For starters - I'd say that watching "Despair" was (amongst other things) a very, very, very despairing experience. Very.This 1978 German production was directed by Rainer Fassbinder. And - Let me tell ya - Had "Despair" been a Hollywood production, directed by an American film-maker - Then - You can bet that no one would be heaping praise on it like they are just because this one happens to be a foreign import. It's true.Set in Nazi Germany during the 1930s - I found "Despair" (for the most part) to be a really plodding and senseless mess. In other words - It was a typical "Fassbinder" film.Adapted for the screen from the novel written by Russian author, Vladimir Nabokov - This one's story may have worked well in book format - But, put into the incompetent hands of director, Fassbinder - It totally stank like the reeking stench of rotting sauerkraut. Yep. It really did.

What can I say -- watch the film. And don't read the other posters comments -- he didn't like the film, or even bother finishing it but felt compelled to make a list of pointless spoilers in his useless comments.This was Fassbinders shot at 'commercialism', which he failed at entirely (thankfully) but we are left with a thoughtful examination of the boundaries between self awareness and delusion. A metaphor for post war Germany? Who am I to be so pretentious ...Strong performances, provocative script, not a light romp but neither is it a heavy slog. CC

Shot in English on a budget that nearly equaled the cost of his first fifteen films, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Despair has wit and style yet its attempt to recreate the dark, comedic genius of Vladimir Nabokov left me unmoved and uninvolved. Based on Nabokov's novel Despair (apparently intended as a parody of Dostoevsky), and adapted for the screen by Tom Stoppard, the film describes the descent into madness of wealthy chocolate entrepreneur Hermann Herman (Dirk Bogarde). Set in Germany on the eve of the Third Reich, scenes of the Nazis assaulting Jewish-owned businesses are sprinkled throughout the film but to no apparent purpose. Herman has left his Russian home to live in Berlin and constantly fantasizes about the beauty of the Russian winters and whispers `Russia, which we have lost forever...' to his wife, Lydia (Andrea Ferreol). He is a thoroughly unsympathetic character: cold, calculating, and cynical and Mr. Bogarde's exaggerated mannerisms do not make him any easier to appreciate. Much of the film takes place inside Herman's stately bourgeois home. Shots of the characters through glass partitions keep the viewer at a distance and the elegant interiors look like an abandoned mausoleum. Lydia's and Herman's relationship is unconvincing and Fassbinder's repeated descriptions of Lydia as an unintelligent sex object border on misogyny. "The flowers of your sensuality would wilt with intelligence," Herman tells his wife whom he always addresses with condescension. In addition to Lydia, we gradually meet other vivid supporting characters: Lydia's cousin, Ardalion; and Dr. Orlovious, an insurance salesman whom Herman mistakenly thinks is a psychiatrist and opens up to. Herman is convinced that Felix Weber (Klaus Lowitch), a laborer, resembles him as closely as "two drops of blood." though the resemblance is tentative at best (a joke Nabokov wisely saved for his readers until the end of his novella). He has an odd compulsion to observe himself as a stranger and devises a plan to commit the perfect crime, exchanging identities with the worker as a means of escaping his existence. Felix, on the other hand, decides to humor the eccentric Herman with the thought of getting a job. In Despair, Fassbinder constructs a world in the process of falling apart where people march inexorably toward self-destruction and where the journey into light proves to be an illusion. In a world approaching madness, however, Hermann seems to fit perfectly -- no more, no less crazy than the insanity occurring around him.

This is one classic I was in no mood for at the time of watching it. In the right mood, I suppose even the most boring, confusing and pretentious films can appear lively and spirited.Hermann is a Russian living in Germany with his completely idiotic Russian wife whose only talent is letting him bang her. Whereas even this right isnt exclusive since she is also carrying on with her red-headed bohemian slob of a cousin. Here is the weird part -Hermann keeps seeing himself everywhere, in particular watching he and his wife having sex. He mistakes this for out of body experiences, or split personality and does nothing to help himself out of it, instead entertaining and even encouraging it. Soon he begins to see his own face in other people. He befreinds a tramp who he believes is his look-alike and convinces him to be his body double to create an alibi while he is committing a crime. He dresses him up in his clothes, puts his papers in his pocket and gives him a shave -then he shoots and kills him. Hermann runs away with the understanding he has staged his own death. Obvious to everyone else is that it wasnt him at all, as his passport photo and the dead mans face don't even remotely resemble each other.To be perfectly honest I tuned out of the dialogue after this point and only occasionally glanced at the screen. Despair was not improving, resulting in a complete waste of time. From what I saw it only gets weirder but perhaps with concentration it might begin to fall together. I like bizarre films, and even pretentious ones sometimes. Despair was just too damn over-dramatised or something. I just felt like the guy was digging his own grave and then constantly bitching about it like it was someone elses fault.Yes, the acting was good, but sorry, the characters sucked.