Swiss director Daniel Schmid adapts Fassbinder’s play about Lily (Ingrid Caven, Fassbinder’s former wife), a downtrodden streetwalker in love with her lazy, abusive pimp (Fassbinder). She meets a prosperous real estate broker (Klaus Löwitsch) who wants to marry her, but happiness in Fassbinder is short-lived. Comprised of epigrams reflective of the writer’s worldview (“When you have money, madness is not far behind”) and equating life with sorrow—evidenced by Lily’s mercy killing of her cat—Shadow of Angels is bleak but undeniably haunting. It was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1976, losing to another grim portrait of humanity, Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.