"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
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