Marriage of Maria Braun, The1979

Director
Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Actors

Hanna Schygulla (Maria Braun)
Klaus Loewitsch (Hermann Braun)
Ivan Desny (Karl Oswald)
Gisela Uhlen (Mother)
Elisabeth Trissenaar (Betti Klenze)
Gottfried John (Willi Klenze)

A powerful postwar drama about a young woman trying to survive and reinvent herself in the ruins of Germany after World War II.
Maria marries Hermann Braun during the last days of the war, but he is soon sent to the front and goes missing, leaving her to fend for herself in a devastated country. Believing Hermann to be dead, Maria works her way through the black-market economy and later becomes involved with an American soldier and then a wealthy industrialist, using her intelligence, charm, and determination to secure a better life. Yet her rise is shadowed by loss, emotional compromise, and the persistent hope that she may one day be reunited with her husband.
Fassbinder turns Maria’s personal story into a broader allegory of West Germany’s postwar recovery, showing how survival, ambition, and moral damage are intertwined in the country’s so-called economic miracle.
“Bravura masterwork, tender and lovely, about destruction and loss… a melodrama every bit as good as anything Douglas Sirk ever committed to film, and watching it, the loss of Fassbinder is ever more painful to contemplate.” – Newcity
“This movie – emotionally absorbing, visually breathtaking and intellectually demanding – is a masterpiece.” – People Magazine
“A masterwork.” – Filmcritic.com