Hans is a street fruit peddler and born-loser. His choice of career upsets his bourgeois family, causing him to turn to drinking and violence. After recovering from a debilitating heart attack, his business finally begins to take off. However the more he becomes a credit to his family, the more depressed he becomes.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder has a genius for detailing the pain of suppressed emotional states, and even at its most achingly deliberate, his style in dealing with the petit bourgeois mentality is a source of endless fascination.
– Don Druker,
Chicago Reader,
1 Jan 2000
rotten:
This soggy picture allows the disintegration of a human being to be almost as dull as the way he earns his living -- and that is appalling.