Despair
A hysterical comedy
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.
- Year: 1978
- Country: Germany
- Genre: Drama, Thriller
- Studio: Bavaria Studios
- Keyword: berlin, germany, husband wife relationship, based on novel or book, businessman, chocolate, identity, paranoia, identity crisis, attempt to escape, painter, republic of weimar, alienation, antisemitism, mental illness, madness, assumed identity, doppelgänger, insurance policy, double, vagrant, nazism, russian emigre, murder plot, 1930s, perfect murder, self image, film within a film, performative, dissociation, jewish ancestry, jewish wife, rise of fascism, rise of nazism, victimhood
- Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Andréa Ferréol, Klaus Löwitsch, Volker Spengler, Bernhard Wicki, Armin Meier
