Analogies of Continuity in The Marriage of Maria Braun

The opening and closing images of The Marriage of Maria Braun are some of the most biting bookends in all of cinema. An image of Hitler, operating like a visual overture, opens the film, accompanied by auditory wedding vows; it provides something of an interpretive key for the film. The final images return to political leadership, this time a series of portraits of Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD) chancellors. The great German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder is both bold and clear in his analogy of continuity: not that much has changed.

One of the final collaborations in the artistically fruitful (though corrosive) partnership between Fassbinder and the ineffable Hanna Schygulla, The Marriage of Maria Braun isn’t about a marriage that was but one that wasn’t. In the waning days of the war, Maria (Schygulla) is married not even three days to Hermann Braun (Klaus Löwitsch) before he is shipped back to the Eastern front. Hermann doesn’t return with the war’s end, and Maria refuses to believe he’s dead. Cynically embodying a capitalistic femme fatale, she uses her beauty and cunning to navigate the changing post-war economy. She sleeps with a few men along the way, none of whom are her husband who returns from a Russian POW camp to their home around the midway point in the film—just in time to watch Maria captivated in foreplay with a kind, Black American GI named Bill (George Byrd).

One recurring theme is transaction.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.