JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Bereamic Awesome Movie

Crwthod A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

James Hitchcock "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 only a day spent together, Hermann must return to his unit, and is later posted as missing, presumed dead, on the Russian front. 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. (At least, Bill is supposed to be American, but whoever wrote his dialogue seems to have been more familiar with British than with American English. He makes far more frequent use of the expletive "bloody" than any American I have come across). 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. When the film was made in the late seventies, the country had been partitioned between East and West ever since the end of World War II more than thirty years earlier and hopes of reunification seemed destined to remain unfulfilled. (Few people in 1979 could have predicted that the Berlin Wall would fall in only ten years time). 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. He had the reputation of being an "arthouse" director, but this film is one of his more approachable works. 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. 6/10

Alexandra Garcia (alexxenglish) This is my first Fassbinder film and, as such, I was excited to sink my teeth into this. This was the second film I was assigned to view for my Foreign History of film course and I was initially enchanted by its charming humor and hyperbolic characters. As the film progressed, Maria's character became more and more reductive. She is depicted as hyperssexual and because of this her character is "cold," calloused, and only interested in being her thought-to-be-deceased husband's subservient little wife. Women are written so explicitly simpleminded and only concerned with having a husband to sport around post-war Germany (or right in the thick of it). They lack a substantial superobjective that is independent of the male characters' own objectives.Has some funny and memorable moments, great Maria Braun dialogue, but overall a bit of a mess in terms of sound editing (added for effect, but completely stripping away from particular scenes), writing, and pacing.

superdood-1 This movie was, as Homer Simpson would have put it, "more boring than church." Maybe I don't understand it well enough, and I thought it started out pretty well, but after (START OF SPOILER) Hermann Braun is sent to jail and Maria starts working/sleeping with her boss it just started to drag, and I struggled to keep awake. Again, maybe it symbolizes something, but the explosion at the end seemed very forced and out of place. (END OF SPOILER). In the end, I fail to see why others think it's so great, as I found it extremely boring. By the way, I did not watch this movie by my own free will, as I was required to see it for a Film class.

Galina Sensual and tough Maria Braun. (Hanna Schygula) marries a soldier in the middle of World War II and spends a half of day and the whole night with him. That's how long her marriage lasts before she loses him to the war and then to prison. She carries on with her life, becomes a successful businesswoman being not only sensual but intelligent, ambitious, and willing to use sex whenever or wherever necessary: "I don't know a thing about business, but I do know what German women want. You might even say I'm an expert on it". While climbing up to the success she always remembers her husband, Hermann (her man) and convinces herself that whatever she does – is for him, for their future happy life together. "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. Hanna Schygula literally shines in every scene of the movie and she is fantastic.8.5/10