Rainer Werner Fassbinder

The Marriage of Maria Braun

The Marriage of Maria Braun

Maria (Hanna Schygulla) marries Hermann Braun in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. Alone, Maria puts to use her beauty and ambition in order to find prosperity during Germany’s “economic miracle” of the 1950s. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s biggest international box-office success, The Marriage of Maria Braun is a heartbreaking study of a woman picking herself up from the ruins of her own life, as well as a pointed metaphorical attack on a society determined to forget its past.

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Film Info

  • West Germany
  • 1979
  • 120 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.66:1
  • English
  • Spine #204

Available In

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The BRD Trilogy

The BRD Trilogy

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The Marriage of Maria Braun
Cast
Hanna Schygulla
Maria Braun
Klaus Löwitsch
Hermann Braun
Ivan Desny
Karl Oswald
Gisela Uhlen
Mother
Elisabeth Trissenaar
Betti Klenze
Gottfried John
Willi Klenze
Hark Bohm
Senkenberg
George Byrd
Bill
Claus Holm
Doctor
Günter Lamprecht
Hans Wetzel
Anton Schiersner
Grandpa Berger
Sonja Neudorfer
Red Cross nurse
Volker Spengler
Train conductor
Isolde Barth
Vevi
Lilo Pempeit
Mrs. Ehmke
Bruce Low
American at the conference
Günther Kaufmann
American on the train
Karl-Heinz von Hassel
Prosecuting attorney
Hannes Kaetner
Justice of the Peace
Kristine de Loup
Notary
Credits
Director
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Producer
Michael Fengler
Screenplay by
Peter Märthesheimer
Screenplay by
Pea Fröhlich
From a story by
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Dialogue by
Pea Fröhlich
Dialogue by
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Dialogue by
Peter Märthesheimer
Cinematographer
Michael Ballhaus
Production designer
Norbert Scherer
Costume designer
Barbara Baum
Sound
Jim Willis
Sound
Milan Bor
Film editor
Juliane Lorenz
Film editor
Franz Walsch
Music by
Peer Raben
Makeup by
Anni Nöbauer
Production manager
Martin Häussler

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Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Writer, Director

Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder made an astonishing forty-four movies—theatrical features, television movies and miniseries, and shorts among them—in a career that spanned a mere sixteen years, ending with his death at thirty-seven in 1982. He is perhaps remembered best for his intense and exquisitely shabby social melodramas (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul)—heavily influenced by Hollywood films, especially the female-driven tearjerkers of Douglas Sirk, and featuring misfit characters that often reflected his own fluid sexuality and self-destructive tendencies. But his body of work runs the gamut from epic period pieces (Berlin Alexanderplatz, the BRD Trilogy) to dystopic science fiction (World on a Wire) as well. One particular fascination of Fassbinder’s was the way the ghosts of the past, specifically those of World War II, haunted contemporary German life—an interest that wedded him to many of the other artists of the New German Cinema movement, which began in the late 1960s.

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