Rating: 4.5/5
Criterion Challenge 2023 | 39/52 | Spine #800-950 (#851)
Fox the Speaking Head is a traveling carnival act in which a severed head speaks to the audience.
Inspector Braun walks onto the stage carrying an arrest warrant. Fox comes through the curtains and kisses Klaus, the ringleader, goodbye as they cart Klaus off to prison.
Fox buys a lottery ticket, the same as he does every week. He pulls off his shoe to grab the money, but the wind catches it. The teller laughs as another man steps on the cash, threatens Fox, and uses the money for beer.
A man cruises Fox, and Fox gets in his car. Fox calls him Uncle Max. They rip off a flower booth so Fox can get his lotto tickets.
Uncle Max takes Fox back to his place, pulling Fox into a world of wealth and cruelty. Fox won the lottery, half a million marks.
— He’s not the kind of guy that wealth makes rich. — You can’t buy manners with money. — Manners don’t fill the belly.
Fox and Eugen, a friend of Max’s, start seeing each other. Though Fox repulses Eugen, he sticks around. Fox embarrasses him in a French restaurant for A) not knowing French and B) showing off some loud finger trick on the tables.
Eugen’s boyfriend doesn’t understand it, but Max gives him a knowing reassurance:
Of course I understand it. There are things between heaven and earth, my boy, that go far beyond what you could ever understand.
Before Fassbinder’s epic Berlin Alexanderplatz, he played his own Franz Biberkopf — one of God’s fools who believe their life can turn around, that goodness is available to them, but that God has cursed to a comic tragedy.
Fassbinder has the perfect Biberkopf face — the clever smirk that every subtlety misses.
These rich men exploit his simplicity, luring him to take everything away.
All the while, Fox believes he is happy.