The Marriage of Maria Braun = die ehe der Maria Braun

A tragicomedy spanning a decade which begins with the wedding of Maria Braun amid the chaos of an Allied bomb attack in 1943. Within 24 hours Maria’s husband is sent to the Russian front. Initially naive and idealistic, Maria increasingly adjusts to male values using her sexuality resourcefully but cynically in the pursuit of wealth and power. Yet she retains a romantic yearning for reunion with her missing husband which prevents her from fully living in the present. Fassbinder clearly means the film to be seen as an allegory about the German ‘economic miracle’ - the deep-seated continuity between past and present. Schygulla’s performance is deliberately dead-pan, taking the melodramatic mode to its limits, and reflecting Fassbinder’s interest in the melodramas of Douglas Sirk. In German with English subtitles.