The Marriage of Maria Braun

1979's THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN is the first in what is known as the RFB trilogy, which continued with LOLA and concluded with VERONIKA VOSS, the first film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder I ever saw.  It announced to me the work of a master filmmaker, something that was cemented with ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL.  Fassbinder has a real artist's sense for composition and the emotions evoked from those images.  All of the stark visuals he composes with cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (later a collaborator of Martin Scorsese) serve the purpose of propelling not only narrative but also social and political commentary.  

The film opens in the closing days of WW2 in Germany as Maria (Hanna Schygulla) marries Hermann Braun (Klaus Lowitsch) amidst falling bombs and artillery fire.  It's one of the most brilliant first scenes in cinema history.  Hermann must rejoin his platoon on the Eastern front the next day.  Soon the war ends.  Word comes that Hermann was killed.  Maria, initially somewhat ineffectual, realizes she must support herself in some fashion, and soon turns tricks in a bar.  She eventually meets a black American soldier named Bill (George Byrd) who supports (and impregnates) her.

Hermann returns home, leading to an altercation that leaves Bill dead......from a bottle Maria lowered on his head in an effort to break up the fight.  Herman takes the rap after observing Maria's loyalty to him in front of the military tribunal.  Then, a long separation, during which Maria promises her husband that she will plan for their future by getting rich and setting up a life for them.  Her baby is stillborn.  She meets and enchants a sewing machine industrialist named Oswald (Ivan Desny), who hires her and becomes her lover.  Maria visits Hermann in prison and tells him everything.  But Oswald will also visit Hermann....

THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN unfolds much like a soap opera, a yesteryear melodrama.  Douglas Sirk films were a clear influence.  It never feels cheap or tawdry.  The genre is elevated under Fassbinder's craft, and his lead actress is fabulous.  She is a symbol of the postwar dynamic, a country that saw economic growth under a social market economy.  But the wounds ran deep.  Maria frequently revisits the remains of her childhood schoolhouse, now in ruins.  Her tenacity sharpens as she becomes a confident, empowered female in a male dominated society.  Does she lose her heart? Her soul? Is her devotion to Hermann born out of true love? Something else?

This is an engrossing, powerful motion picture, what I consider a near classic of German cinema.  It whets my appetite for some lesser known Fassbinder.