#204: FASSBINDER, Rainer Werner: The Marriage Of Maria Braun (1979)
THE BRD TRILOGY {Spine #203}
The Marriage Of Maria Braun [1979]
Spine #204
DVD
DVD
In the first part of Fassbinder's postwar trilogy, Maria Braun (Hanna Schygulla) uses her beauty and ambition to prosper during Germany's "economic miracle" of the 1950s. Fassbinder's biggest international box-office success, The Marriage of Maria Braun is a heartbreaking study of a woman picking herself up from the ruins of her own life, as well as a metaphorical attack on a society determined to forget its past.
120 minutes
Color
Color
Monaural
in German
1:78:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2003
Director/Writers
Dialogue by Pea Fröhlich, Fassbinder, and Peter Märthesheimer.
Screenplay by Märthesheimer and Fröhlich.
Fassbinder was 34 when he directed The Marriage of Maria Braun.
The Film
Surely, Fassbinder’s burning star never lit up a film as brightly as this one — a huge commercial success both in Germany and abroad — and unexpected, as well.
Hard at work on his epic fifteen-hour plus Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) [Spine #411], he had — unusually — passed off the writing duties to Märthesheimer and Fröhlich. He repaired his fractured relationship with Hanna Schygulla (Maria) — it had been five years since they last worked together — and hired the brilliant DP Michael Ballhaus for the 16th, and last time (Ballhaus would go on to be Martin Scorsese’s main man in later years) …
Eventually, Maria would make up the first film in what became known as the BRD Trilogy (see Spine #203).
The theme is the post-war Wirtschaftswunder (“economic miracle”). Women were clearly the heroes of this time; the men were either dead, shell-shocked or just plain cowards, and the women made things happen more than anybody. Maria stands for this. She is willing to do anything and everything to improve her own existence, society’s morality be damned …
The men in her life — her husband, Hermann (Klaus Löwitsch), and her lover, Oswald (Ivan Desny) — are merely ornaments. Even her mother (Gisela Uhlen) is to be denied a secure place in her new life of prosperity. She barely has any sympathy for her oldest friend, Betti (Elisabeth Trissenaar), whose husband, Willi (Fassbinder regular Gottfried John) has returned from the war shell-shocked, devoid of any true emotions.
Some bullets:
- Costume designer Barbara Baum deserves huge credit for dressing Schygulla, as the character undergoes gradual well-being.
- 0:12:20: an ECU of the Camel cigarettes accentuates their value at that time.
- 0:15:33: Fassbinder casts himself in the role of a black-market peddler.
- He whistles the four-note theme of Beethoven’s Fifth to his lookout accomplice!
- An accordion plays “Deutschland über alles” in the background.
- Maria trades her mother’s broach for a low-cut dress and a bottle of liquor (for her mother).
- Fassbinder offers her “a valuable complete edition of Kleist’s works, 1907. Heinrich von Kleist.
- Fassbinder surely felt an artistic kinship with Kleist — a tortured bisexual — whose plays were full of absurdist and grotesque imagery. Kleist was a master at combining tragedy with erotic comedy — a description that could be used for Maria Braun as well.
- Maria declines the books. “Books burn too easily, and they don’t keep you warm.”
- 0:26:44: She meets Bill (George Eagles aka George Byrd. He was a conductor; in 1959, he became the first African-American to conduct the West Berlin Philharmonic).
- 0:30:24: With her back to the camera, Maria lets some water trickle down her hand. This shot will be paralleled to great effect at 1:57:35.
- 0:33:27: Note the gorgeous camera work as Bill and Maria make love.
- 0:58:01: Oswald, urging his accountant, Senkenberg (Hark Bohm) to be bold:
- “Be Napoleon. Or Blücher (Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher), if you prefer.”
- 1:03:18: In a brilliant bit of business, Oswald sits at the piano and mimics the soundtrack which is playing the slow movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 (at 14:50)!
- Coincidence? This was Fassbinder’s 23rd film!
- 1:03:53: Similarly shot to the above love-making scene with Bill, Maria makes love with Oswald. Different men, all the same to Maria …
- 1:04:33: We meet Oswald’s secretary, Frau Ehmke (Lilo Pempeit, Fassbinder’s mother!).
- 1:09:11: A tiny, but lovely detail: The camera bifurcates the scene — Maria and Hermann at medium distance on the left and a close-up of a guard, dangling his keys on the right. Rack focus on the keys at the last second of the shot.
- 1:09:20: In the very next shot, Oswald is waiting for Maria with chocolate and flowers. Unthinkable only a few years earlier, Maria throws them both in the garbage.
- 1:42:12: Wonderful traveling shot in the restaurant. The camera always moves in Fassbinder’s films.
- 1:46:35: Fassbinder prepares us for the extreme dramatic shock in the final scene with this seemingly innocent shot of Maria lighting her cigarette with the flame from the gas stove.
Film Rating (0-60):
The Booklet
Fifty-four page booklet featuring essays by Kent Jones and Michael Töteberg.
Jones:
55
The ExtrasThe Booklet
Fifty-four page booklet featuring essays by Kent Jones and Michael Töteberg.
Jones:
“Fassbinder was an inventor. He gave us a whole new point of view, devoid of sentimentality or even grace, yet profoundly empathic. In Fassbinder, a magical world of purely human wonders is parceled out to us in the form of tales, tales in which desperation, treachery, scheming, hypocrisy, and ignorance play no small part, where desire plays a major supporting role but the will to power is sadly dominant.”
Töteberg:
“Fassbinder had long dreamed of a ‘German Hollywood film.’ He sought not only success with the audience, but also professionalism. The auteur film in its purest form is an attempt to abolish the division of labor: the filmmaker represents in his own person the director, the scriptwriter, and the producer. Yet no one can be perfect in all areas, as Fassbinder well understood, and the films of Douglas Sirk made him conscious of the fact that a director can retain his own personal signature even in a regulated studio system. He was looking for a writer who could turn his material into a perfect screenplay and nevertheless deliver the basis for a Fassbinder film.”
Commentary
By Fassbinder cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and renowned filmmaker Wim Wenders.
Worthwhile personal reflections …
Video interview 1
By Fassbinder cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and renowned filmmaker Wim Wenders.
Worthwhile personal reflections …
Video interview 1
With the star of The Marriage of Maria Braun and regular Fassbinder collaborator Schygulla.
A bit superfluous.
Video interview 2
A bit superfluous.
Video interview 2
With Fassbinder scholar Eric Rentschler.
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