Cinema
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Die Ehe der Maria Braun
Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 1979
Synopsis
In 1943, during a bombing raid, Maria marries the soldier Hermann Braun, who immediately returns to the front. When the war is over, she is told that he is dead. To support her mother and her grandfather, she becomes a waitress in a bar for American soldiers and takes up with one of them, Bill, who supplies her with nylon stockings and cigarettes. It is then that Hermann, back from captivity, reappears at her home one evening.
Context
The film grew out of a television project conceived by Fassbinder with Alexander Kluge; the screenplay is by Peter Märthesheimer and Pea Fröhlich, some of whose dialogue and the ending Fassbinder reworked. Shot in Coburg from January 1978, then completed in Berlin in March after a falling-out with the producer Michael Fengler, it was presented at the Berlinale on 20 February 1979 and released in cinemas on 23 March. Hanna Schygulla was working with Fassbinder again for the first time in four years. It is the first part of his trilogy of the Federal Republic, and its commercial success strengthened Fassbinder's position in negotiating his next projects.
Who it is for
A melodrama that follows its heroine over more than ten years, from the war to the mid-fifties.
Prizes and reception
Silver Bear for Best Actress for Hanna Schygulla at Berlin in 1979; one of its author's greatest successes.