--- title: "Fox and His Friends" year: 1975 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/fox-and-his-friends" fi1m_id: "fox-and-his-friends" imdb_id: "tt0072976" tmdb_id: 42254 wikidata_id: "Q571505" fi1m_score: 78 critics_score: 70 critics_reviews: 5 published: "2026-09-26T00:00:38.433885+00:00" updated: "2026-09-26T00:00:38.944445+00:00" region: "PA" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Fox and His Friends (1975) Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 2h 05m · Drama ## Identity Fox and His Friends - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/fox-and-his-friends - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** fox-and-his-friends - **IMDb ID:** tt0072976 - **TMDB ID:** 42254 - **Wikidata ID:** Q571505 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072976/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/42254, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q571505 **Fi1m score: 78** · Critics 70 (early) from 5 reviews *In a sentence:* Fox wins half a million marks and spends it learning that the rich never pay for anything > Fassbinder puts himself in front of the camera as a fairground worker who wins the lottery and is picked clean by the men he falls in with. It is cold, exact and hard to sit through, and the cruelty is deliberate. ## Synopsis Munich, the mid-1970s. Franz “Fox” Bieberkopf (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) works a fairground sideshow as “Fox the Talking Head” until his lover and employer Klaus (Karl Scheydt) is arrested for tax fraud and the booth is shut. Broke, Fox talks the florist “Fatty” Schmidt (Peter Kern) out of ten marks for a lottery ticket, and the ticket comes up: half a million marks. In a public lavatory he meets Max (Karlheinz Böhm), an antiques dealer who takes him into the city’s well-dressed gay set, where he meets Eugen Thiess (Peter Chatel), the son of a factory owner whose bookbinding business is in debt. Eugen leaves his lover Philip (Harry Baer) and moves in with Fox. Fox’s sister Hedwig (Christiane Maybach), who drinks, watches and does not approve. ## Review In 1975 Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote, produced, directed and starred in a film about a man who wins half a million marks and is relieved of them by people with better manners. The German title, *Faustrecht der Freiheit*, means something like freedom by right of the fist; *Fox and His Friends* is gentler, and the film is not. It is one of the plainest things he made, and one of the best. The subject is money, not sex. Fox is gay, his friends are gay, and the film treats this as ordinary, which in 1975 was not ordinary. The people who ruin him are not punished for their desires but rewarded for their class. Eugen Thiess, the well-spoken son of a factory owner, needs a loan to keep the family bookbinding firm afloat, and Fox has just come into one. Everything that follows, the flat, the furniture, the holiday, the contract nobody reads to him, is a bill made out in Fox’s name and signed in Eugen’s handwriting. Fassbinder gives himself the role of the mark and plays it without vanity. Fox is stocky, grinning, quick to buy a round, in denim and a leather jacket, and he is not stupid. He knows when he is being laughed at. He pays anyway, because he wants to be let in, and Fassbinder shows the wanting on his face a second before he hides it. Peter Chatel’s Eugen is thin, pinched and courteous, correcting Fox’s grammar and his table manners in the voice of a man doing him a favour. Karlheinz Böhm’s Max is the smoothest of the lot, so pleasant that we kept forgetting whose side he was on until the film reminded us. Michael Ballhaus shoots the antique shop and the flat in long, slow tracking moves past mirrors and glass cases, so that the characters are always framed among the goods being sold. Kurt Raab, who also plays the barfly Wodka-Peter, designs the flat Eugen fills on Fox’s account: dark, heavy, expensive, and nothing in it that Fox would have chosen. Helga Kempke puts Eugen in tailored grey and Fox in satin shirts, and when Fox is finally put into a suit he wears it like a hired one. Peer Raben’s score stays out of the way and lets the jukebox do the talking. Thea Eymèsz holds each scene a beat after the humiliation has landed, so we have to sit in it with him. We watched most of it with our jaw set. Not frightened, not moved in the usual way; angry, at Fox for handing over the cheque book and at the people taking it, and then angrier at ourselves for having laughed at some of the earlier scenes, because Chatel’s small, patient corrections are funny right up to the moment you notice what they are costing. That is the film working as intended. Fassbinder wants the audience to be complicit, and we were. It is long at 125 minutes, and it knows where it is going from the first reel. Once the shape of the swindle is clear, around the hour mark, the rest is the invoice being read out item by item, and a trip abroad in the middle stretches further than it needs to. Some of the bar crowd, Hans Zander’s barman and Karl-Heinz Staudenmeyer’s Krapp among them, are sketches rather than people. The second half goes where you fear, and we will not describe it. *Ali: Fear Eats the Soul*, made the year before, has more tenderness and gives its lovers a fighting chance. This one does not. It is the harder film to like and, we think, the clearer one about how the well-off talk to those beneath them and what they take while they are talking. See it, but not on a night when you want to be cheered up, and not with anyone you owe money to. *Fi1m score 78, published 26 September 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is Fox and His Friends worth watching?** *Fox and His Friends* is worth watching for anyone who can sit through two hours of a decent man being picked clean by people with better manners, and we scored it 78. Fassbinder plays the fairground worker who wins the lottery himself, without vanity, and the cruelty is deliberate. Do not choose it on a night you want cheering up. **How long is Fox and His Friends, and what is it rated?** *Fox and His Friends* runs 2h 05m. It is a drama film. **Where can I watch Fox and His Friends in Panama?** *Fox and His Friends* is not on any streaming or rental service in Panama at the moment. It is available in 7 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How does Fox and His Friends compare to All That Heaven Allows?** *Fox and His Friends* is the colder and more exact of the two, and [*All That Heaven Allows*](https://film.one/film/all-that-heaven-allows) the warmer, though both are angry about how respectable people treat those beneath them. Sirk's melodrama is richly coloured and tender, and gives its lovers a fighting chance; Fassbinder's film does not. Start with Sirk if you want to feel something, with Fassbinder if you want to be shown something. **What should I watch after Fox and His Friends?** After *Fox and His Friends*, try [*All That Heaven Allows*](https://film.one/film/all-that-heaven-allows) (1955, Fi1m 86): The Sirk melodrama Fassbinder learned from: love, class, and neighbours who disapprove. Then [*Midnight Cowboy*](https://film.one/film/midnight-cowboy) (1969, Fi1m 85): Another naive man arrives in the city with hopes and leaves with less; and [*Parasite*](https://film.one/film/parasite) (2019, Fi1m 91): Two households, one bank balance, and a house that decides who belongs in it. ### Reviews we read (5) - **Slant Magazine**, Clayton Dillard (4/5): Dillard calls the film one of Fassbinder’s greatest explorations of class violence and sexual exploitation, while finding the Criterion release’s extras lacking. He praises the transfer’s sharpness, intact image, and vivid colors. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/fox-and-his-friends-bd/) - **Time Out**, GA (80/100, inferred): Time Out describes the film as one of Fassbinder’s excellent melodramas. It singles out Fassbinder’s portrayal of a working-class lottery winner who is destroyed by the men around him. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/fox-and-his-friends) - **The New Yorker** (75/100, inferred): The capsule regards the film as a sharp, precise melodrama about class, status, and predation. It particularly praises Fassbinder’s attention to the costs and meanings of domestic finery and industrial necessities. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/fox-friends) - **Film Comment**, Max Nelson (64/100, inferred): The available page does not reveal the critic’s verdict. It also provides no details about what the critic praises or criticizes. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/restoration-row-the-mad-fox/) - **Eye for Film**, Jeff Robson (45/100, inferred): The review finds the film technically accomplished but bleak and difficult to watch. It praises the writing, editing and cinematography while emphasizing the ruthless satire of social hypocrisy. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/fox-and-his-friends-film-review-by-jeff-robson) ## Details - **Director:** Rainer Werner Fassbinder - **Director:** Rainer Werner Fassbinder - **Writer:** Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Christian Hohoff - **Cinematography:** Michael Ballhaus - **Editor:** Thea Eymèsz - **Music:** Peer Raben - **Production design:** Kurt Raab - **Costume design:** Helga Kempke - **Producer:** Rainer Werner Fassbinder - **Cast:** Rainer Werner Fassbinder as Franz "Fox" Bieberkopf; Peter Chatel as Eugen Thiess; Karlheinz Böhm as Max; Adrian Hoven as Wolf Thiess, Eugen's Father; Christiane Maybach as Hedwig; Harry Baer as Philip; Hans Zander as Barman Springer; Kurt Raab as Wodka-Peter - **Runtime:** 2h 05m - **First release (France):** 15 May 1975 - **Genres:** Drama ## Where to watch in Panama Not streaming, renting or buying in Panama at the last check. Also available in: AT, CA, CH, DE, GB, IE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Ali: Fear Eats the Soul* (1974): Fassbinder’s kinder film on the same subject; the world still wins, more slowly - *All That Heaven Allows* (1955), Fi1m 86: The Sirk melodrama Fassbinder learned from: love, class, and neighbours who disapprove — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/all-that-heaven-allows.md) - *Midnight Cowboy* (1969), Fi1m 85: Another naive man arrives in the city with hopes and leaves with less — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/midnight-cowboy.md) - *Stranger by the Lake* (2013): Desire and danger at a French cruising spot, shot with the same steady stare - *Parasite* (2019), Fi1m 91: Two households, one bank balance, and a house that decides who belongs in it — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/parasite.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/fox-and-his-friends