The Marriage of Maria Braun 1979
I’ve written, read and said so much today, I’m running out of brain power and words. But the film is so in-my-face, I have stopped it, to take a pause and write down what’s happening now.
[Yes, I’m back in Fassbinder land. I do know how I got here but I need to explain that Godard is on hold for another week because of Fassbinder and the uprising of his films once again which happened when I stumbled across a trilogy of his films in Lane Cove Library.]
The film begins with the signing of a marriage certificate and death. Thereafter Maria searches for but comes to think Herrmann is dead. She takes a black lover against what is acceptable in her milieu. Her dead husband returns one day – undead and barging in the door – and knocks her to the ground and the black lover is killed.
The times are desperate. By any measure, with Germany cut in quarters, the German people who not particularly motivated or involved in Hitler’s war are nevertheless suffering and living in hard times.
