The RW Fassbinder Chronicles - The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)

You are Maria Braun. The proto-feminist of the BRD. You marry Hermann Braun in the middle of the war. THE War. Bombs and air raids. Nazis and Hitler. Life goes on, even during the darkest hour. Except Hermann returns to fight the Soviets after one-half of one day and a whole night of marriage. You’re alone; life during wartime.  You wait, you trade items on the black market. You walk up and down the train station with a sign: Does anyone know Hermann Braun? The war ends. American GIs are everywhere. Still no Hermann. You take a job in a bar. You’re young, blonde, tall, shapely, feminine. You are a symbol. You’re worth fighting for. You kept the boys fighting for you. Dreams of coming home to you. You know your role and play it well. You meet men at the bar. American big band music plays under American flags. You get confirmation that Hermann is dead. Life during wartime. You allow yourself to be with Bill, the black American GI. You’ll never marry him, but he helps with the pain. You get pregnant. You allow yourself to be happy again. Only to be ripped apart when Hermann returns. Shocked, you have no choice but to kill Bill. Having just left a Russian prison, Hermann has no problem taking the wrap. You were fond of Bill, but you loved Hermann.  You lose Hermann once again, and then you lose the baby. The poor creature wouldn’t have had it easy in life. Life during wartime. So you catch a train out of town and spy a lonely Frenchman in first class. Mr. Oswald. Post-war survival of the fittest. Your charm, wits, and toughness land a cushy position at Oswald’s company. Post-War German boom. Das Kapital. You are the first Post-War feminist. Your time is just beginning. You know a lot about the future. You’re a specialist in that. It’s the new Twentieth Century. The new German half. And you, Maria Braun, are the grease in the wheels. After surviving the war, you’re showing everyone how to survive the peace. You prefer to make miracles rather than wait for them to happen. “Ich bin ich bin,” you say. People don’t have affairs with you – YOU have affairs with them. You’re a master of disguises: a tool of capitalism by day; an agent of the working classes by night. The Mata Hari of the economic miracle. But things don’t work out as planned. Your husband Hermann doesn’t know who he is, won’t wait, can’t understand, doesn’t fit in. Not everyone recovers from the War. Not everyone shared in the miracle. He’s released and flees the country. But he sends you one red rose every month. You buy a house, rise in wealth and stature. Sleep with who you want, when you want. Until. Mr. Oswald, your boss and lover, your concubine, your mentor and captor and worshiper – Mr. Oswald dies in his sleep. And then Mr. Braun comes home. You’re still Maria Braun. This time for good. Husband and wife reunited. Total married time together: two days. You’re nervous, he’s nervous. Maybe you should get to know each other first. Or maybe it’s not meant to be. Fate exploded on the scene and kept you apart. Fate tears love apart. Love endures.

    The Marriage of Maria Braun is long on plot, expertly crafted with characters, conflicts and drama. Maria’s journey from 1945 to 1954 is full of the ups and downs of human existence. That’s not to say other Fassbinder films aren’t plot heavy, but here it’s different. More like a Hollywood movie produced by Warner Brothers at any point in the 20^th Century.

The film is a spectacle with period setting, detailed costumes, and on-location filming complete with hundreds of extras. It’s an epic, and a new phase for Fassbinder. The type of film Michael Cimino would have loved to make in 1979. It’s the kind Scorsese went on to make.

One of the best opening scenes ever, the movie explodes with a wedding during the end of WWII. Even the credits explode on the screen. Maria and Hermann Braun are united for a brief moment in time. Happiness is a freeze frame during the opening titles. They then spend the rest of the movie apart.

    The film’s first act pivots on a reverse Fear Eats the Soul moment, where young Maria dances with Bill, the black American. They begin a love affair where people look and think twice, but Fassbinder is not concerned with that story here.

The scene where Hermann returns is devastating. Talk about love being colder than death. Hermann (Klaus Löwitsch) watches voyeuristically from the doorway as Maria declares her love for Bill – while stripping the middle-aged man naked. The heartbreak is arrested with a surprising burst of violence – not from where the audience is expecting.

The next brilliant scene is all about Hanna Schygulla’s amazing, dominant performance as Maria. As the second act unfolds, Maria (and Hanna Schygulla) delivers an impressive English turn as she takes down another American soldier on a train. Maria Braun 2, American Soldiers 0. This moment is a precursor to Christoph Waltz’s multi-lingual feats in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, a film that shares a color palette and visual style to Maria Braun.

A third beautiful moment, uniquely Fassbinder, occurs at Maria’s mother’s birthday party. Maria walks across the room and briefly slow-dances with all the partygoers. It’s a smooth tracking shot, timed perfectly to capture Maria’s mind as she pirouettes from man to man to woman to man. She eventually lands on her lover Oswald. They too decide to dance, and the camera tracks back across the room landing on Maria’s sad friend Gerti – standing alone with her back to the crowd. It’s a poignant, touching moment that encapsulates the entire film in one camera move.

There is no American equivalent of Maria Braun. An American version of this story would have had Maria Braun played by Diane Keaton where she has a baby then moves to the country to raise a child under hilarious circumstances. Or Meg Ryan’s Maria Braun would have quickly succumbed to Tom Hanks’s charm. Even in the 2020s, Hollywood filmmakers are still struggling to depict authentic female characters that are complex and independent of men. Today’s Hollywood would give Maria Braun actual superpowers and send her off with other guardians of the galaxy.

    This is Fassbinder’s most complete film. Many consider it his best for the “Hollywood-ness” of it. But it fires on all cylinders – unlike his or anyone else’s films. Not just the plot or acting or cinematography (by Michael Ballhaus), but also sound design and lighting and wardrobe and production design. All the key creative departments. Oscars didn’t happen for Maria Braun, but it could have easily swept all categories. It’s a real MOVIE-movie. With scope and heart, tangibles and history as we see the modern nation of (West) Germany created before our eyes.  

The film is dedicated to Peter Zadek, the German theatre director.

The RW Fassbinder Chronicles - Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

Fear eats the soul. Many things eat your soul. Soul mates and lost souls. Eternal souls are the center of all religion, organized and wild. No one’s ever seen a soul. Science won’t touch it. But fear eats it. 

When we talk of fear we refer to the unknown. The beyond. Death and the undiscovered country. Other countries have other customs. Foreigners. Strangers. Fear of people from a little town in Morocco. We fear others until we meet. Forced to speak or die from loneliness. Kindness to strangers, kindness to us. Suddenly there’s no fear. No fear only love. Love is a tough cookie. A survivor on an island of refuse. Fear and hate are the weeds that spring eternal. Ali knows both. Ali moved to Germany looking for work. It was only a few decades after Hitler. A lot of Germans went to that party. Many of them still around in 1974 while Ali fixes their cars. “Kif-kif,” Ali says. “Who cares?” But he cares. He knows he’s hated. Especially after the Munich Olympics in 1972. Arabs in Germany are treated like animals, according to Ali. He also admits to thinking too much. We can relate to Ali. Alone with our thoughts. Fearing the worst, as people look at us in the street. Fear and happiness go hand-in-hand. Fear not good, according to Ali. Neither is shame. There’s an old world: shame. Some people would die of shame. Shame and love go hand in hand. Lust and shame. Sex and shame. We fall in love with everything wrong. The wrong people. The wrong ideals. We love ugly sweaters and silly songs. Love and fear. All you need is fear. Fear is colder than death. Fear and marriage. Fear and fighting. Fighting and war. Fear eats your identity. If everyone’s afraid, then what about you? Does lack of fear make you an outsider, and thus: one to be feared? Fear the person you once were. Happiness is not always fun. Time heals all wounds. In business, money trumps all. Simple slogans to explain fear. Star-crossed lovers know all about fear. Munich in the 1970s is no different from Verona in the 15th Century. Or New York City in 1959. I am black, you are white. I am young, you are old. I am Muslim, you are Christian. I am foreigner, you are resident. I am poor, you are not. Cruelty doesn’t discriminate. Cruelty transcends all ages, gender, race, religion. Cruelty is timeless. Yesterday’s fear becomes tomorrow’s cruelty. Forgiveness is the better way; the path to righteousness. Forgiveness heals the soul. Forgiveness circles back to love. Love conquers fear. Love heals the soul. Love is the soul. 

“Happiness is not always fun.” The subtitle reads at the start of this fable. A lesson in love and hate. Fear and forgiveness. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a poetic examination of love in 1970s Germany. Both Hitler ’39 and Munich ’72 cast a long shadow over this film. It’s Romeo and Juliet with more distinct battle lines. A middle-aged German woman falls in love with a younger, black Muslim from Morocco. Prejudices reveal themselves in friends, relatives, and neighbors. This is not only Germany, but the whole world. Everywhere is Germany, and it’s always 1939. 

Much has been written about this movie. BFI Film Classics published a beautiful, thoughtful study by Laura Cottingham in 2005. The Criterion Collection released a restored Blu-ray with several poignant essays. Most compare it to Douglas Sirk’s All that Heaven Allows (1955). Both movies expose the hypocrisy of post-war Western capitalism. Materialism eats the soul. That’s OK, as long as everyone has a house, a car, and looks nice in church. The real question is what has changed in the decades since? Could Emmi marry Ali in 2023 America? The answer, of course, is yes, but what will people think? The United States deals with fear differently. As I write this, innocent Americans were shot this year when they 1) mistakenly went to the wrong house and rang the doorbell, and 2) drove down the wrong street and turned around in a stranger’s driveway. Shot by guns in 2023. Fear eats the soul alright. 

In 2002, Todd Haynes made Far From Heaven – an updated take on Sirk’s 1955 film. Haynes added the element of race by casting Dennis Haysbert in the Rock Hudson role. Yet the movie is still set in the 1950s, making it more allegorical than real in 21st Century America. An easier pill to swallow, especially when taken by the choir at the art house church. The same thing happened in 2021 when Steven Spielberg remade West Side Story. Rather than updating the tale of Puerto Ricans versus native New Yorkers, he kept it in the Eisenhower era. Another missed chance to critique the world of today. 

Fassbinder never shied away from that. He wanted to ruffle feathers and point fingers. “This is us,” his films exclaimed. That’s a brave artist.