The Marriage of Maria Braun

We watched this film in our German Cinema class at university some years ago, and I still remember it well.

Without wishing to give too much away, it tells the tale of a woman who, seeing the desolate landscape that Germany was in 1945, determines to build herself a comfortable life and, as she does so, she becomes one of many women in Germany rebuilding the nation. This was a time, historically, when the women were a greater driving force in the social and economic rebuilding of the nation than were the men (who were both lacking in credibility following the horrors and the mess of the years past, and somewhat dazed by what the nation had just been through).

As she builds that life (and in so doing helps to rebuild the nation), however, she finds that she may have sacrificed too much.

It is a movie worth watching in order to gain some understanding of what life was like in Germany from 1945 to roughly 1970. Rainer Fassbinder makes use of images in places which show the transition of German society from broken ruins to economic superpower, the changing status of women in German society over that time period, the changing attitudes both within Germany and from outside toward Germany, and the sacrifices that women were prepared to make in order to build the Germany that they ultimately did. It also asks, though, if the single-minded pursuit of rebuilding the nation economically and materially did not take too much out of the nation and the people in other areas.

I enjoyed the movie, and am happy to recommend it.