I read Effi Briest, I know the story. But i couldn't see the story in this movie. Characters just appear for one or two scenes without any introduction so you just don't know who is who in this movie.Characters who play a huge role in the book and have a rich background just appear for one or two scenes.The scenes don't deliver the actual plot at all. Suddenly its 30 years later and no mention at all, i just know, because i read the book. And this is what this film feels like: an movie you watch while reading the book. As a standalone movie its just not working at all because it doesn't deliver story. Its just random scenes from the book. Maybe the scenes which carry the essence of the book, but only as an addition to reading the book.Then there are very weird things happening in this movie, which doesn't make sense at all. e.g. the narrator starts narrating while the characters are still talking scenes of characters just standing for minutes without dialog weird text inserts which often repeat what characters just said or random things, unrelatedAnd the characters have no movements in their faces the whole movie. They just carry the same look all the time. except of Effi, who smiles from time to time but that's all. No one ever is mad, happy, angry, fearful, greedy, sad or even in love. And the book is about emotions. Its very confusing to see absolutely no emotions in this movie.

One the tablets used by Fassbinder in this movie (the same method he shall use 6 years later in "Berlin Alexanerplatz") shows the text: "He put her under pressure wherever he could. So-to-say a calculus of fear" (Fontane). As any other calculi, also the calculus of fear consists of theorems. Speaking about the relationship between Von Instetten and Effi, we have: 1. Never treat her without menacing, but do not show the menace open, so that you can deny it after. 2. Isolate her from society, best make her a child as soon as possible so that she does not get bored. 3. Never praise her for what she is doing, unless in the presence of foreigners. 4. Praise her in front of her parents with whom you should establish a good friendship. If she is complaining later about her marriage, the guilt will be given to her.As the sub-title of the movie says (the longest ever used in a movie): The movie is about those people who are capable to see the unjustness of social rules but don't help changing them, and by doing so, confirm them. "Effi Briest" is therefore a typical Fassbinder movie which he liked to call "melodramas" and thus also a predecessor of his later "women-movies" about Maria Braun, Lola, Lili Marleen and Veronika Voss.That this film is an outstanding masterpiece has nowadays been recognized by all leading film experts around the world. Although Fassbinder let himself sometimes inspire by works of literature, Fontane's "Effi Briest" is one of his only three explicit literature adaptations, besides "Berlin Alexanderplatz" and "Querelle". One could perhaps go as far and say: While in "Effi Briest", society is criticized at the hand of one single, individual fate, in "Berlin Alexanderplatz" a society as a whole is put in the pillory, and in "Querelle" a possible alternative world after all the disgust is shown. Fassbinder made this long way in societal criticism in only eight years, during which he approached the society of the time in which he lived, by systematically coming closer to reach the 50ies of the 20th century (Lola). His movies can be seen as chronicles of different means of suppression by using calculi which turn out to be independent of time.

This film has everything one could ask for: astonishing visual intelligence and imagination, wonderfully evocative, impeccably composed images that draw on silent cinema and painting, all perfectly adapted to the very moving story being told, and the period/milieu in which it unfolds: Effie Briest is presented as enclosed in the many different spaces (most of them - especially the interiors - saturated with stifling formality, social rectitude and conformity) through which she moves and in which she lives, or tries to live (the bird in the cage being a transparent symbol of all this). Quite simply, Fassbinder knows - knew - what "mise en scene" really means. The passage of time is brilliantly handled (through, for example, the use of the fade to white, intertitles and a moving voice-over narration), and the cast is flawless, as well as being flawlessly directed. A film of immense dignity and power, yet it somehow remains understated...

When reviewing an ordinary film (like Jurassic Park) It is customary to note if the film is not particularly "cinematic". This would then mean that the film in question wouldn't have flashy tracking shots, groovy camera angles, fast paced editing and so on. If these are considered to be good qualities in a film then Effi Briest surely is a bad film.But what if from the beginning the film was meant to be like this? Fassbinder has chosen to hide his work in order to bring forth the original book Effi Briest is based on. To do an adaptation of a text he obviously liked a lot can't have been an easy task to a filmmaker who never relied on existing models of filmmaking. Considering that, one must view Effi Briest as an attempt to create a film as faithful as possible to the original.The result, however, is not alltogether satisfying because most of us will interpret it through a framework of "watching a film". And it must be noted that as a film Effi Briest is slowgoing, static (as is to be expected) and dramatically flat. This could be perhaps a result of a Brechtian device of Fassbinder's to prevent the audience from sinking into the plot (which in itself would be a fine starting point for a soap)but what difference does it make if the film is unwatchable.