Fassbinder's The Stationmaster's Wife is a critical and brilliantly stylized look at the affairs of beautiful woman in pre-Hitler Germany of the twenties. Married to the local stationmaster, Hanni manipulates both her servile husband and a series of local lovers in order to further her philistine existence. Bitter and claustrophobic in equal parts, the film deals with the conditions of prewar petit-bourgeois life that contributed to the rise of fascism.