Fassbinder Collection: The Marriage of Maria Braun (15)

Dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978, West Germany, 116 mins
Cast: Hannah Schygulla, Klaus Löwitsch, Ivan Desny, Gottfried John, Hark Bohm

Just as the autuers of the French New Wave aspired towards incorporating American influences into their native cinema, so Fassbinder and the other directors of the New German Cinema sought to make ‘German Hollywood movies’. In that respect, and judging things by Hollywood standards, The Marriage of Maria Braun can be considered Fassbinder’s most successful work, given that it was by far his most financially successful.

One should also bear in mind, however, that Fassbinder’s opinion of Hollywood was a mixture of love and disgust, and it is ironic that a film so bound up with critiquing the transactional nature of life should have raked in the most money. Another irony is that Fassbinder was able to reach his commercial peak when his consumption of cocaine and alcohol, which would kill him within four years, had reached such monumental levels.

Maria (Schygulla) marries Hermann (Löwitsch) the day before he leaves for the Russian Front. Thinking he has been killed, immediately after the war she becomes involved with a black GI. When her husband returns, she kills the soldier but Hermann chivalrously takes the blame.

Unbowed, Maria piggybacks on West Germany’s post-war economic recovery, making as much money as she can for when Hermann is released. She becomes an advisor and then mistress to Karl (Desny), a French textile magnate. Schygulla gives a tremendous performance as Maria, who for much of the film seems a paragon of individuality and self-determination. She does what’s necessary to succeed, and she does it for love.

But Maria is trapped in a system she cannot beat, a system that sours purity. Fassbinder subtly adumbrates the sickness at the heart of the post-war boom with radio speeches concerning rearmament made by Chancellor Adenauer, and meetings between trade unionists and bosses at which the mood is one of relentless cynicism. This cynicism turns Maria’s chutzpah into cold-heartedness. “It’s not a good time for feelings,” she tells her husband. “But that suits me. That way, nothing really affects me.” And later, when tipping a removals man, she snaps, “So, now I don’t have to say thanks. I’d rather pay than say thanks.”

But while a less complex film might have been satisfied with drawing a line between material wealth and spiritual atrophy, Fassbinder goes deeper than that. The film is littered with false premisses: Maria believes Hermann to be alive when everyone else thinks him dead; when she finally accepts his death, he returns; when Hermann is released from prison, he leaves the country, claiming that he can only return to Maria when he feels whole again. In fact Karl, who has only a short time left to live, has paid him off so that he can have Maria to himself until he dies.

It is this last misconception that spells Maria’s doom. When Hermann returns her excitement is hysterical and lacking real happiness. That things come to a bad end is, by this stage, no surprise, and Fassbinder adds a sick-making irony to the agony of the final scene by including an invasively loud commentary of the 1954 World Cup final, in which West Germany triumphed. This national success stands in mordant contrast to the domestic tragedy we have witnessed, a tragedy that, it is strikingly suggested, we will very possibly not learn from at all.

Extras:
Includes Fassbinder Familia - An interactive biography of Fassbinders' close entourage; Documentary by Florian Hopf on Fassbinder; Short film: The Little Chaos

Chris Power