The Merchant of Four Seasons 1972

Munich in the 1950s introduces Hans Epp, Hans Hirschmüller, an ordinary but likable man who has just come home after years in the French Foreign Legion. His return is met with a bitter echo from his mother, who says, “The good die young, and people like you come back,” a line that sets the tone for a life lived under judgment and quiet disappointment. Hans works as a fruit peddler, calling out his wares as he makes the rounds through crowded residential streets, a routine that reflects his stubborn, unglamorous devotion to steady work and a dream of better days.

At home, Hans is married to Irmgard Epp, Irm Hermann, a practical partner who helps with the day-to-day business. They have a young daughter, Renate, and together they navigate the small disappointments and daily negotiations of family life. On one ordinary day, Hans delivers pears to an attractive married woman in an apartment building. She invites him in and asks him to deliver the fruit personally, but he declines, saying “some other time.” That encounter awakens in him a memory he rarely speaks aloud: the great love of his life, a married woman who was the subject of his youth, played by Ingrid Caven. The tension between longing and duty tethers Hans to a life he both cherishes and cannot fully inhabit.

Inside the bar, the weight of his unfulfilled ambitions grows heavier. A flashback reveals a youthful misstep: Hans once brought a prostitute to the police station to take a statement, only to be lured into a sexual moment. When his superior learns of it, Hans is fired, a blow that echoes through every other choice he makes afterward. Back in the present, Irmgard questions the delay in his return, and the couple’s quarrel spills over into a violent scene; Hans, deeply intoxicated, assaults Irmgard in front of their daughter. The next morning, Irmgard disappears, and Hans is left desolate and desperate.

Irmgard seeks shelter with Hans’s family, where a fragile balance of judgment, obligation, and nostalgia plays out. His bourgeois mother, who has long favored her obedient daughter Heidi and tolerated her outspoken sister Anna, remains condescending toward Hans. Heidi, Heide Simon, agrees with the mother that Hans has never deserved a proper chance, while Anna, portrayed by Hanna Schygulla, offers a rare note of sympathy, insisting that the family never gave Hans a fair shake. When Hans arrives, he tries to reconcile with Irmgard, but she retreats to a corner in fear as the men clash; a lawyer is sought, and the fight hints at an imminent divorce.

That night, Hans sings to calm the moment: “Buona, buona notte, you can’t have everything you want.” Then a heart attack abruptly interrupts the turmoil. While Hans rests in a hospital bed, Irmgard explores new intimacy with a street lover, and their daughter witnesses the affair, bringing fresh pain into the room. At the hospital, Hans and Irmgard briefly reconcile; she promises to stay, and when he returns home, she explains a small, telling detail about their dynamics: she once found him funny because he is shorter, and his humor drew her to him in the first place.

After his heart attack, Hans is unable to work or drink, and Irmgard steps more fully into the family business. He hires a diligent assistant, Anzell, Karl Scheydt, though Anzell is the same man with whom Irmgard had the hospital-time affair. Fearing exposure, Irmgard manipulates Anzell into overpricing the produce and then sharing the extra with her; Anzell agrees, but Hans’s suspicions grow as he observes the scheme. Anzell is eventually fired in disgrace, and Hans knows the truth of Irmgard’s infidelity.

A reunion with an old friend, Harry, Klaus Löwitsch, injects a new energy into Hans’s life. Harry takes over the cart routes and brings efficiency and profit to the business, but this success comes at the cost of Hans’s relevance and autonomy. The more capable Harry becomes, the more Hans feels alienated from his own life, a creeping isolation that deepens his sense of failure.

Seeking solace, Hans revisits the memory of the great love in his youth, a moment when he brought roses to the person who would not marry a fruit peddler, a memory that haunts him as he grows older. Anna, his sister, is busy with her studies and cannot offer him much comfort, leaving him with the sense that his family’s support has always been conditional. The doctor cautions that prolonged alcohol use would be fatal for Hans’s weak heart, and the possibility of death colors every choice he makes.

In a final, solitary turn, Hans returns to the bar where Morocco and a moment of captivity in the Foreign Legion flicker before his eyes. He was captured and tortured by an Arab, a memory that mirrors his own sense of entrapment and pain; he is saved by his comrades, but his desire to live wanes. At a grand dinner with Irmgard, Harry, and friends, Hans drinks dozens of shots and dies on the spot. The funeral brings a quiet ending to a life marked by longing, missteps, and a stubborn effort to belong. In the wake, Harry commits to staying with Irmgard and takes up the life that Hans had once imagined for himself, closing a circle of friendship and loss.

Buona, buona notte, you can’t have everything you want.