Die Ehe der Maria Braun

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with a portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging on a brick wall. Suddenly an explosion blows a hole through the wall and inside is Maria Braun (Hanna Schygulla) and Hermann Braun (Klaus Lowitsch) about to get married. What is supposed to be a ceremonial and memorable moment for them has turned violent as bombs are going off around them. The setting is Berlin during World War II. As the ceremony is brought to a halt by the bombs, the Priest attempts to leave only to be stopped by Hermann. Separated for a brief moment as bombs continue to rain around them, Maria, Hermann, and Priest take cover on the ground and are finally able to sign their marriage license. After the opening of the credits, we see Marias mother eating a small piece of bread with a tiny drizzle of oil. The economic times are bad. Maria returns after being unable to sell off her wedding dress. However, she does not return empty handed. Amongst the things she brings back is a shaving brush. Then catching a photo of her husband Hermann, she begins to break into tears. Hermann has been sent to the front. With her mother cheering her up, they decide to cook up some potatoes with bacon.
With a poster hanging behind her back with the information of Hermann, Maria waits with anticipation at the train station, where the women wait for the men to arrive from the war. However, Hermann doesn't show up. Taking refuge in a soup kitchen, Maria talks to a woman working in the kitchen about the death of her husband in the war and remarriage. These are desperate times for everyone as several men dive for a cigarette butt thrown by a soldier. Heckled by a couple of American soldiers, Maria's strength is revealed as she confronts one of them, only to be given a packet of cigarettes. She decides to give it to her mother only in exchange for her brooch, which the mother agrees to. In the following scene, we see Maria once again roaming the city with the poster of Hermann hanging on her back. This time she is accompanied by her friend Betti Klenze (Elisabeth Trissenaar), who also has a poster of her husband Willy Klenze (Gottfried John) dangling on her back. Near the end of the day, they help each other put on heavy makeup in order to search for a job that their husbands might or might not approve. Maria believes that Hermann would have no qualms about her. On the following day, Maria meets up with a peddler (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) who trades a dress for her in return for Maria's brooch. She wears the elegant dress and manages to find a job as a waitress in a bar. Paying a visit to her childhood doctor (Claus Holm), she asks for a health certificate for her new employer. The following morning, she returns back to the train station and doesn't find Hermann. Giving up on her hope, she tears Hermann's photo off and tosses the poster board onto the train tracks. At her new job at the bar, she meets and shares a dance with Bill (George Eagles), an African-American soldier. Spending an afternoon in the woods, as Bill teaches Maria English, their relationship suddenly has become more passionate and intimate. In the next scene, we see Betti reunited with her husband Willy. However, he brings with him the news of Hermann's death. Maria returns and is shocked to find Willy back. Although ecstatic to have Willy back, Maria cries because her husband is not with her. Her only means of comfort now is in Bill. As Bill and Marias relationship begins to grow more intimate and close, she soon finds herself pregnant with his child. As they celebrate the announcement and preparing to make love, they are paid an unexpected visit. It is Hermann. As Bill and Hermann wrestle each other, Maria grabs a bottle and hits Bill across the head, which kills him. As the Americans put Maria on trial, Hermann takes responsibility and admits that he is the one who killed Bill. As Hermann is put in jail, Maria says that she will wait for him so that they can start a new life together. Furthermore, in spite of picturing their future with a new child, Maria tells her doctor that she is going to abort it. In the meantime, Maria focuses on attaining wealth. During a train ride, she meets Karl Oswald (Ivan Desny) in first class, a half-German, a half-French business who owns a factory in Germany. He has returned to restart it after enduring difficult times during the war. Changing to her more seductive dress, Maria strikes a conversation with him. However, her nonchalant and in different attitude ultimately attracts him. He also admires her firm demeanor as Maria is able to drive away a drunk and noisy American soldier from the train. As they share a car ride with Karls accountant Senkenberg (Hark Bohm), Karl decides to give her a job as his personal advisor. Later as she tells her family about her new position, Maria decides to move out of her mothers house in order to prepare for a future home with Hermann, much to the disagreement of those around her, especially Betti. Visiting Hermann in prison, she tells him that she is going to change thanks to this job. In one of her first duties as personal assistant, she becomes a translator for Karl and an English speaking customer. However, she doesn't translate faithfully in order to tell Karl what he wants to hear. As Karl and Senkenberg argue over whether or not the company can afford to buy three SE Machines, Maria asks for 30-minutes alone with the customer. In the scene that follows, Karl congratulates Maria with a toast for her contribution. However, Senkenberg remains skeptical as he would only drink in five years time of the company. As Karl reprimands Senkenberg for not being able to have fun, Maria jumps to his defense. We soon find Maria in bed with Karl. He even asks her to be with him over the weekend in the country. However, she tells him that she has to visit someone on the weekend. Maria though does not divulge the fact that she is going to visit her husband. As Karl tries to understand her and show her his affection, Maria shrugs it away. Instead, she chooses to talk about her salary as she tells him that she has to earn a lot of money over the next few years. On the day Maria visits Hermann, she tells him that she is sleeping with Karl. She reassures him that she wants to sleep with him because she is dependent on him. Furthermore, she does it in order to give herself the upper hand. Upon returning home, Maria finds Karl waiting for her. Having spent the night together, Karl lets it known that he was going to propose to her had she gone with him to the country. Maria tells him that she will never marry him, but is willing to settle as his mistress. In a business event, Maria finds out from Willy that his marriage with Betti is in trouble for he is unable to communicate with her. Willy describes her as someone who cooks for me. In the following scenes, Karl once again reiterates his love for Maria. Yet, his love remains unrequited as she simply offers her body to him. One day, Karl pays a visit to Hermann in order to meet the man that Maria loves. Karl makes a secret deal with Hermann that if he stays away from Maria until Karl dies, than they will get the company. Later, on her mothers birthday, Maria finds that her mother has a new lover. During the party, Betti reveals that she is losing Willy. Like the strong assertive woman that she is, Maria tells her that she can do something about it. As Maria dances with Karl, he declares his love, fully realizing that he is going to die soon because of his liver.
Finally on the day of Hermann's release, she realizes that he has left to Australia or Canada. As agreed upon with the deal between Hermann and Karl, Hermann will leave a rose every month for her to remember him by. Maria soon loses herself in her job. Her personality begins to transform as her once firm demeanor evolves into certain ruthlessness. Her family, co-workers, and Karl become victims to her change. As the film draws to its end, Karl passes away. Hermann finally returns back to Maria. However, upon finding out that her husband and Karl made a deal on her behind her back, she does not accept it lightly. As Maria and Hermann are in her new home, she accidently leaves the gas stove on in order to light a cigarette. As Senkenberg leaves after handing over the company to the Brauns as promised, the house explodes as Maria lights her cigarette. The film ends with Senkenberg witnessing the dead body of Maria Braun.

Tags: psychedelic

Review:
We watched this film in our German Cinema class at university some years ago, and I still remember it well.Without wishing to give too much away, it tells the tale of a woman who, seeing the desolate landscape that Germany was in 1945, determines to build herself a comfortable life and, as she does so, she becomes one of many women in Germany rebuilding the nation.
"Maria Braun"'s style reminds much of melodramas by Fassbinder's favorite Hollywood director, Douglas Sirk and offers a glimpse of the loss and survival in postwar Germany.
It seems to me that if one views the characters as representatives of some of the major "world views" obtaining during the reconstruction period, one sees a few of the many different human reactions there can be to such an experience: Many feel burned out and can't feel hope any longer; others, like Maria, feel there is at least money and position to be gained under the new dispensation; some simply don't care; others try to feed off the experience without contributing; and so on and so forth.It also occurred to me that, at age 60, I may be in a position to appreciate this film more, and certainly to be more understanding of and sympathetic with the characters/types portrayed.
And the character of the Black US Army Sergeant, while tragic at the end, was itself an essay in human relations that has to embarrass most Americans -- the fleeting moments when he and Maria found joy and pleasant times together were just wonderful to behold, and an indictment of our sad history in that regard.View it and see what you think!.
But in this version, instead of the tragic Mother trying to save her children and mourning them, Maria Braun sells out for comfort from collaboration with the Nazi's through the economic wonder "Wirtschaftswunder" of the cold war.
It's a betrothal where the husband goes off to war and is held in a Russian prison camp, unbenownst to the helpless but hopeful and proud Maria, who keeps standing by the depressing rubble of the train station as some come home, others don't, with a sign awaiting Hermann.Trouble arises, as happens in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's melodramas, and as its one of his best and most provocative, we see as Maria (uncommonly gorgeous Hanna Schygulla in this role) will do a two-face: she'll stand by her man, even if it means working at a bar for American GI's and, even still after she hears from a fellow soldier that Hermann has died will still stand by him as she sleeps with a black GI and comes close to bearing his child (that is, naturally, until he reappears and a murder occurs and he takes the rap so she can be safe), or working for a German businessman (effectively sympathetic Ivan Desny) and becoming his sometimes mistress and rising star in the company.
She's like the feminist that has her cake and eats it with a sultry smile: she gets to have a husband, more or less (actually a lot less until the last ten minutes of the film) while obtaining things- a man who dotes on her whenever he can, a new and expensive house with servants, a secretary, money- that others around her aren't getting due to already being with a man or too weak in a position to rise anywhere (such as the secretary, played interestingly enough by Fassbinder's own mother).Maria is sexy, confident, and all alone, with an idealized life going against a life that should be made in the shade.
She says of the two men- the American soldier and poor old and sick Oswald- that she's fond of them, and at the same time will stick by those roses the confused and soul-searching husband Hermann sends from Canada, after being released from prison.
She's casts a profile that a feminist would love to trounce, but understand where she's coming from and going all the way.Fassbinder employs this inherent contradiction, and moments with Maria appear to go against the conventions of a melodrama (for example, Hermann walking in on the jubilant and half-naked Maria and GI is just about a masterpiece of a scene, with Maria's reaction not of surprise or guilt but pure happiness to see that he's there let alone alive), while sticking to his guns as a director of such high-minded technique with a storyline that should be predictable.
A few times Fassbinder puts sound of the radio on in the background, and we see Maria walking around her family house, hustle and bustle going on around her, and the radio speaks of a divided Germany, of things still very unsettled, of a disarray.
This is what Fassbinder captures in his wonderful first part of his "trilogy"; while I might overall prefer Veronika Voss as a masterpiece, Maria Braun is perhaps just as good as a character study, of what makes a woman tick and tock with (almost) nothing to lose..
When Hanna Schygulla says to her husband in prison `this are bad times for feelings' it is Fassbinder saying that in the seventies cinema there's no place for the classic melodrama of the 40s and 50s, unless all the craze that then was suggested now turns somehow more explicit.
The points Fassbinder's trying to make are a bit obtuse and perhaps not designed for American viewers (those are his prerogatives, after all) but the early scenes of the country immediately after the war are fascinating and he's aided immensely by the great Michael Ballhaus' restless camera.
While Mildred rebuilds her life after a personal tragedy, so does Maria, albeit in the backdrop of the post-war German economic disaster.
Of course since Maria herself is not a very likeable person, one doesn't feel too much for her.The story in a nutshell is of almost war widow Maria Braun rebuilding her life in post war Germany & rising high on the corporate ladder till she realises that she has given too much of herself for the climb to enjoy the cause she was climbing for.Standing by itself, I still think this movie will appeal either to European baby boomers or serious students of Fasbinder.
In doing so she becomes financially successful but loses her soul in the process.The Marriage of Maria Braun is a film that operates on two different levels.
While on another, the film can clearly be read as a critique of the way the new Germany forgot it's awful past and sold it's soul in order to prosper in what would become known as the German Economic Miracle.
She begins by prostituting herself to the Americans and ends very wealthy but emotionally dead; she forgets her past quickly in order to concentrate on her future.There is no doubt that Rainer Werner Fassbinder put together a clever allegorical film here.
There seems to be almost as much dead weight being carried around in The Marriage of Maria Braun as there is subtle grace.Thankfully to aid Fassbinder's articulate work is lead (and apparent muse) Hanna Schygulla.
It was sweet, I liked the way it was shot and something in the relationship between her and the black soldier charmed me but I am very much a product of my generation and I think if i ever do really appreciate this movie it will after I have a heap of more life experience under my belt.If you are trying to really get into the world of movies that are technically great (like I was), this one is a bit advanced.
'The Marriage of Maria Braun' is German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's best-known and most financially successful movie and it's not hard to see why: it's a big event, a tour de force.
The film begins as she's getting married amidst the chaos of the last day of World War II in 1945, and much of what follows has to do with the peculiar way in which she devotes herself to her absent, yet somehow always present, idealized husband.
Nothing here is easily spelled out as right or wrong.'The Marriage of Maria Braun' is the first part of Fassbinder's BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) trilogy, along with 'Veronica Voss' (1982) and 'Lola' (1981), which is made available as a set by the Criterion Collection.
Although this film has abundant imagery that is inspired in post WWII Germany, people watching this movie should not forget that it's entertainment.
A World War II widow (Hanna Schygulla) seeks to adjust to life in postwar Germany.Karena Niehoff wrote in the daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung that The Marriage of Maria Braun "is a charming and even amusing film, at the same extraordinarily artful, artificial and full of twists and turns".
Although obviously dark (this is Germany right after World War II), there is plenty of humor that arises from unusual situations, particularly as the Americans and English interact with the local Germans.I feel like this is the sort of film that Professor Wes Gehring might have considered in the dark comedy tradition of Charlie Chaplin's "Shoulder Arms".
He was one of the leading directors in the New Germany after WWII.Hanna Schygulla was magnificent as the cold, calculating Maria Bruan, who lost her husband to the War, found him after she took an American soldier as a lover, lost him again after he went to jail for her, and found him agin at the end.
The political musings have point to them: we see the shortages after the war, how the blackmarketers were able to control so much of the day-to-day life (delicious moment when Fassbinder, playing a grifter, tries to sell a complete set of Kleist to Schygulla, who remarks that burning books don't provide much warmth: she really wants firewood).There's some clumsiness in the first hour.
Film starts out with Maria (Schygulla) and Hermann Braun (Klaus Lowitsch) just getting married as the bombs continue to fall and Hermann is shipped out towards the waning days of the war and now Maria and her mother and sister must scrape by to survive.
The war has ended and Germany must rebuild and one day on a train Maria meets Karl Oswald (Ivan Desny) who is a successful businessman in textiles and she uses her charms to get a job.
But Maria leaves the gas on the stove and the house explodes with both of them still in it.There are so many interesting things in this film that its one of those movies that can be studied and talked about to great lengths.
Like in all Fassbinder films the use of color is used in a very interesting way.
As the film begins the tones are brown and gray to represent war torn Germany but as Maria starts to become successful they change to bright rich colors like red and white.
The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) was the first part of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's celebrated trilogy of films that looked specifically at the period following the end of the Second World War, and in particular, the socio-political and economic re-birth of Germany following the Wirtschaftswunder.
It is to this day one of the most startling opening sequences from any of Fassbinder's work; with the war-time iconography, use of ironic, on-screen inter-titles, freeze-frames and the continual punctuation of loud explosions and jarring cuts in the editing, all grabbing our attention right from the off.From this set up, Fassbinder uses the situation to explore the eventual ideas of faith, loyalty and betrayal, incorporating an early subplot in which Maria - who earnestly believes that her husband has been killed in battle - begins a passionate relationship with one of the American G.I.s who hangs out at the bar where she works.
Veronika Voss exists in very much the same cinematic universe as the two other films that formed the backbone of what would eventually become known as "the BRD trilogy"; though Fassbinder himself had often talked of plans to make more films in a similar vein - analysing post-war German history through to the present day - but was unable to continue the theme due to his untimely death in June of 1982.
Regardless, The Marriage of Maria Braun skilfully establishes the ideas that would go towards forming the dramatic nucleus of these two subsequent works, depicting the sense of determination and the sheer triumph of will that went towards rebuilding Germany from the ashes of the Second World War through the eyes of a resolute young woman willing to push her own emotional stability to breaking point in order to secure a better future for her and her incarcerated husband.To me, it is startling to think that Fassbinder could begin something as obviously political and large of scale as the film in question only a few months after having completed the incredibly personal and controversial In a Year of 13 Moons and the similarly controversial but very much satirical The Third Generation; with the entire look, feel and evocative period recreation of The Marriage of Maria Braun seeming light-years away from the harsh, unglamorous and unflinching depictions of late 1970's Frankfurt and Berlin with their various homosexual and pseudo-radical subcultures.
There are continual overlapping themes to tie them all together, but at times it really does feel like the work of a completely different filmmaker; almost as if Fassbinder had a shadowy alter-ego who made painfully honest and personal films alongside his more large-scale and popular works.
Not to say that this doesn't have its personal moments, and of course, there is still that ending, with its ironic and almost melodramatic mark of devastation and the almost subversive sense of mocking satire that is something that only Fassbinder could pull off.The Marriage of Maria Braun is, without question, one of the highpoint of Fassbinder's all-too brief career and one of the crowning achievements of the once-radical New German Cinema movement.
"The Marriage of Maria Braun" tells the story of post-war Germany as seen by a young woman, the title character Maria Braun.
The film opens in 1943 with Maria's marriage to a soldier named Hermann Braun.
After the war we find Maria (like most Germans during this period) living in desperate poverty, but she finds work as a bar hostess and, believing her husband to be dead, becomes the lover of Bill, a black soldier with the American occupation forces, who helps to support her financially.
Subsequent developments involve Hermann's unexpected return to Germany after being held in a Soviet prison camp, his imprisonment for the killing of Bill (a crime actually committed by Maria herself) and Maria's life as the mistress of Karl, a wealthy industrialist.The French film critic Jean de Baroncelli saw Maria Braun as an allegory of Germany, "a character that wears flashy and expensive clothes, but has lost her soul".
There is certainly some truth in this comparison, but I felt it might perhaps be more accurate to say that it is the marriage of Maria and Hermann which is an allegory of the plight of Germany during the Cold War years.
Maria, who sells herself to an American for nylon stockings and cigarettes and is later seduced by a capitalist, can therefore be seen as symbolising the flashy and prosperous if rather soulless West Germany, while Hermann, held prisoner by the Soviets, represents the Communist East.The director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the leading members of the "New German Cinema" group of auteurs of the late sixties, seventies and eighties.
Despite numerous clashes between Fassbinder and his collaborators, clashes which led to an acrimonious lawsuit which was to continue even after the director's death, it was both a critical and a commercial success in West Germany and, despite its political subtext, was also shown in cinemas in the East.Many European films from the Cold War years have since lost much of their relevance, but this one still remains watchable today.
The lovely Hanna Schygulla, who had earlier appeared in some of Fassbinder's other films such as "Effi Briest", succeeds in making Maria a brilliantly realised character and in persuading us of the central truth of the film, namely that, whatever her relationships with Bill and Karl, it is Hermann who is really her true love and that in her heart she stays true to him.
She reminds us that "The Marriage of Maria Braun" is not just a film about post-war Germany, and certainly not just a film about politics, but also a human drama with a very human character at its centre.
Basically this film projects Maria's attitudes - those attitudes she permits herself under the mentioned circumstances, as a metaphor for Germany's loss of soul after they lost the war, and how it proceeds to rebuild itself.
And why would you, if the central matter of most of his films is about "What love becomes in this society  a commodity, an instrument of power, a weapon."It was remarked that it is typical Fassbinder to have the scenes with Maria and Betti walking in expensive dresses in the ruins after the war - with these clothing essentially the wrong period.
Fassbinder's opening scene is an excellent example of the female lead character, Maria Braun, becoming a metaphor for the German nation.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's most profitable film, "The Marriage of Maria Braun" tells the tale of an upwardly mobile, independent Maria Braun (Hanna Schygulla), a woman who uses a combination of business smarts, tenacity and promiscuity to lift herself out of desperation.
From director Rainer Werner Fassbinder (The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, Fear Eats the Soul, Fox and His Friends, I assumed this was a German war film about the sister or another female relative of Eva Braun, and even though it wasn't I watched with interest.
Basically, set in Germany, 1943, and during a bombing raid by Allied forces, Maria (Hanna Schygulla) is married to soldier Hermann Braun (Klaus Löwitsch), but after only a short time together he returns to the front, and she is later told he has been killed.