Le mariage de Maria Braun

Maria Braun's marriage is a very successful metaphor for post-war Germany, for the economic miracle played by Adenauer, himself heard several times in the film, in his speeches appealing to pride in German economic reconstruction.

In the rubble of the Second World War, Maria/Germany survives, between a tenuous hope of returning to the lost past and the agony of a miserable and dishonorable present.

But the defeated have no right to shame. It is up to them to rebuild the future in the bed of the victors, until they learn to live without them, more than autonomously, as new victorious powers, taking the place of those who humiliated them. In life, in the economy or even in football (Fassbinder coincides the narrative climax with the 1952 World Cup final, in which Germany became champion, for the first time in the history of the competition, thus using yet another metaphor for German reconstruction).

After the victory is complete, the honor is washed away, life ends and it is time to give way to others, to the future, which must not repeat the mistakes of the past.

A bold message and a powerful performance by Hanna Schygullla.

Fassbinder at his best.

Allegory for postwar Germany...examination of modernist female sexuality...Marxist critique of human labor under capitalism...yada, yada. I won't bore you with that prattle. Which isn't to say those idea weren't baked into the movie or that you're wrong to see the movie as deeply philosophical. But it certainly isn't necessary to enjoying the movie.

The Marriage of Maria Braun is a great film without needing to be dissected as some dull academic thesis paper. Maria depicted quite spectacularly by Hanna Schygulla, she plays a character who I can't really decide is tragic or the real "villain." This is one of those weird films where every character is so endearing and well written that it's painful to see things go so off the rails for them.

Ending was a little obvious, and I could argue it was too dumb for the rest of the movie, but overall an amazing production.

First and best of Fassbinder's Post-WWII "Wirtschaftswunder" films. His lead character, a young woman, determined to emerge out of Germany's WWII ruins as a success, literally "walks over corpses" to get what she wants. Marrying a man doomed to be among the last to "fall" for the Fuehrer and the German Reich, Maria is now "Frau" instead of "Fraulein". Initially searching for her MIA husband, she eventually gives it up and moves on. Climbing the ladder, Maria Braun has her share of good times. Showering her impoverished family with lavish presents and lifting everyone's life-style up by a notch, Maria becomes the celebrated "Wunderkind" who gets whatever she wants. Although her uppity attitude isn't always popular, and there is plenty of talk about Maria (and her "ways"), Maria Braun laughs it all away. The Marlene Dietrich-like heroine always has the last laugh, as the shocking ending proves.

This is a Modern Classic, one of the very best films to come out of the 1970s/80s German Cinema. Much stronger than "Veronica Foss" and in the league of "Das Boot", "The Marriage of Maria Braun" is a product of Modern German Dramatic Cinema's golden age. No sugar coating, just pure, unadulterated truth as seen through the rear-view mirror of people who have lived the horrors and survived into new tomorrows. A true gem of a film!

We watched this film in our German Cinema class at university some years ago, and I still remember it well.

Without wishing to give too much away, it tells the tale of a woman who, seeing the desolate landscape that Germany was in 1945, determines to build herself a comfortable life and, as she does so, she becomes one of many women in Germany rebuilding the nation. This was a time, historically, when the women were a greater driving force in the social and economic rebuilding of the nation than were the men (who were both lacking in credibility following the horrors and the mess of the years past, and somewhat dazed by what the nation had just been through).

As she builds that life (and in so doing helps to rebuild the nation), however, she finds that she may have sacrificed too much.

It is a movie worth watching in order to gain some understanding of what life was like in Germany from 1945 to roughly 1970. Rainer Fassbinder makes use of images in places which show the transition of German society from broken ruins to economic superpower, the changing status of women in German society over that time period, the changing attitudes both within Germany and from outside toward Germany, and the sacrifices that women were prepared to make in order to build the Germany that they ultimately did. It also asks, though, if the single-minded pursuit of rebuilding the nation economically and materially did not take too much out of the nation and the people in other areas.

I enjoyed the movie, and am happy to recommend it.

A complex, pessimistic tale of post WWII Germany, this is one of Fassbinder's masterpieces that brings a step beyond the classic melodrama form articulated by Douglas Sirk. When Hanna Schygulla says to her husband in prison `this are bad times for feelings' it is Fassbinder saying that in the seventies cinema there's no place for the classic melodrama of the 40s and 50s, unless all the craze that then was suggested now turns somehow more explicit. Fassbinder has a quality of elevating low elements into the realms of High Art, not only through the services of his personal use of the camera, but also through an admirable compassion towards his material.