I liked this movie. The cinematography was beautiful and it was very interesting to watch for someone (me) who is very interested in New German Cinema. The only problem is that it's unnecessarily long. I understand the point Fassbinder was trying to make and it came across perfectly fine. I just feel like he went into some much detail to make his point go across. Throughout the film, Maria becomes drastically different people. She's really a lot of things. It's obvious that she is confused about herself. The thing that gets me is that the movie is very meandering. It just goes on and on with something that doesn't have to be so long. It'd be fine if the characters were more likable (like in Pulp Fiction, a film that relies on it's characters) but with this film they really aren't supposed to be likable. Maybe, on a second watch of the film, the whole thing would feel like it passes by faster. But for now, I'd say it's a 7/10. I'd recommend it only if you are curious about the history of cinema or if you're crazy about Fassbender.

"The Marriage of Maria Braun" tells the story of post-war Germany as seen by a young woman, the title character Maria Braun. The film opens in 1943 with Maria's marriage to a soldier named Hermann Braun. After only a day spent together, Hermann must return to his unit, and is later posted as missing, presumed dead, on the Russian front. After the war we find Maria (like most Germans during this period) living in desperate poverty, but she finds work as a bar hostess and, believing her husband to be dead, becomes the lover of Bill, a black soldier with the American occupation forces, who helps to support her financially. (At least, Bill is supposed to be American, but whoever wrote his dialogue seems to have been more familiar with British than with American English. He makes far more frequent use of the expletive "bloody" than any American I have come across). Subsequent developments involve Hermann's unexpected return to Germany after being held in a Soviet prison camp, his imprisonment for the killing of Bill (a crime actually committed by Maria herself) and Maria's life as the mistress of Karl, a wealthy industrialist.The French film critic Jean de Baroncelli saw Maria Braun as an allegory of Germany, "a character that wears flashy and expensive clothes, but has lost her soul". There is certainly some truth in this comparison, but I felt it might perhaps be more accurate to say that it is the marriage of Maria and Hermann which is an allegory of the plight of Germany during the Cold War years. When the film was made in the late seventies, the country had been partitioned between East and West ever since the end of World War II more than thirty years earlier and hopes of reunification seemed destined to remain unfulfilled. (Few people in 1979 could have predicted that the Berlin Wall would fall in only ten years time). Maria, who sells herself to an American for nylon stockings and cigarettes and is later seduced by a capitalist, can therefore be seen as symbolising the flashy and prosperous if rather soulless West Germany, while Hermann, held prisoner by the Soviets, represents the Communist East.The director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the leading members of the "New German Cinema" group of auteurs of the late sixties, seventies and eighties. He had the reputation of being an "arthouse" director, but this film is one of his more approachable works. Despite numerous clashes between Fassbinder and his collaborators, clashes which led to an acrimonious lawsuit which was to continue even after the director's death, it was both a critical and a commercial success in West Germany and, despite its political subtext, was also shown in cinemas in the East.Many European films from the Cold War years have since lost much of their relevance, but this one still remains watchable today. The lovely Hanna Schygulla, who had earlier appeared in some of Fassbinder's other films such as "Effi Briest", succeeds in making Maria a brilliantly realised character and in persuading us of the central truth of the film, namely that, whatever her relationships with Bill and Karl, it is Hermann who is really her true love and that in her heart she stays true to him. She reminds us that "The Marriage of Maria Braun" is not just a film about post-war Germany, and certainly not just a film about politics, but also a human drama with a very human character at its centre. 6/10

This is my first Fassbinder film and, as such, I was excited to sink my teeth into this. This was the second film I was assigned to view for my Foreign History of film course and I was initially enchanted by its charming humor and hyperbolic characters. As the film progressed, Maria's character became more and more reductive. She is depicted as hyperssexual and because of this her character is "cold," calloused, and only interested in being her thought-to-be-deceased husband's subservient little wife. Women are written so explicitly simpleminded and only concerned with having a husband to sport around post-war Germany (or right in the thick of it). They lack a substantial superobjective that is independent of the male characters' own objectives.Has some funny and memorable moments, great Maria Braun dialogue, but overall a bit of a mess in terms of sound editing (added for effect, but completely stripping away from particular scenes), writing, and pacing.

This is the best of the 43 films that Rainer Werner Fassbinder made; his most successful at least. He was one of the leading directors in the New Germany after WWII.Hanna Schygulla was magnificent as the cold, calculating Maria Bruan, who lost her husband to the War, found him after she took an American soldier as a lover, lost him again after he went to jail for her, and found him agin at the end. Her day and a half marriage before he disappeared was longer than their time together at the end.Such is life. Things come and go, and you do the best you can. You can give up or adjust you way of thinking to survive. Even though Maria adjusted her thinking and did what she had to do, she never stopped loving Hermann, which makes the end such a tragedy.Excellent drama.