Wer war Edgar Allan? (1984)

A nameless German art student, lacking drive and direction, travels to Venice, where he tries to escape his dull reality through alcohol and drugs. His father dies shortly afterward, leaving him a substantial inheritance that frees him from all financial worries. From then on, he no longer bothers with his studies, instead wandering aimlessly through Venice and its nightlife. While roaming the city and its cafés and bars, he meets an American who calls himself “Edgar Allan”—his father supposedly gave him the name as a tribute to the famous writer Edgar Allan Poe. The student is fascinated by the mysterious man, who is about 50 and seems to wander aimlessly through the city just as he does. The student meets other strange people as well, including a mysterious Contessa, who soon falls to her death from the roof garden of her palazzo. And the enigmatic “Edgar Allan” keeps turning up, while more strange things happen. The student eventually suspects that “Edgar Allan” is involved in all these events and in the Contessa’s death. In the end, the student tries to find out who this ominous “Edgar Allan” really is, but the harder he tries, the more hopeless his undertaking seems, and the harder it becomes for him—exacerbated by his use of alcohol and drugs—to distinguish fantasy from reality. Eventually, the student begins to doubt his own identity.