From the structure of the film, one cannot motivate the title of R.W. Fassbinders third film: Roughly speaking, three young people who can hardly make their living from selling newspapers, decide to make a small robbery and get away with it. However, typical not only for Fassbinder's early movies, "Das Kleine Chaos" is riddled with quotations. As a matter of fact, the whole short movie seems to be one quotation of the major elements of the American Film Noirs of 30ies or 40ies. Fassbinder's acting is highly stylized and remembers that of "methodic" Hollywood actors from that time, e.g. of James Cagney. So, what the actors play, looks like the movie of somebody else (e.g. from Raoul Walsh). Further, at the end, after the three have gotten their money, Fassbinder says: "And I am going to the cinema". Thus he goes to the place, where that what they just played can be seen. So, did they play an actual (yet fictive) event or a story from a screenplay?
We therefore have three levels of reference in "Das Kleine Chaos": 1. The level of a robbery that takes place somewhere in Munich at the end of the 60ies; 2. The acting which is imitating that of American Film Noirs some 50 or 60 years ago, and 3. Fassbinder's uttering that he goes to the cinema, where such American Noirs could be seen often in the Munich of the 60ies. Hence, by "chaotic" may be meant the lack of exact correspondence between the three levels of the movie.
We therefore have three levels of reference in "Das Kleine Chaos": 1. The level of a robbery that takes place somewhere in Munich at the end of the 60ies; 2. The acting which is imitating that of American Film Noirs some 50 or 60 years ago, and 3. Fassbinder's uttering that he goes to the cinema, where such American Noirs could be seen often in the Munich of the 60ies. Hence, by "chaotic" may be meant the lack of exact correspondence between the three levels of the movie.