Thursday, February 21, 1S80
Paga 3
Fassbinder's latest
deserves acclaim
By DOROTHY ROMPALSXE
Some of my friends have complained
that one of the most frequently
misused terms lately has been "New
Wave." Whatever the art form, from
cinema to pop music, get together two or
more artists who share a similar origin and
idea about their art and there is.a good
chance that their work will be called a part
of a new wave, through overuse, there is
the danger that the term may become
meaningless. It's difficult to say what
constitutes a new wave. (If all the
filmmakers in the world went to China
and all jumped off their five-foot-high
tripods at the same time )
Cinema
Until recently, the phrase "New Wave
cinema" belonged almost exclusively to
the young French directors of the 1950s
and '60s who shared specific critical
doctrines about how a movie should be
made. But, things have changed. The
third-world countries have had their own
New Wave, so have the Eastern Europeans
and the Australians. Even the most
sophisticated film-goer, however, might
have a hard time explaining how
approximately three films by two very
different Australian directors can be
legitimately called a wave.
The current New Wave in cinema is
from Germany, and, in this case, the term
may be a valid one. Though there are
some obvious differences in the styles of
the directors of the new German cinema,
the most successful of whom have been
Herzog, Fassbinder and Wenders, there
also are similarities. Each one of these
directors is a social critic with a caustic
sense of humor. Their targets usually are
their homeland and a society which, they
often suggest, has sacrificed its culture,
history and maybe even its morality in
order to rebuild itself after the devastation
of World War II. Thirty-three-year-old
Rainer Werner Fassbinder is the most
prolific of these German directors, having
made 37 films. His most successful work is
The Marriage of Maria Braun, which
currently is showing at the Carolina
Theatre in Durham.
iT o l!x o
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The critical raves that Fassbinder has
been receiving for this black comedy are
justified. The film is a complex portrait of
young Maria Braun's rise to the top of
post-war German economic society. On a
larger scale, the film documents the
changes that occurred in German society
itself and the sacrifices that country made
to achieve the "economic miracle" of the
1950s and '60s.
The film opens with Maria marrying
Hermann Braun during an air attack on
their city. He leaves her immediately for
the battlefields while she waits for him
loyally at home. When the war ends and
Hermann doesn't return home, Maria
refuses to give up hope. To survive, she
works as a barmaid in a smoky tavern
catering to American G.l.s.
When Maria is told that her husband is
dead, she finds solace in the arms of a
lonely black G.I. named Bill. He teaches
her English and also gets her pregnant.
With his typical love for irony,
Fassbinder shows Maria and Bill about to
celebrate her pregnancy by making love,
when a man appears at their doorway and
watches them undress. It is Maria's
husband, Hermann, who did not die after
all. He has returned from a Russian POW
camp. A painfully comic confrontation
between the three of them ends when
Maria accidentally kills poor Bill.
Hermann takes the blame for his wife's
actions and goes to prison, while Maria
passionately prepares a home for the man
to whom she has devoted her life. She
loses Bill's baby. A chance meeting with a
French businessman named Oswald lands
Maria a job as an interpreter with his firm.
But soon her intelligence and ambition
overwhelm Oswald, and Maria becomes
his top executive by day and his mistress
by night. She is, "the Mata Hari of the
economic miracle."
Maria freely tells her husband about her
affair with her boss, but she refuses to tell
her boss about her husband. She thinks of
one thing, making a home for her
husband to come to when he is released.
Her boss, who is dying, also things of only
one thingspending his remaining
months with Maria, the woman he has
come to love very deeply.
Oswald finds out about Hermann and
they make a deal shortly before Hermann
is to be released from prison: If Hermann
stays away from Maria until Oswald's
deaththe Brauns will inherit his entire
fortune.
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Hanna Schygulla as Maria Braun
When Oswald dies and Hermann
returns home, life appears to be perfect
for Maria, who is about to become a rich
woman. But the ending of the film, which
I won't divulge, makes it clear that life is
far from perfect for the Brauns and, from
Fassbinder's perspective, far from perfect
for economically stable but
psychologically unsound German society.
There are far more plot complications
than I can describe in a brief outline and
Fassbinder and his cinematographer
Michael Ballhause have captured the
perfect atmosphere for this complex tale.
Stylized sets, costumes and background
acting highlight a society that, as Hermann
Braun says, has grown very cold.
It is a bad time for emotion, but Maria
claims to like it that way because then,
"nothing can really hurt you." The
characters are people who have learned
that, in order to survive, they must be
practical and cold. Yet, sometimes their
emotions do show. Maria's warm side is
exposed in some of the film's most
beautiful scenes when she climbs around
the ruined buildings of her childhood.
As Maria, beautiful Hanna Schygulla has
already won the Berlin Film Festival's best
actess award and critical raves in this
country. She is excellent as a woman who
manipulates those around her to achieve
security for herself and her husband. And,
even though Maria's means are suspect,
Schygulla's sensitive performance makes
it difficult to doubt the sincerity of her
character.
If Schygulla is good, much of the credit
goes to screenwriters Peter
Marthesheimer and Pia Frohlich. The
character they have created in Maria is
one of the most intelligent and well
rounded portraits of a woman written for
films in a long time. The entire supporting
cast of this film is very fine, especially Ivan
Desny as Oswald, Klaus Lowitsch as
Hermann, George Byrd as Bill and Gisela
Uhlen as Maria's mother. For serious film
goers, The Marriage of Maria Braun is a
movie that shouldn't be missed. 0
Dorothy Rompahke is a movie critic for
The Daily Tar Heel.
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