Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Long before Michael Moore came up with the idea of using a documentary film, Fahrenheit 9/11, to try to help unseat a head-of-state, Rainer Werner Fassbinder spent his entire short but prolific film career taking dead aim at the right-leaning Chancellors of the Federal Republic of Germany during the period immediately following World-War II. Fassbinder’s most highly regarded work came fairly near the end of his career (and life) in 1979 in the form of The Marriage of Maria Braun. I’m embarrassed to admit that when I first heard the name of this film several years ago, I confused the name “Maria Braun” with “Eva Braun” – the longtime mistress of Adolph Hitler. I thought, at that time, that it was a film about the last days in the Berlin bunker and the last minute marriage between Hitler and Eva Braun before their joint suicides and cremations. Fortunately, I had clarified my expectations about this film long before I sat down to watch it for the first time.
Historical Background: Fassbinder produced over forty films despite dying at a youthful 37 years of age. His early films were of the low-budget art-house variety. Effi Briest (1974) might be the best of these, although some Fassbinder fans might choose The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) instead. Fassbinder films typically dealt with such themes as crime, dirty linen from the Nazi past, emotional distress, and drug abuse. His films often reveal a cynical view of human relationships and typically culminate with deaths of one or more of the principal characters. Shortly before undertaking The Marriage of Maria Braun, Fassbinder participated in a joint effort with ten other German directors (similar to a recent film about the 9/11 terrorist attack), called Germany in Autumn, about the rash of terrorists kidnappings and murders during 1977/8 in West Germany. Fassbinder viewed the leftist terrorists as akin to the rightist government, despite his own leftist leanings.
The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) was Fassbinder’s first international success, garnering him widespread recognition. This was especially bizarre because Fassbinder cranked the film out in a brief five-month period while he was waiting to start a project of epic proportions for German television which would be called Berlin Alexanderplatz. The Marriage of Maria Braun was to be a low-budget quickie, but Fassbinder, for the first time in his career, went way over budget, much to his producer’s consternation. It didn’t help that part of the overrun was due to Fassbinder’s increasingly severe cocaine addiction. Nevertheless, the completed film reawakened interest in cinema among the people in Germany, earned over four million Deutschmarks, as well as over one million dollars during its later release in America. The critics also gave rave reviews to The Marriage of Maria Braun, though the acclamation was not as resounding as Fassbinder wished. He was distraught when he was overlooked for the Golden Bear award for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival and devastated when his film was beat out by another German entry, Tin Drum, for the Best Foreign Film award at the American Academy Awards. Fassbinder committed suicide in 1982, just three years after his greatest film triumph.
Fassbinder’s social and political perspective was truly distinctive. Politically, Fassbinder was a leftist but he liked to refer to himself as a romantic anarchist. Like many Germans in the first generation born after the war, Fassbinder couldn’t understand how his parents’ generation could have made the decisions that they made to support or even allow the Nazi agenda and the death camps. Like many leftists, he felt that the German middle class of the 1950’s (corresponding to the period of the film’s story) and the 1970’s (when the film was made) had not changed essentially from that which had existed before and during the war. In particular, the German mentality was attuned to issues of productivity, efficiency, and capitalistic exploitation and oblivious to deeper emotional and spiritual needs. The war effort may have been replaced by the need to rebuild economically, but good old heartless German “efficiency” still ruled the minds of these people in Fassbinder's view.
Socially, Fassbinder was an out-of-the-closet homosexual. He considered marriage to be nothing more than an institutionally-maintained trap. He felt that “love” was not real. He drank too much alcohol, abused cocaine, and suffered from depression.
The Story: After a whirlwind three week courtship, Maria marries her true love Hermann Braun (Klaus Löwitsch) just before he is shipped off to the front near the tail-end of World War II. Their vows are exchanged during a bombing raid over dreary Berlin and Hermann has to literally tackle the justice of the peace (who is more interested in finding shelter) to force him to complete the job by signing the marriage document. After half-a-day and an entire night of married life with Maria, Hermann goes off to war and is soon declared missing and presumed dead.
Faithfully and hopefully, Maria paces the platform at the train station each day displaying a sign with Hermann’s name and picture. Finally despairing, she trades cigarettes to her mother for a broche, the broche for a sexy dress, and takes a job as a hostess at a club and dance hall for American G.I.’s, where her best friend Betti (Elisabeth Trissenaar), also works. To everyone’s joy, Betti’s husband, Willi Klenze (Gottfried John) returns alive, released from a Russian POW camp, but he also delivers shocking news to Maria that her beloved Hermann was killed. The heartbroken Maria takes comfort in the arms of a large, black American G.I. named Bill (George Byrd).
Bill falls head-over-heels in love with Maria but Maria tells him honestly that, while she is very fond of him, she will always love her deceased husband and will never remarry. Bill accepts this and showers Maria with gifts, such as hard-to-get nylon stockings. He also teachers her English while they are walking together or making love. Maria is soon “expectant” with Bill’s child. During one of their trysts, amazingly, Hermann shows up – a good deal less dead than had been supposed – and catches Maria and Bill undressing. In the altercation that ensues, Maria breaks a bottle over Bill’s head, accidentally killing him. Later, she is put on trial by the new American-run courts. To spare her from the fierce witness interrogation, Hermann claims responsibility for Bill’s death. He is sentenced to a long prison sentence. Later, Maria loses her mixed-race baby during childbirth.
Maria and Hermann remain faithfully committed to one another and mutually in love. She visits him weekly in prison and encourages him by insisting that she will build a life and a house for the two of them as he would have done if he could, so that they can begin life when he is ultimately released. True to her word, she begins a single-minded effort to rebuild her life, even as Germany is rebuilding itself as a country. An opportunity presents itself when she slips into a near-empty first-class car (few Germans can afford it) on the train by flirting a bit with the conductor. The only other passenger in the car is a wealthy French/German industrialist named Karl Oswald (Ivan Desny). She impresses him with her multilingual capability, her panache, and, most likely, her figure and pretty face. He also observes her decisively cool down an overheated American G.I. with some well-chosen words. Shortly, he offers her a position as a translator and his personal assistant.
Maria exhibits a flare for business. Oswald’s top aide, Senkenberg (Hark Bohm), is a stubbornly thrifty accountant, exceedingly attached to Oswald, but excessively timid in matters of business. Maria’s courageous and aggressive style is a perfect complement to Senkenberg and Maria is careful to acknowledge the importance of Senkenberg’s prudence in financial matters. Senkenberg opines that he looks forward to having such an interesting competitor. Maria takes control of an important negotiation with an American equipment supplier and helps get the company moving forward.
Oswald, of course, also wants Maria as a mistress. She is pleased to oblige, feeling a need herself for a man for sex, but she is also insistent that the affair be kept separate from the workplace. She insists that he pay her what she is worth to the company, professionally, and that the sexual relationship not carry over to the office. Maria is quite forthright with Oswald, informing him (the first time that the topic becomes appropriate) that she will never marry him – and then dropping her bathrobe in the next moment to ensure that any disappointment he might be feeling on that score will be quickly drowned by his ardor. She does not, however, tell him about Hermann. By contrast, during her weekly visits with Hermann, she is bluntly honest, telling him about Oswald, that she has sex with him, that she does so willingly and enjoys it, but that he, Hermann, is the only man that she will ever love. Hermann accepts the circumstances. During another visit, Maria offers Hermann money, but he won’t accept. Apparently that offer merely makes him feel emasculated.
By a combination of hard work and acumen, Maria establishes her worth in the corporate world while also keeping her boss happy in bed. The company flourishes. Oswald ultimately decides to spy on Maria, determined to discover what it is that she does with her Saturdays, and learns about Hermann. He pays Hermann a visit, telling him he wanted to meet the man that Maria truly loves.
As the political situation in Germany begins to stabilize, Maria’s doctor and old friend is able to use his influence to effect Hermann’s release. Maria dresses to the nines for her trip to the prison to pick up her husband, but discovers to her amazement that he left an hour earlier, leaving behind only a letter. It informs her that Hermann has left for, perhaps, Canada or Australia and will return to live with her once he has “become a man again.” In the meantime, he will send her one red rose each month to remind her that he continues to think of her and that their time together will come. After years of separation by the war and another decade of separation by prison, and having enjoyed no more than one night together in marriage, Maria will have to endure a further period of waiting.
Maria becomes increasingly cranky and abusive to hired help, co-workers, and her family but continues to live with Karl Oswald and satisfy his needs until his sudden death from a heart attack – sudden from Maria’s perspective though Oswald knew he had been slowly dying from liver failure for several years. Maria is pained but it is Senkenberg who bawls like a baby. Maria now buys herself a lovely house and soon thereafter Hermann shows up out of the blue. They coyly dance around one another, having been married and truly in love (more even than most couples) for more than a decade, but having had very little sex together. For her part, Maria has had plenty of sex without love as well as love without sex, but has no idea how to link the two together. In the midst of this quandary, Senkenberg and the secretary of the company show up for a reading of Oswald’s will.
SPOILER ALERT ~ THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH CONTAINS TWO SPOILERS! SKIP IF YOU PLAN TO SEE THE FILM!
Oswald’s personal wealth has been left . . . . not exclusively to Maria, but half to Maria and half to his “good friend” Hermann. It seems that during Oswald’s visit to Hermann at the prison, the two struck a deal. Oswald informed Hermann that he was terminally ill and that if Hermann would agree to remain apart from Maria until Oswald’s death, Oswald would leave Hermann half his fortune as payment. Maria is stunned, suddenly realizing the meaning of Hermann’s reference to a time when he had “become a man again.” Maria walks off into the kitchen to mull over this development and to light her cigarette. Unfortunately, she had left one of the gas burners open but unlit and, in lighting her cigarette, she blows up a large part of the house, killing both herself and Hermann! In the background, a radio blares news of the victory of West Germany in the World Cup in soccer over Hungary in 1954. The screen now pans through a sequence of black-and-white negative photographs of Hitler, followed by the various rightist prime ministers between World War II and 1979, when the film was made.
END SPOILER ALERT!
Themes: As much as anything, The Marriage of Maria Braun is a political allegory for postwar German. Maria is obviously the key person in the film, so understanding this film begins with understanding what Maria represents. Maria embodies, first of all, German preoccupation with the pragmatic. Though Maria paid a heavy price in relation to, first, the war, and, second, the American occupation and sometimes overzealous trials that led to Hermann’s imprisonment, she represses her feelings and suffering and sets out to get ahead. She will use all that she has – both her sharp mind and her femininity – to achieve success. For his part, Hermann’s feelings and desires are involuntarily suppressed by the fact of his imprisonment, but given his first opportunity, he “sells” the first months that would have been available to him with Maria to Oswald for an inheritance. Emasculated by the losing war effort followed by imprisonment, his priority is to recover his manhood not through love but through acquisition of wealth. Maria prostitutes herself and Hermann later becomes her pimp, in effect, without her knowledge.
Maria also serves as an icon for the liberated woman in a Germany newly liberated from Nazi control. She is tough, smart, able to compete in a man’s world, but also sexy as all get-out. Certainly, there’s no particular reason why those qualities should be less respectable for a woman than a man, but consider, for a moment, Fassbinder’s view that the German mentality, for decades (if not centuries), had been overly characterized by aggressiveness and pragmatism (traditional male attributes) and under-characterized by love, compassion, affection, and sensitivity (traditional female attributes). If the liberated women in Germany were to become more masculine in their personal attributes, how on earth would the deficiency in female qualities in this society as a whole be alleviated?
For me personally, there is a bit of a dilemma in reacting to this film. Except for the brief part of the film in which Maria turns nasty toward the working class and her mother, I rather liked Maria. In fact, I liked her a whole lot. For one thing, Maria was a wonderful breath of fresh air in the honesty department and “truth” is just about my top priority in relationships and life in general. Maria told Bill up-front that she was only fond of him and would never marry him. Maria was equally square with Karl Oswald. Maria also outlined the nature of her affair with Oswald to her husband – even to the point of stating that she enjoyed the sex with Oswald and did it freely and out of choice but that she loved only Hermann. Those are exceptional examples of honesty. My view of the morality of relationships places the highest premium on honesty. If two people enter into a relationship with open eyes on an honest basis where each knows the true parameters of the relationship, it is hardly ever either exploitive or immoral in my opinion.
I apparently see Maria somewhat differently than most other reviewers. One describes her as “ambitious and shrewd.” Good for her, I say! Nothing wrong with those attributes taken by themselves – provided that ambition is not fed by backstabbing or deceit or some other wrong behavior. Another reviewer describes Maria as “amoral.” I don’t agree. Her husband is in prison for ten years while she is in her sexual prime and she has sexual needs. She even has the decency to be honest with her husband about it. He even acquiesces. One reviewer calls her “greedy.” Let’s see. She wants to earn enough money to buy a house so that she and her currently imprisoned husband can someday have a place to live. Doesn’t sound abnormally greedy to me. Next, she’s described as “cynical.” Quite the contrary. She’s forward looking, takes the bull by the horns, and creates her own miracles. She’s called “narcissistic.” How so? She desires sexual satisfaction to a normal extent and no more. She’s monogamous sexually and monogamous in love – it just so happens that they just can’t be the same guy at the moment. And finally, she’s called a “gold-digger.” I’ve applied that term, myself, in a previous review, and believe that I can spot a gold-digging female when I see one. I don’t object to labeling a woman such if the shoe fits. Maria, however, earned her wealth by her own zeal and business acumen. She earned her inheritance from Oswald as well. It wasn’t promised to her upfront by Oswald; he chose to pass on (half) his personal wealth to her out of gratitude for her love. That’s not gold-digging. It’s earning consideration by being a good caretaker and lover for another person.
All in all, Maria, to me, is a pretty darn attractive kind of person – and I don’t mean just physically. I do, however, understand Fassbinder’s point about the deficiency in female qualities in German society and his concern about how much worse that is likely to become if women begin to substitute aggressiveness and upward economic mobility for traditionally female personality attributes. It’s the essential dilemma for society in relation to the liberation of women. Fewer women, today, are developing traditional kinds of female attributes but men, on the whole, are not taking up that slack. There are many more families where both parents work and fewer hours devoted to childrearing between the two parents combined. Personally, I’m glad to see a wider range of opportunities opening up for women; I’m not glad, on the other hand, that more children are being shortchanged.
Like another openly gay director, Pedro Almodóvar, Fassbinder preferred female protagonists (he found them more interesting) to male. Usually the women he portrayed were strong and independent. Fassbinder, however, was a good deal less sympathetic to his strong, feminine characters than was Almodóvar, usually reflecting on their failures and, often, having them die at the end of the film. It was difficult, in fact, for characters to get out of Fassbinder films alive!
Fassbinder also makes his political points by other tactics in this film. The radio broadcasts in the background illustrate false promises from Chancellor Adenauer – first promising that Germany would never rearm and then recanting a few years later. Fassbinder is at pains to illustrate that his characters pay little attention to the broadcasts, indicating their lack of political awareness and civic responsibility. The movie is framed by explosions at both ends – the opening one caused by Allied bombing of Berlin and the last due to a household gas explosion (but symbolically, an implosion of a society preoccupied with selling itself to get ahead). Then, he wraps the film up unsubtly with the series of photographs of rightist leaders of Germany, beginning with Hitler and following with Konrad Adenauer, Ludwig Erhard, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, and Helmut Schmidt. Certainly as vicious as anything in Michael Moore’s arsenal.
Production Values: Hanna Schygulla’s performance in The Marriage of Maria Braun is the highlight of the film and the glue that holds the whole thing together. She was rewarded with the Best Actress award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1979. Schygulla was not even Fassbinder’s original choice for the part. He had cast Romy Schneider, who had played in What’s New, Pussycat? in 1965. She and Fassbinder did not hit it off, however, and Fassbinder then turned to Schygulla, who had worked with him previously in Effi Briest (1974). It is hard to imagine The Marriage of Maria Braun, now, with the lead part played by anyone other than Schygulla, as her mastery of the part is total and complete. Schygulla also worked with Fassbinder, later, in Berlin Alexanderplatz and performed later for Ettore Scola in the interesting film La Nuit de Varennes (1982). The rest of the cast really only had to play off of Schygulla. Klaus Löwitsch previously appeared in Cross of Iron (1977). Gottfried John appeared in GoldenEye (1995) and Balzac: A Life of Passion (1999). Ivan Desny played in Lola Montes (1955), Anastasia (1956), and The Disenchanted (1990).
One problem with this film for viewers not fluent in German is that several scenes include concurrent dialogue and radio broadcasts, sometimes with the dialogue in the foreground and the radio in the background and sometimes vice versa. The subtitles are unable to handle both concurrently. Most of the time, the words in the radio broadcast are not presented in the subtitles. The radio broadcasts reflect important developments from the post-war years in Germany, usually in the form of speeches by Chancellor Adenauer. The juxtaposing of the broadcasts with the developments in the story relating to the characters is an important part of this film, making it a political allegory as well as the surface story. To some extent, the political parallels may be lost on non-German speaking viewers both because of unfamiliarity with the details of postwar Germany and inability to comprehend the radio broadcasts.
My one other complaint with this film is an element of the sound score (in an otherwise impressive soundtrack). Fassbinder several times introduces these awful overwrought dramatic sounds to underscore emotionally charged moments. Although it’s quite likely intended to be satirical or comical, it’s really just annoying. There’s nothing I hate worse in films except, perhaps, canned laughter. When a film has to announce by dramatic sounds when you’re supposed to be moved by a scene, you know it’s on pretty insecure footing.
Bottom-Line:The Marriage of Maria Braun is the most highly regarded work of a rather controversial German wunderkind director. He burned hot and bright for a short time and then disappeared from the firmament. This is a film rich in symbolism that provides a fertile field for contemplation for those inclined toward “deep” films. The surface entertainment level is pretty good as well. This film is in German (and a few short scenes in English) with English subtitles and has a running time of two hours even. It’s rated R. There’s both male and female nudity.
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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Germany:
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