The Merchant of Four Seasons, set in Munich in the “prosperous fifties,” shows how that hollow phrase reflects failure back on itself for the average Hans, whose path in life might depend more upon the treacheries of family than the vagaries of the marketplace. This particular Hans (Hans Hirschmüller), a street vendor, is despised as he is dominated by his mother, then by his wife (Irm Herrmann), who looks like a cadaver on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but who is a surprisingly supple manipulator of her world. She'll be middle class over his dead body. Still, Hans is no prize, and his collaboration in the conspiracy against him leaves little room for sentiment. Thus Fassbinder's approach combines distance with grisly humor, a stark and startling, elegant tableau saturated with color-Sirk's reds and blues for the Sirk-inspired dreams of a ridiculous man.