Despair

"A hysterical comedy"

Sep 20 1978 N/A 1h 59m
Drama, History

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.

Plot

In early-1930s Berlin during the Weimar Republic and the Nazis' rise to power, elegant Russian émigré and eccentric chocolatier Hermann Hermann leads a petite-bourgeois life with his voluptuous, frivolous wife Lydia. Troubled about his Jewish roots, Hermann convinces himself that he has seen his doppelgänger in the person of 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?

Written by

Tom Stoppard, Vladimir Nabokov

Directed by

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Cast

Dirk Bogarde, Andréa Ferréol, Klaus Löwitsch

Crew

View crew

Production Countries

Germany

Production Companies

Bavaria Studios

Languages

English

Awards

3 wins & 1 nomination

Trailers
Trailer
Scores
# of Votes
2,950
Average Rating
6.9 out of 10
Metascore
NA
Popularity
NA