Rainer Werner Fassbinder's most profitable film, "The Marriage of Maria Braun" tells the tale of an upwardly mobile, independent Maria Braun (Hanna Schygulla), a woman who uses a combination of business smarts, tenacity and promiscuity to lift herself out of desperation.
Fassbinder was drawn to female characters, and often wrote them well. Here he observes as Braun weasels her way back and forth, buying low cut dresses to impress Americans, learning English, framing her husband and killing men to ensure her future. "It's a bad time for feelings," she says, before worming her way into a German mega-corporation which does big business overseas. From here she turns her back on all outsiders (primarily the United States, which forced debts upon and dismantled industries across post war Germany) and tactically sleeps with her new boss. We then watch as she becomes increasingly wealthy, whilst all around the less fortunate remain burdened with post-war, national guilt. But guilt is precisely what Maria does not allow herself; she crushes all in her path. "I'm a master of deceit," she says, "a capitalist tool by day, by night an agent of the proletarian masses. I am the Mata Hari of the economic miracle."
Quickly it becomes apparent that Maria represents West Germany's own rise out of World War 2's rubble, a nation casting off the chains of an insincere American Occupation and brushing off the ashes of defeat. Braun's not just an opportunist, but delights in saying what everyone wants to hear. She makes promises to every class and every country, but only to curry favour and pursue her own wants. It's a kitchen gas explosion which kills her - and symbolic ends an unholy marriage between east and west - distributing her body in all directions, an event which coincides with Germany's victory in a world-championship soccer match. Germany has been reborn, its socioeconomic progress cannot be contained. It is hungry (we hear Germany literally beating Hungary on a radio football match) and ready to explode onto the world stage.
Contrasted with Wirtschaftswunder, Germany's economic miracle or post-war rise, is a rise in what Fassbinder saw as "everyday", "benign", "soft" fascism. Germany becomes a giant, but the power plays which got her there are precisely those which continue to influence, scar and weight heavy on her own inhabitants. "Is this worth it?" Fassbinder asks. His next film was "The Third Generation", a black comedy about revolutionaries or "terrorists". It plays like the spiritual sequel to "The Marriage of Maria Braun".
8/10 - Worth one viewing.
Fassbinder was drawn to female characters, and often wrote them well. Here he observes as Braun weasels her way back and forth, buying low cut dresses to impress Americans, learning English, framing her husband and killing men to ensure her future. "It's a bad time for feelings," she says, before worming her way into a German mega-corporation which does big business overseas. From here she turns her back on all outsiders (primarily the United States, which forced debts upon and dismantled industries across post war Germany) and tactically sleeps with her new boss. We then watch as she becomes increasingly wealthy, whilst all around the less fortunate remain burdened with post-war, national guilt. But guilt is precisely what Maria does not allow herself; she crushes all in her path. "I'm a master of deceit," she says, "a capitalist tool by day, by night an agent of the proletarian masses. I am the Mata Hari of the economic miracle."
Quickly it becomes apparent that Maria represents West Germany's own rise out of World War 2's rubble, a nation casting off the chains of an insincere American Occupation and brushing off the ashes of defeat. Braun's not just an opportunist, but delights in saying what everyone wants to hear. She makes promises to every class and every country, but only to curry favour and pursue her own wants. It's a kitchen gas explosion which kills her - and symbolic ends an unholy marriage between east and west - distributing her body in all directions, an event which coincides with Germany's victory in a world-championship soccer match. Germany has been reborn, its socioeconomic progress cannot be contained. It is hungry (we hear Germany literally beating Hungary on a radio football match) and ready to explode onto the world stage.
Contrasted with Wirtschaftswunder, Germany's economic miracle or post-war rise, is a rise in what Fassbinder saw as "everyday", "benign", "soft" fascism. Germany becomes a giant, but the power plays which got her there are precisely those which continue to influence, scar and weight heavy on her own inhabitants. "Is this worth it?" Fassbinder asks. His next film was "The Third Generation", a black comedy about revolutionaries or "terrorists". It plays like the spiritual sequel to "The Marriage of Maria Braun".
8/10 - Worth one viewing.