Despair (German: Despair – Eine Reise ins Licht, lit. 'Despair – A Journey into the Light') is a 1978 psychological historical-drama film directed and co-edited by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, adapted by Tom Stoppard from Vladimir Nabokov's 1934 novel. It stars Dirk Bogarde, Andréa Ferréol, Klaus Löwitsch, Volker Spengler and Bernhard Wicki. The film follows a wealthy chocolatier in Weimar Germany (Bogarde), who plots to kill and impersonate his own apparent doppelgänger in order to escape his life. The tone of the film, like that of the novel is satiric and ironic. The plot is mostly similar to the novel, although one of the key characters is significantly altered in the adaptation. Despair was a West German and French co-production, and was Fassbinder's first English-lan
