The Marriage of Maria Braun

Maria full face portrait

The first of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “BRD Trilogy”, The Marriage of Maria Braun (aka Die Ehe der Maria Braun) is a canonical part of the New German Cinema era of the 1970s and in its key figure, Maria (Hanna Schygulla), gives us post-War Germany’s spectacular economic rebirth (die Wirtschaftswunder) distilled down into a single person. Fassbinder starts us off in the dog days of the Second World War. The first image on the screen is a portrait of Hitler, seconds later dislodged by the shock wave from a falling bomb to reveal a man and woman in the process of getting married while the world literally explodes around them. Maria and Hermann. Cut … Read more

Everything Went Fine aka Tout S’est Bien Passé

Emmanuèle and father André

A film about a daughter helping her father to kill himself doesn’t sound like appointment viewing – unless you work at Dignitas (or some other physician-assisted-suicide organisation) – but in the hands of director François Ozon it is just that. There’s an “all human life is here” aspect to Everything Went Fine (Tout S’est Bien Passé originally) – it’s compassionate, dignified, funny at times, poignant and also triumphant. In a thumbnail, the film focuses on the relationship between a daughter (Sophie Marceau) and her father (André Dussollier) after he, in his mid 80s, has a stroke. He recovers a bit but he’s a shadow of his former self, paralysed down one side, mouth … Read more

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Petra on her shagpile carpet

Though he had 40+ films to his name when he died in 1982 aged 37, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s roots lay in the theatre and it often showed. They’re clearly visible in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, a film playing out on one set where a handful of actors perform in a theatrical “back of the room” style. The action, what little of it there is, takes place in and around the bed of Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen), a massively entitled fashion designer attended by an entirely silent aide, Marlene (Irm Hermann). As Marlene brings coffee, cake, champagne, opens doors to let people in and out, types letters and between times … Read more