Faustrecht der Freiheit
Franz "Fox" Biberkopf is a working-class guy, at loose ends when his lover is arrested and the police shutter their carnival booth. In need of cash for his weekly lottery purchase, Fox lets himself be picked up by an elegant older man named Max. At Max's, he meets two younger gay men who have expensive tastes and images to uphold. The next day, Fox wins 500,000 marks in the lottery, and Max's friends suddenly become Fox's friends, especially Eugen, the heir to a bookbinding firm that's short of cash. Eugen's polish beguiles Fox, and the fleecing begins.
Criterion: A lottery win leads not to financial and emotional freedom but to social captivity in this wildly cynical classic about love and exploitation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Casting himself against type, the director plays a suggestible working-class innocent who lets himself be taken advantage of by his bourgeois new boyfriend (Peter Chatel) and his circle of materialistic friends, leading to the kind of resonant misery that only Fassbinder could create. Fox and His Friends is unsparing social commentary, an amusingly pitiless and groundbreaking if controversial depiction of a gay community in 1970s West Germany.
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Peter Chatel | Eugen Thiess |
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder | Franz Biberkopf |
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Karlheinz Böhm | Max |
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Adrian Hoven | Wolf Thiess / Eugen's father |
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Christiane Maybach | Hedwig |
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Harry Baer | Philip |
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Hans Zander | Barman Springer |
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Kurt Raab | Wodka-Peter |
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Rudolf Lenz | Attorney Dr. Siebenkäss |
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Karl Scheydt | Klaus |
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Peter Kern | Florist 'Fatty' Schmidt |
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Karl-Heinz Staudenmeyer | Krapp |
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Walter Sedlmayr | Car dealer |
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Bruce Low | Doctor |
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Marquard Bohm | American Soldier |
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Brigitte Mira | Shopkeeper #2 |
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Evelyn Künneke | Secretary at Travel Agency |
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Barbara Valentin | Alwine |
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Elma Karlowa | Shopkeeper #1 |
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Ingrid Caven | Singer in bar |
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Lilo Pempeit | Neighbour |
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Ulla Jacobsson | Eugen's mother |
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Hark Bohm | Policeman Müller |
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Katherina Buchhammer | Madame Antoinette |
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El Hedi ben Salem | Salem the Moroccan |
| Director | Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
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| Writer | Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Christian Hohoff | |
| Producer | Rainer Werner Fassbinder | |
| Musician | Peer Raben | |
| Photography | Michael Ballhaus | |
| Edition | Criterion |
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| Nr Discs | 1 |
| Distributor | Criterion |
| Edition Release Date | Jan 17, 2017 |
| Regions | Region A |