Sickly yellows and chocolate browns that choke you
Director
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Dirk Bogarde
Hermann Hermann
Andréa Ferréol
Lydia Hermann
Klaus Löwitsch
Felix Weber
Volker Spengler
Ardalion
Bernhard Wicki
Orlovius
Armin Meier
Silverman / Sergeant Brown / Foreman
Peter Kern
Müller
Adrian Hoven
Inspector Schelling
Hark Bohm
Doctor
Roger Fritz
Inspector Braun
Gottfried John
Perebrodov
Lilo Pempeit
Mrs. Schmidt
Ingrid Caven
Hotel Manager
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Fassbinder shot this in English for international appeal, then allegedly hated the result and rarely watched it. The disdain fits.
Nabokov's novel was already meta; Fassbinder added layers of theatrical artifice that suggest 1930s Germany itself was performance—and Hermann's madness is seeing the seams.
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