Review of Tenderness of the Wolves (1973)
Seen in 2026.
A fictionalized account of the period in Fritz Haarmann’s life where he worked as a police informant while also murdering boys in Weimar-era Hannover and selling the meat.
This is similar to the same director’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) in three important ways. It’s about a gay relationship, precisely one party to that relationship is obsessive about their love, and it takes place in the 1920s. I get the impression that in Tenderness of the Wolves, Fassbinder is more honest about his own interests, though it might just be Kurt Raab who wrote the screenplay and stars as Haarmann.
There is a lot of unintentional comedy in the Brechtian acting, dubious mise en scene, bad foley and Soviet-style アフレコ dialog, but you also get a series of tendentious twists to the real story of Haarmann’s life. In this version, he doesn’t have a shop; he does all the killing and butchering in his own home, a garret with a big, black cross. The entrance to the building bears the words “Grüss Gott”. The outrageous staging and Raab’s kitsch expressionism put more life into the piece than any of the gore or nudity, without ever tipping over into camp.
References here: Time Enough for Love (1973).