"Faustrecht der Freiheit" or "Fox and His Friends" is a West German German-language film from 1975, so this one had its 40th anniversary last year. The writer and director is German filmmaking infant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder and he was roughly at the age of 30 when he made this 120-minute film back in the 1970s. And I already wrote that I think it may be Fassbinder's most personal film. There seem a lot of parallels to the filmmaker's real life in here and it shows that he put all his heart in it, for example that he was not even scared of full frontal nudity to make Biberkopf/Fox look authentic. This one here came out 5 years before Fassbinder made his successful mini-series "Berlin Alexanderplatz", which is of course also known for its main character Franz Biberkopf, so the name in here is certainly no coincidence. But the thing that hits closest to home is of course the ending because (apart from the location) we see exactly the way the real Fassbinder died. Unfortunately, despite this emotional impact, I never managed to create a lot of interest in the story. I guess this may have to do with me not being the greatest Fassbinder fan, but also with the script, which never seemed really interesting or even edge-of-seat level to me. Fassbinder is nonetheless fun to watch and I still believe he is at least as good of an actor as of a filmmaker, if not better. So with another lead actor than RMF (who lost some weight for his role here),this may have dragged even more. Nonetheless, my verdict overall is thumbs-down. I do not recommend the watch. I guess Fassbinder is just superior with female main characters.

From director Rainer Werner Fassbinder (The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, Fear Eats the Soul, The Marriage of Maria Braun) (also playing the title role),when I watched this film, listed as one of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, from the book, I didn't know what to expect, which made it all the more watchable. Basically Franz 'Fox' Bieberkopf (Fassbinder) is a working class homosexual carnival worker, and when he finds himself out of work and his boyfriend, the owner Klaus (Karl Scheydt),arrested for tax fraud, he is in need of money. He uses some tricks to get him a little bit of cash in order to buy a lottery ticket, convinced that because it is a lucky day he will win the jackpot, and with the help of sophisticated antique art dealer Max (Karlheinz Böhm) he does get one before the newsagents close. A month passes, and Fox did indeed win the lottery, a fortune of 500,000 marks, and he is trying to fit in the more upper class society as Max introduces him to his friends. This includes low on money Eugen Thiess (Peter Chatel) who dumps his boyfriend Philip (Harry Baer) to make his move and try and take advantage of him and his fortune. Max suggests to Fox that good things could happen if he invests in Phillip's company, so he does give him 100,000 marks, and then he ends up paying high amounts for apartment stuff and clothes, and then when he hears about Klaus being released he gives him 30,000 marks, so he really is being taken advantage of. After returning from a holiday to Marrakech, Morocco, they find out that the company is going bankrupt, and all Fox can do while trying to sort these problems is drink in bars, proposition other men, including some American soldiers, until the point where has a small heart attack. He eventually sees sense to break up with Eugen, and after some arguing with him and his sister Hedwig (Christiane Maybach),the only way he can make some of the money back that he has lost is to sell his car for 8,000 marks. In the end Fox sees no real reason to keep going, so he overdoses on his pills until collapsing and dying on the floor of the underground, and two young boys come along to steal his things, until interrupted by Max and Klaus walking past, but they carry on walking knowing he is dead and not wanting to get involved, and the two young boys continue stealing his money, golden watch and clothing. Also starring Adrian Hoven as Wolf Thiess - Eugen's father and Ulla Jacobsson as Eugen's mother. Fassbinder does a good job of directing, but he mostly excels playing the leading role of the ordinary gay man being propelled into high society and unsure of how to handle it, the film is full of the eerie stuff with all the homosexual material and the rich people's sleazy activities, and there is the prominent despair as well, but overall it is interesting drama. Good!

In an interview with RW Fassbinder, he mentioned that it was important to him that this be the first movie featuring homosexuals where that wasn't the problem, or rather that wasn't some kind of big focus- they're gay, big deal, get over it, lets go on with the rest of the story. And his intentions were realized since it's not about homosexuals, per-say, but about class. In the film Fox (Fassbinder himself in part of the title role) is a carnival worker- Fox and the Severed Head the act is, and in a clever turn Fassbinder never shows us his own character's trick, perhaps as an allusion to disappointment in the film for Fox- and loses his job, only to miraculously win the lottery and meet a man (Peter Chatel) who is a little more well-spoken and well-raised, from a richer background than Fox's working-class roots. But Fox falls in love, and soon they get an apartment, as well as Fox becoming a business partner for his new lover's father's business.

There is some melodrama, to be sure, but it's only somewhat about romance between two men, or about men who want to pick up other men for sex (there are a couple of very interesting scenes of this, such as when Fox and Eugen are on vacation and bicker with one another as to what to do with a Moroccan; Salem from Fear Eats the Soul in a great bit part). But it's more about money, about status and the crushing sense of self-worth that comes in a society based on a value system - even in the "lower" class, like the guys at the bar and the bar owner, who have their own sense of worth in their community, one that is not totally at ease with Fox after a while. Often Fassbinder has dealt with the element of the outsider in society, and here one can find no better example: Fox is awkward, doesn't always say the smart things, is not "book" smart to get by with intellectuals nor does he have the butch capacity of those like the traveling-through American soldiers.

And yet at the same time Fox is, as well as the way Fassbinder brilliantly plays him, a good person at heart, not meaning to really hurt anyone, but just f***ing up a lot of the time, like when he puts through 40,000 pamphlets the wrong way through a copy machine at his work. Indeed I can't think of anyone else in Fassbinder's circle of actors who could've done it better: he's someone we sympathize with, even when he messes up royally or does the wrong thing at a family dinner or when his sister, a classic blue-collar woman, gets drunk and embarrasses those around her. He is, at least, more human than the out-for-his-own Eugen (and, likewise, Chatel portrays this coldness very effectively, like when we see his eyes darting around and lying right behind Fox). It takes a little time in the middle for things to get really interesting with the plot, in seeing Fox rising little by little to his quasi-ascension to a plastic happiness, as it were. But once Fassbinder gets there to the meaty parts of the drama, it's hard to resist its pleasures.

And, also, there's some funny moments too, and as Fassbinder is such a likable guy on screen (ironic considering his reputation) there ends up being a few sardonic moments of humor, little jabs here and there about sex or that very obvious scene where Eugen is caught with having Fox in his apartment with another man coming by in the morning... and the twist, late in the film, when this situation becomes reversed. Fox and His Friends is not a masterpiece, but it is essential viewing in the Fassbinder cannon, for the way he goes about telling this story, how he avoids making it *about* gay people (just as he avoided making it simply about race in Fear Eats the Soul),and he himself proves himself a very good actor here in his own right.