The Marriage of Maria Braun
1979 ‘Die Ehe der Maria Braun’ Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Synopsis
The Marriage of Maria Braun is a collage of the times in Germany after the war, economic miracles, and a portrait of a woman who in her circumstances wants to emancipate and have a successful and happy career. The film is a masterpiece from German director Fassbinder.
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder is a director who has long been woefully underrepresented in my movie-watching biography, so I figured it was time to take a stroll through some of his films. I figured the best place to start would be "The Marriage of Maria Braun," and I'm happy I did.
Ostensibly widowed the day after her wedding when her husband (a German officer) goes missing in the last days of World War II, Maria (Hanna Schygulla) begins with nothing and slowly rises to become the embodiment of the German economic miracle. Full of the kind of icy resolve and never-suffering-fools-gladly demeanor that made Marlene Dietrich a star, Schygulla plays Maria as a character incapable of separating herself from her past…
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Good luck being as good as this, everything else I see in 2013.
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As good as movies get.
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Really surprised by this film. There are so many complex things going on with this film, not only in terms of story, both with the themes it goes over. Probably my favorite part of the film is the way it was shot (you can tell Fassbinder comes from a theater background) and the acting is really well done as well. Really interesting foreign film.
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There's a strangeness to this film that says its not for me. Feel as though I've wasted 2 hours.
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Fassbinder’s astonishingly prolific output came to an abrupt, pill and cocaine fuelled end in 1982, but not before he had cemented his place in international cinema history. At the centre of Fassbinder’s entre onto the world stage proper, were three women-centric allegories for West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder, the "economic miracle" that came about in the decade following the war.
The Bundesrepublik Deutschland Trilogy (or what retrospectively became the BRD Trilogy after Lola was tagged BRD 3 in 1981) collects together the stories of three women intent on consummating their lives in the blossoming new republic. While the films aren’t narratively or even stylistically linked (each film has a very distinct visual approach), thematically they share a common DNA. Willful cultural amnesia,…
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Fassbinder's best film? Certainly my favorite and a fantastic performance from Hanna Schygulla.
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The opening scene and the ending were two of the most striking sequences I've ever seen. Fantastic film.
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The grand piano, the radio broadcast, the prison keys, and, my god, the jokes.
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I knew nothing of this movie going in. Don’t you love that feeling? Especially when it turns out to be really great? The lighting was great, the art direction and wardrobe were great, everything was great. Except the lead actress, Hannah Schygulla. She is not great. She is phenomenal.
I liked this film tremendously.
Maria Braun, self-made woman and Mata Hari of the Economic Miracle, applies her face in the mirror: “I look like a poodle.”
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By far the dullest and most straight forward of the Fassbinder movies I've seen so far.
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The first of Fassbinder's BRD trilogy is also the first of his work I have seen, and while I can't say I was completely interested, there is definitely something there that will bring me back for more.
Maria Braun is an interesting character however. While not likable in a single sense, her intrigue comes from traits similar to what makes Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood so compelling. The constant ambition for advancing herself through manipulation and other means transforms her from poor bar-tending "widow" to rich socialite. Yet in this transformation she shows no change of emotion, always unsatisfied with the world. In that way, and even though I have little knowledge of post-war Germany, I feel the…
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Definitely a movie that I appreciated more than I enjoyed. I certainly wasn't at 100% when I watched it as well. With as little knowledge as I have of Germany at the time it seemed like an intense startlingly real portrait of what someone has to do to survive. I liked the coldness of the performances as a way to create a distance from the actors which made the film that could've been sensational and over the top feel mundane. I think this helps contribute to the message, as it were, of telling the lengths people go to feel universal and applicable to all people in dire straits. Almost as a cautionary tale.
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Probably Rainer Werner Fassbinder's masterpiece
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As good as movies get.