09 20 Oct '24
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Despair (Despair - Eine Reise ins Licht)

Edition 1979
119' - 1978 - Historical, Drama - Dialogue: English
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Composer: Peer Raben With: Dirk Bogarde, Andréa Ferréol, Klaus Löwitsch
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?

Image gallery

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Credits

Director

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Composer

Peer Raben

With

Dirk Bogarde, Andréa Ferréol, Klaus Löwitsch

Scenario

Tom Stoppard

Director of Photography

Michael Ballhaus

Editor

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Juliane Lorenz

More information

Dialogue

English

Countries of production

France, West Germany

Screenplay based on

"Despair" (Vladimir Nabokov)

Year

1978

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