The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) on Netflix
Maria Braun's marriage to Hermann lasts a day before he rejoins his unit. After the war she is told he is dead, and she looks after her family in ruined Berlin.
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- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.7/1016,421 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes93%
Trailer
Plot summary
For a single day Maria Braun is a wife: she and Hermann Braun marry in Berlin during an Allied air raid in 1943, and he goes back to the Eastern front the next morning. When the fighting stops she is told that he died, and she refuses to let go of his memory. Germany's economy lies in ruins, so she finds work in a bar that serves Allied soldiers, where her employer demands a doctor's certificate before she begins. There she meets Bill, a Black American soldier, and the pair grow close, though Maria will not marry him because she remains loyal to Hermann. Her friend Betti Klenze is also waiting for a husband who has not come home.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While shooting, Fassbinder learned that producer Michael Fengler had oversold the film's rights to Hanns Eckelkamp's Trio-Film. Feeling deceived, he broke with Fengler, demanded co-producer status, won an injunction against him and Eckelkamp, fired most of the crew and moved the shoot from Coburg to Berlin.
- Fassbinder shot the film by day and worked on the Berlin Alexanderplatz script at night; to keep that schedule going he took large quantities of cocaine supplied by production manager Harry Baer and actor Peter Berling. Berling said the cash for the cocaine, coming from Fengler, was the main reason the film went over budget.
- Producer Michael Fengler wanted an international star and took Fassbinder to ask Romy Schneider to play Maria. Because of Schneider's alcohol problems, fickleness and demands, the part went to Hanna Schygulla instead, her first collaboration with Fassbinder in several years.
- Yves Montand was interested in the film but wanted to play Hermann, not Oswald as Fassbinder and Fengler suggested. Because Herman had already been promised to Klaus Löwitsch, Montand was never offered a role in the film.
- Hanna Schygulla won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin film festival, but the prize did not satisfy Fassbinder, who had expected the film to win the Golden Bear.
- When Trio-Film was ordered to pay Fassbinder's heirs 290,000 DM, Hanns Eckelkamp refused, and at the Fassbinder Foundation's request the company had to declare bankruptcy in 1988. In 1990 the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf ruled that Fassbinder was not a co-producer of the film.
- The film's commercial success strengthened Fassbinder's negotiating position on later projects: he won a financing agreement for a favourite project based on Pitigrilli's novel Cocaine and was able to raise the budget for Berlin Alexanderplatz.
SPOILER
Fassbinder changed only a few details in the screenplay by Peter Märthesheimer and Pea Fröhlich, including some dialogue and the ending: instead of a suicide by car accident, Maria dies in a gas explosion, leaving it unclear whether it was intentional.
