Despair

Hermann Hermann Dirk Bogarde lives in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. A refugee from Soviet Russia, with a Baltic German father and a wealthy Jewish mother, he has inherited a business making chocolates. His wife Lydia Hermann Andréa Ferréol, voluptuous but not intelligent, has an over-close relationship with her bachelor cousin, the painter Ardalion Volker Spengler. As the Great Depression bites and Nazi thugs start targeting Jewish businesses, his firm becomes less profitable and Germany feels less hospitable, and Hermann begins to dream of escape. He already experiences moments of leaving his body—watching himself make love to his wife—and he consults a man he believes to be a Viennese psychiatrist but is in fact a life insurance salesman, who sells him a policy.

After watching a film that features a doppelgänger, he spots an unemployed drifter named Felix Klaus Löwitsch, who he decides is his double. Felix, bemused at first by the idea of any resemblance, goes along with the plan when Hermann promises him a job. The work, as it turns out, is to act as Hermann’s double for a substantial lump sum.

Hermann is now ready to finalize his plan to erase all traces of his unwelcome existence. He has Ardalion write a letter that demands money to leave Lydia and go painting in Switzerland, and then shows the letter to the life insurance salesman as evidence that he is being blackmailed. He also tells Lydia that he has a troubled twin brother who is contemplating suicide. He will switch clothes with his brother so that the corpse is taken as his own, and lie low in Switzerland. When Lydia has been paid the insurance money, she is to join him there.

Having lured Felix to a secluded place in the woods, Hermann dresses Felix up in his own clothes, shaves his facial hair, adjusts his hairstyle and files his nails. Hermann then shoots him dead. Dressed as Felix and with Felix’s passport, he goes to a Swiss hotel, where he learns from newspapers that Berlin police are seeking the murderer and suspect it is him. Moving in increasing desperation from village to village, in the end he is spotted by Ardalion and armed police close in. He explains that he is an actor making a film and they must stand aside to let him go on.

Last Updated: October 05, 2025 at 11:51