Linkshoch Wonderful Movie

ThiefHott Too much of everything

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

James Hitchcock "The Marriage of Maria Braun" tells the story of post-war Germany as seen by a young woman, the title character Maria Braun. The film opens in 1943 with Maria's marriage to a soldier named Hermann Braun. After only a day spent together, Hermann must return to his unit, and is later posted as missing, presumed dead, on the Russian front. After the war we find Maria (like most Germans during this period) living in desperate poverty, but she finds work as a bar hostess and, believing her husband to be dead, becomes the lover of Bill, a black soldier with the American occupation forces, who helps to support her financially. (At least, Bill is supposed to be American, but whoever wrote his dialogue seems to have been more familiar with British than with American English. He makes far more frequent use of the expletive "bloody" than any American I have come across). Subsequent developments involve Hermann's unexpected return to Germany after being held in a Soviet prison camp, his imprisonment for the killing of Bill (a crime actually committed by Maria herself) and Maria's life as the mistress of Karl, a wealthy industrialist.The French film critic Jean de Baroncelli saw Maria Braun as an allegory of Germany, "a character that wears flashy and expensive clothes, but has lost her soul". There is certainly some truth in this comparison, but I felt it might perhaps be more accurate to say that it is the marriage of Maria and Hermann which is an allegory of the plight of Germany during the Cold War years. When the film was made in the late seventies, the country had been partitioned between East and West ever since the end of World War II more than thirty years earlier and hopes of reunification seemed destined to remain unfulfilled. (Few people in 1979 could have predicted that the Berlin Wall would fall in only ten years time). Maria, who sells herself to an American for nylon stockings and cigarettes and is later seduced by a capitalist, can therefore be seen as symbolising the flashy and prosperous if rather soulless West Germany, while Hermann, held prisoner by the Soviets, represents the Communist East.The director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the leading members of the "New German Cinema" group of auteurs of the late sixties, seventies and eighties. He had the reputation of being an "arthouse" director, but this film is one of his more approachable works. Despite numerous clashes between Fassbinder and his collaborators, clashes which led to an acrimonious lawsuit which was to continue even after the director's death, it was both a critical and a commercial success in West Germany and, despite its political subtext, was also shown in cinemas in the East.Many European films from the Cold War years have since lost much of their relevance, but this one still remains watchable today. The lovely Hanna Schygulla, who had earlier appeared in some of Fassbinder's other films such as "Effi Briest", succeeds in making Maria a brilliantly realised character and in persuading us of the central truth of the film, namely that, whatever her relationships with Bill and Karl, it is Hermann who is really her true love and that in her heart she stays true to him. She reminds us that "The Marriage of Maria Braun" is not just a film about post-war Germany, and certainly not just a film about politics, but also a human drama with a very human character at its centre. 6/10

Julio Kortazar Although this film has abundant imagery that is inspired in post WWII Germany, people watching this movie should not forget that it's entertainment. For example, in the bar scenes there are only black American soldiers and they are all dancing with Aryan damsels in distress, as if the full occupying American army was made up only of black guys! That was laughable. On the one hand, the bar scene could be trying to stoke that old Germanic paranoia about barbaric heathens ready to take over the motherland OR maybe the intent of the bar scene is to poke fun at that paranoia. There are plenty of other scenes throughout the movie where one is also left wondering what was the real message being sent.

birthdaynoodle 'The Marriage of Maria Braun' is German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's best-known and most financially successful movie and it's not hard to see why: it's a big event, a tour de force. This melodrama tells the story of an audacious, beautiful woman who puts her survival instinct to use during the early post-war era, when capitalist West Germany arose from the ashes. The film begins as she's getting married amidst the chaos of the last day of World War II in 1945, and much of what follows has to do with the peculiar way in which she devotes herself to her absent, yet somehow always present, idealized husband. The character of Maria is fascinating as a person, but it also serves as an allegory for Germany during this period of reconstruction, now generally referred to as the "economic miracle" ("Wirtschaftswunder"). Hanna Shygulla gives a perfect performance as the gorgeous and strong-willed Maria. She and Fassbinder were close and had worked together in many plays and films, including 'The Bitter Tears of Eva Von Kant', in 1972. By the time they made 'The Marriage of Maria Braun' in 1979, four years had passed since their last collaboration, so they both regarded it as a special reunion. To me, the film is a testament of the director's nostalgia and adoration for his diva. He was infamously difficult with many of his actors and actresses, yet is said to have treated Shygulla with a special kind of tenderness, and I believe it shows here. Fassbinder was openly gay, but married twice. His relationships with his first wife, Ingrid Caven, and Moroccan male lover El Hedi Ben Salem, both important actors in his films, are known to have been especially tempestuous. This pattern of love/hate may reflect on some of the characters in his work. He was accused (perhaps unfairly) by some feminists of being misogynistic and by some gay critics of being homophobic. I haven't watched enough of his films to have an opinion on this. But I sense there's a very particular, mixed energy projected onto the character of Maria Braun, who is both hero and antihero, someone who has an admirable tenacity to overcome adversity, yet is willing to prostitute herself and stop at nothing in order to accomplish her goals. It's this complexity that makes the film interesting. Nothing here is easily spelled out as right or wrong.'The Marriage of Maria Braun' is the first part of Fassbinder's BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) trilogy, along with 'Veronica Voss' (1982) and 'Lola' (1981), which is made available as a set by the Criterion Collection. ('Veronica Voss' was filmed last, but is meant to be viewed as the second part of the trilogy.)

Galina Sensual and tough Maria Braun. (Hanna Schygula) marries a soldier in the middle of World War II and spends a half of day and the whole night with him. That's how long her marriage lasts before she loses him to the war and then to prison. She carries on with her life, becomes a successful businesswoman being not only sensual but intelligent, ambitious, and willing to use sex whenever or wherever necessary: "I don't know a thing about business, but I do know what German women want. You might even say I'm an expert on it". While climbing up to the success she always remembers her husband, Hermann (her man) and convinces herself that whatever she does – is for him, for their future happy life together. "Maria Braun"'s style reminds much of melodramas by Fassbinder's favorite Hollywood director, Douglas Sirk and offers a glimpse of the loss and survival in postwar Germany. Hanna Schygula literally shines in every scene of the movie and she is fantastic.8.5/10