The Marriage of Maria Braun is widely regarded as the greatest film by German director Ranier Werner Fassbinder. It is at least in the top three of over forty films made by Fassbinder in all of but fifteen years. The dialogue is intelligent and refined, the acting is utterly unique, the cinematography is fluid, the auditory backdrop is unlike any other film, and the elements are carefully arranged through expert direction.
Richard T. Jameson, film critic for Seattle Weekly (January 16, 1980), wrote, "To watch this film...is to realize how carelessly most movies are visualized. There is not a dull shot, one that fails to catch the eye, provoke the intellect, and remind us what an invigoratingly participatory experience the watching of a film can be." Of the sense of visual participation, the audience is addressed with immediacy from the outset. The so called "fourth wall" between stage and audience, here with a picture of Hitler on it, has a hole blown through it so that we can see Maria getting married. The presentational aesthetic is fully embraced.
Fassbinder is not relegated to visual presentation, though. The radio broadcast at the end is louder than the dialogue. The broadcast is of a German soccer match that marks West Germany coming back into conversation with the rest of the world after WWII. The film is also graced with puns such as Maria's brief reflection on the color brown (her last name). If a film can be said to consciously engage the audience, albeit alienating at times, Maria Braun may be the film to begin with for its thoroughgoing merits.
The subject matter wrapped in this presentational aesthetic is Maria Braun. When we engage Maria, we get the closest thing to feminist cinema a male director can achieve. The circumstances women found themselves in after the war were miserable. Maria not only makes the best of it, she exploits it. Every aspect of her being, whether her feminine charm, or her drive, her naive charades for men and her business acumen, all prove fair game in making a better life for herself. She is Rosy the Riveter, only she will not go back to quaint domesticity as men return from war. It may even be plausible by the end of the film to regard Herr Braun as simply Maria's husband. This is the subject matter which the audience is being addressed with, and the film not only intends to engage the subject matter, it achieves its conversation with the audience.
All of these elements are astounding: whether it is presentational theater, alienating cues, a feminist approach by a male director, or a running commentary on post-war West Germany, the craft is apparent. What makes the film decisively great, and essentially holds it together, is the rupture between marriage and accepted norms of love. After all, most literature ends with marriage in an attempt to bring closure to a love story. The result is thinking of love as what happens prior to marriage, and marriage seals the deal. By starting with marriage, the film deviates from the pattern with the simple question of what happens now? Marriage as an amorphous "happily ever after," is taken to be uninteresting. What holds Maria Braun together is precisely this inversion of norms in the run of the mill love story. Here is not the love story ending in a vague reference to marriage, but a vague love story preceding the realities of marriage in all of its contractual splendor.
IMDb rates this film 7.8 out of 10
Film 101 rates this film 5 stars out of 5 (not red stars)
Roger Ebert reviews this film in his Great Movies selection
A selection of other films directed by Fassbinder:
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Lola, and Veronika Voss
The subject matter wrapped in this presentational aesthetic is Maria Braun. When we engage Maria, we get the closest thing to feminist cinema a male director can achieve. The circumstances women found themselves in after the war were miserable. Maria not only makes the best of it, she exploits it. Every aspect of her being, whether her feminine charm, or her drive, her naive charades for men and her business acumen, all prove fair game in making a better life for herself. She is Rosy the Riveter, only she will not go back to quaint domesticity as men return from war. It may even be plausible by the end of the film to regard Herr Braun as simply Maria's husband. This is the subject matter which the audience is being addressed with, and the film not only intends to engage the subject matter, it achieves its conversation with the audience.
All of these elements are astounding: whether it is presentational theater, alienating cues, a feminist approach by a male director, or a running commentary on post-war West Germany, the craft is apparent. What makes the film decisively great, and essentially holds it together, is the rupture between marriage and accepted norms of love. After all, most literature ends with marriage in an attempt to bring closure to a love story. The result is thinking of love as what happens prior to marriage, and marriage seals the deal. By starting with marriage, the film deviates from the pattern with the simple question of what happens now? Marriage as an amorphous "happily ever after," is taken to be uninteresting. What holds Maria Braun together is precisely this inversion of norms in the run of the mill love story. Here is not the love story ending in a vague reference to marriage, but a vague love story preceding the realities of marriage in all of its contractual splendor.
IMDb rates this film 7.8 out of 10
Film 101 rates this film 5 stars out of 5 (not red stars)
Roger Ebert reviews this film in his Great Movies selection
A selection of other films directed by Fassbinder:
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Lola, and Veronika Voss
