Satan’s Brew

(Satansbraten). Critics were divided as to whether Satan’s Brew was Fassbinder in a comic mode or Fassbinder in his blackest meditation on everyday fascism. All agreed it was a faceful of slap. Its hero, Walter Kranz (Kurt Raab), a poet of the ’68 revolution who has not written a line in years, takes out his frustration in misogyny, humiliating the women in his life including a harridan wife who happens to be dying, a wealthy mistress, an Asian prostitute, and an unattractive, adoring fan. Both to pay the bills and to massage his own narcissism, Kranz publicly takes on the persona of the homosexual symbolist poet Stefan George and integrates into the fantasy his own obsession with mastery. “Fassbinder doesn’t make ‘comedies’ . . . if anything, he makes ironies, and he’s never been more brilliantly ironic than in this examination of a sadistic anti-hero . . . probably the only really honest examination of the real appeal of the philosophy that brought a man like Hitler to power” (Rob Baker, Soho Weekly News).

—Judy Bloch

• Written by Fassbinder. Photographed by Michael Ballhaus. With Kurt Raab, Margit Carstensen, Helen Vita, Volker Spengler. (113 mins, In German with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Janus Films/Criterion Collection)