The movie is a relentlessly uncompromiaing, keening cri de coeur, a movie that has turned a wake into a work of art.

"Moons," in fact, is suspiciously easy to kiss off. It can be tedious and silly. Yet Fassbinder is too brilliant to be dismissed.

In Fassbinder's portrait of the gleamingly rebuilt Frankfurt as an emotionally devastated wasteland, Fascism-the need of some to dominate and of others to endure-comes off as a woeful constant of the heart.

…demonstrates RWF's ability to expose the inner life of these characters, not seeking their company for any outwardly attractive quality, but for an outsider status that suffuses his outlook, of which this is a typically potent and memorable example….