Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982) who was the director of Maria Brown’s marriage. As one of members of a special generation(who was born after WW2) in Germany, he believed that the experience of World War 2 was a valuable heritage from last generation. Kaes (1989, p. 77) argued that after WW2, in Germany, the original Nazism is avoided, and the whole society exhibits a repressive and silent atmosphere. However, after along-depressed time, the reflection of WW2 and Nazim outburst in 1960s; all of the society started to reflect on the past and this social phenomenon continued to the later 1960s. Fassbinder as a representative member of New German Cinema,his work Maria Brown’s Marriage also shows some special features of New German cinema.
New German cinema absorbed the narrative and view ability of Hollywood film, but it also had the tendency of anti-Hollywood film, which broke the conventional narrative mode. Plot does not pay attention to causality, but pays attention to the reality of time and space, rather than the continuity of narrative; Secondly, movies often contain a large number of emotional shots, characters often wander out of the narrative to show their feelings; Finally, it emphasizes the reproduction of real life at that time.
Fassbinder also have his own way to deal with the emotion. Del Río (2006) mentioned that Fassbinder was largely influenced by Brecht. However, when he was dealing with the emotion in film, Fassbinder’s attitude was totally different. For him, emotion and feelings are important,but he hated that feelings were being exploited by the film industry at that time (Del Río, 2006, p. 164). He kept the critics on emotion to avoid emotion becoming sentimentality. Compare with Brecht, he criticized emotion by using the emotional event itself instead using a logical and clam to preach. Wang(2004, p. 23-24) also mentioned that Fassbinder was good at portraying female images and use women as vehicles for emotional expression. We can also find evidence in Maria Brown’s Marriage.
In Maria Brown’s Marriage, we can also find some evidence to prove this point. Maria Brown’s interaction with other three male characters is the evidence to show this point. In order to make a living, she had to compromise with the other two men, exchanging material support and some possible emotional sustenance for them; but she still refuses to let go of her feelings for her husband, or, let's say, her marriage and being a wife. In the film, the director uses many details to show her struggling emotion. When she is sleeping on the bed with Bill or even since she stays together with Bill,she never takes off her ring. Additionally, when Bill is trying to persuade her to get married. She replies “No, Bill, I have got married. I have husband.”Even later, she becomes the secretary and lover of Oswald, she is still trying to separate these identities from those of the wife. This is a very ideal or even naive method. Finally, her tragic ending also precisely revealed her unrealistic ideas and a helplessness of the society at that time. If her attachment to her wife and the sacrament of marriage is the thread that runs through the film, then her interactions with the three male characters use other emotional events to criticize or examine her own fantasies and beliefs. I believe that this not only can be an evidence of the emotion shot in New German film, but also shows the features on emotion dealing in Fassbinder’s films.Fassbinder use Maria Brown’s emotion and tragical ending to criticize her own naive method which wants to find the balance between the material and spirit or personal belief. He also uses this tragical ending to reflect the helpless life after WW2 in German. Maria Brown compromises to life again and again, but eventually lost herself in the transaction with other men, and in the end, the only ideal is also disillusioned. This can be a satire on Nazi Germany and it also can be a critic about the traditional German film industry.
For the satire on Nazi Germany, I think Maria Brown’s fantasy is a good evidence. At the beginning, she was forced to make a living to be a hostess and a lover in exchange for survival resources, but she was also greedy and unwilling to give up her insistence, which is the identity of the wife, and the final outcome is tragic. This is similar with the Nazi Germany at that time sticking to its own populist ideology, waging war, and finally losing, even the ideals and beliefs of the past were broken. Moreover,there is also another role to show the satire and reflection to the Nazi German and the German after WW2. It is Herman, Maria’s husband. I can say, half of Maria’s tragic ending is caused by him. We should first consider his identity,beside husband, he is a soldier and more importantly, he is a Germany man. When he came back, he saw Maria sleep with Bill, the first thing he do is to slap Maria in her face. Then, we can see he run to smoke instead of fighting with Bill. This is also critical detail in this film. Herman as a Germany man cannot protect her own woman and let her to make living by herself. He is angry when he saw his wife sleep with other man. However, he also compromised to matter,when he smokes Bill’s cigarette. The whole film seems to describe a story about emotion of a woman, but in fact it criticizes and reflects Nazi Germany and people's living situation in a period of time after the war through this emotion.
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