Lily Brest (Ingrid Craven) is a beautiful, consumptive streetwalker with few clients, who are intimidated by her beauty. She loves her sadistic gay pimp Raoul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) who gambles away what little she earns. Lily is so depressed that she strangles a kitten, and the pimp is so glum that when Lily returns home, she finds him lying on the floor playing with the kitten's corpse. Tired of her lonely life, she looks for a way out. Even that act serves the local corrupt powers. Then, after one special encounter, she begins talking to them, rather than sleeping with them--and becomes very successful.
The town's power broker, the "Rich Jew" real-estate speculator (Klaus Löwitsch), discovers she is a good listener, so she's soon busy. Raoul imagines grotesque sex scenes between Lily and the Jew, then he leaves her for a male lover. Her parents, bitter ex-Nazi father Herr Müller (Adrian Hoven) a cabaret singer in drag and her wheelchair-bound mother Luise (Annemarie Düringer), offer no refuge. Even though all have a philosophical bent, the other whores reject Lily because she tolerates everyone, including men. However, Lily ultimately realizes that there's a high price to pay for being privy to the dark secrets of others. She learns that Raoul has been gravely wounded in a barroom brawl. "He'll live," Lily's father assures her. "Does he want to?" Lily inquires. She and Raoul are caught up in an emotional hurricane which results in their deaths.
This is the film version of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's suicidally grim stage play, "Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod" ("The Garbage, the City and Death"). The anguish and suffering of a trio of outcasts is shown in the movie, based on Fassbinder's controversial and possibly anti-Semitic play. Unfortunately, the sardonically stereotypical characters are basically flat, and the film is quite stagebound with actors staring into the distance as they recite the aphorisms that constitute Fassbinder's dialogue. Some examples: "Where there is no contempt, there is no love." "Ugly persons despise the sweat on beauty's forehead." "When no one sings, silence reigns." "The thought of death makes me smile. What else can one do?"
Controversy surrounded the Jewish businessman, who is always referred to as "the Rich Jew". Ultimately, the story is more concerned with the outsider status of this businessman and the prostitute he hires to listen to him and occasionally perform in a mock wedding ceremony. Both find themselves out of place in an environment dominated by prostitutes, pimps, corrupt policemen, and perverse businessmen. Gottfried Hüngsberg and Peer Raben composed the music score. Daniel Schmid and Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote the screenplay. Daniel Schmid directed. This Swiss/German production is in German with English subtitles. The English title is "Shadow of Angels".
