“Fox” evokes the cruelty of a dog-eat-dog world. A major scene is set in Marrakesh, where Fox has taken Eugen on vacation. The two men pick up a Moroccan (El Hedi Ben Salem, the male lead in Fassbinder’s “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul”) and take him back to their luxury hotel only to be informed that Arabs are not allowed. Of course, after the Moroccan is escorted out, the desk clerk offers to send a hotel employee to their room. Love is a commodity; social class is absolute. The idea that West Germany might also be a sort of colony is introduced by the presence of two American soldiers whom Fox vainly attempts to hustle.

Despite its outrageously downbeat ending, “Fox” was promoted at the 1975 New York Film Festival as a daring display of “homosexuality without tears” — presumably because the movie is so matter-of-fact in representing its gay milieu. Four decades ago, “Fox” was something of a novelty, as was Fassbinder, perhaps the first openly gay or bisexual filmmaker of note since Jean Cocteau.

The New York Times critic Vincent Canby, an important supporter of Fassbinder’s work, chose not to review “Fox,” first shown as “Fist-Right of Freedom”; the movie was dismissed in The Times by Richard Eder as “a ‘Blue Angel’ done in drag.” When “Fox” opened commercially in New York it was at the Waverly (the same Greenwich Village theater where, two months later, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” appeared), with the word “homosexual” prominently used in its ads.

P ositioned as a niche film, “Fox” caus ed controversy. Some critics and activists took offense at Fassbinder’s depiction of gay life or, more precisely, his use of a gay milieu to make fresh a familiar story of sexual exploitation. Discussing “Fox” before it went into production, Fassbinder made no mention of his main characters’ sexual orientation, blandly describing it as the story of “a young entrepreneur whose company is on the verge of bankruptcy, and who manages to trick money out of someone to save the firm.” When “Fox” had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, he maintained that “homosexuality is shown as completely normal,” adding that the “problem” is social inequality and it’s “something quite different.”

Hollywood movies like “The Killing of Sister George” or “The Boys in the Band,” are told from an outsider’s perspective. “Fox” is not. Fassbinder’s on-camera presence in virtually every scene gives the film a confessional aspect. Still, if “Fox” is a psychodrama, Fassbinder is playing a role. That he did not see himself as the character Fox may be gleaned from the movie’s dedication to his real-life lover, Armin Meier, and “the others.” A few years later, Fassbinder and Meier, who soon after committed suicide, played themselves, as bully and abject partner, in Fassbinder’s contribution to the 1978 anthology film “Germany in Autumn.”