Monday | November 20, 2000 9:00 pm

The Marriage of Maria Braun
(Die Ehe der Maria Braun)

Screening on Film

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
With Hanna Schygulla, Klaus Löwitsch, Ivan Desny.
West Germany, 1978, 35mm, color, 120 min.
German with English subtitles.

A parable of post–World War II Germany, Fassbinder’s film recounts the transformation of an impoverished war bride (Schygulla) into a mercenary business woman. Best known of Fassbinder’s trilogy of historical films about the Federal Republic’s "economic miracle" of the 1950s and one of the major productions of the New German Cinema, The Marriage of Maria Braun is equally a melodrama of the highest order—Fassbinder’s successful realization of his desire to create for Germany the equivalent of a classic Hollywood movie.