The mood of The Third Generation, one might assume, is rampaging cynicism. The film looks in two directions, at the modern capitalist state of West Germany and at the terrorist radicals who bedevil it, and seems to pronounce a curse on both their houses. Such a feat is possible, however, not because the film is two-faced but because the situation it describes is so complex….

In cut and dried terms, this is the message of Fassbinder's latest film. But it does not account for some of its most curious features, not least of which is that it is more emotionally than politically painful. Although some historical long view of the German experience is implied, the film actually works as a claustrophobically intense soap opera, a black farce of political mannerisms or, as an opening title puts it, "a comedy in six parts, about party games, full of suspense...