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DVD Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy (The Marriage of Maria Braun / Veronika Voss / Lola) - Criterion Collection
There is at least one certifiable masterpiece in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy, and one could argue that all three films qualify for that honor. Conceived as a series of sociopolitical melodramas set during West Germany's "economic miracle" of post-war recovery (roughly 1947-60), these exquisitely crafted films found the prolific Fassbinder (1945-82) near the end of his astounding career and at the height of his creative powers, depicting post-war Germany as a land of repressed memory and surging capitalism, repressively avoiding any connection to the horrors of its Nazi past. Women were Fassbinder's conduit to analyzing the BDR (Bundesrepublik Deutchland) and its effect on the German character, resulting in three of the most remarkable female characters ever committed to film.
As noted in an affectionate commentary track by Fassbinder's friend and fellow director Wim Wenders, The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) is Fassbinder's undisputed masterwork, a critical and box-office triumph that fulfilled Fassbinder's goal of creating a "German Hollywood melodrama" in the tradition of his director-hero, Douglas Sirk. Beautifully shot by Michael Ballhaus (who advanced to brilliant collaborations with Martin Scorsese), it stars Hanna Schygulla in her signature role as a newlywed whose missing husband returns in the mid-'50s, just as she's reinventing herself through opportunism, seduction, and blind ambition--a woman, like Germany, determined to forget her miserable past, with explosively tragic results. "BRD 2" is the wickedly satirical Veronika Voss (1982), filmed in black and white (a stylistic nod to German'y's post-war thrillers) and starring Rosel Zech as a faded film star-turned-morphine addict making futile attempts to revive her career. Set in 1957, Lola ("BRD 3," 1981) is Fassbinder's homage to Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel, and stars Barbara Sukowa as a cabaret singer and prostitute who, like Maria Braun, is for sale to the highest bidder--in this case a straight-laced official (Armin Mueller-Stahl) who discovers the high cost of ignorance.
Taken together, these films form an impressively coherent vision, compassionate and yet brutally honest, unsentimental, and provocatively critical of post-war Germany. In the established tradition of the Criterion Collection, extensive supplements explore the depth of Fassbinder's achievement. Three commentaries, each with their own uniquely personal and/or critical perspective, are among the finest Criterion has ever recorded. Interviews with Schygulla, Zech, Sukowa, and many of Fassbinder's closest collaborators pay latter-day tribute to Fassbinder and his extended family of on- and off-screen talent, while the 96-minute German TV documentary I Don't Just Want You to Love Me explores Fassbinder's tragically curtailed life and work through abundant film clips and interviews. A filmed 1978 interview with Fassbinder himself--at 49 minutes, the longest ever recorded--offers further insight into the psychology and chain-smoking intensity of a man who burned out from drugs and exhaustion at the age of 37. Along with the collected Adventures of Antoine Doinel, the BRD Trilogy is one of the most impressive DVD sets ever released, and a sparkling jewel in Criterion's crown. --Jeff Shannon
Review(s): DVD Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy (The Marriage of Maria Braun / Veronika Voss / Lola) - Criterion Collection
Germany deconstructed
With the BRD trilogy Fassbinder, possibly the most prolific director of the New German cinema, shows much more than just a trilogy of German history.
He goes much further, than most directors would have dared, when he brings to surface constellations, which are mostly not talked about or best forgotten.
The trilogy starts with his most famous and popular film “The Marriage of Maria Braun” a subtle attack on the German ‘economical miracle’ this film shows Maria Braun, a young woman that got married in Berlin during the Second World War mid attack who has to adapt to her new found post war situation which seemingly made her a widow. She starts to work at an American bar, where she soon gets together with a black GI, which she is dating more for economic than for personal reasons.
Surprisingly her husband comes back and she kills the GI when and argument between the two starts. Her husband takes the blame and goes to prison, as she continues her rise to economic success at a time where a lack of feelings within a nation was overcome by continuous hard- work. She is torn between two worlds, having the pre-war mentality of staying faithful to her husband but being fully adapt to a world where apart from gaining power working hard and re-creating the economy hardly anything matters, having reached all what more is there to gain for her?
The Marriage of Maria Braun is considered Fassbinder’s best film by many, and though it was his most successful work, which shows brilliance in both style, camera and plot, I personally regard Part 2, Veronika Voss the highest.
Veronika Voss, Part 2, is set in Munich in the 50s and shot in very high contrasted black and white this film truly is one of Fassbinder's most approachable and one of my personal favourites. The story is more involving than in most of his other films and though a certain distance between the film and the viewer is created, it only helps to create space to put its main issue of cold-heartedness across.
Veronika Voss is a fading star with ties to the Nazi regime, and has clearly forfeited popularity in Germany after the war. She is mostly not even recognized in public anymore but still makes a scene wherever she happens to be. Soon the sports reporter Robert Krohn, who she has met on a rainy night and has started a ill-fated affair with, realizes that she has become a morphine addict, relying on the mysterious Dr. Marianne Katz, even living in her flat. Though Robert Krohn plays a major part in the film, and is at times even more present than Veronika Voss herself, he serves as a character rather as a guide through the film and the different aspects portrayed within it.
Dr. Marianne Katz, who counts even concentration camp survivors amongst her morphine-addicted clients is exploiting them by issuing out the expensive drug in exchange for their belongings. The addictive poison she is issuing out, the morphine takes on a symbolic role describing a state within German society. A Germany that is also more and more co-dependent, as a country(symbolised with the U.S. soldier) and its inhabitants, too.
A Key term of the film remains the UfA(whose style is clearly shown by the way the film is shot, composed and edited), and Veronika Voss’ preference under the old regime, which has now brought her into her inescapable victim role, being incapable of adapting, and to live on. Fassbinder’s hatred is quite obviously directed at the power cartel, that is issuing ‘drugs’ to people, that they may not really be in need of. Krohn, who takes on the detective role throughout the film, has no chance in winning against this conspiracy.
It is also important to note that the actual title of the film in German was:
‘Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss’:
‘Sehnsucht’ means ‘longing’, but the word ‘Sucht’ on its own ‘addiction’
So the title really says it all: “The longing-addiction of Veronika Voss”
Lola, the final Part of the trilogy, shows how building Instructor von Bohm arrives in the small Bavarian town Coburg. At first he is an outsider in the “one-hand-washes-the-other” society, that the town is. He wants to bring honesty and dignity in a town that is plagued with Nepotism, and mostly under the control of building giant Schuckert, who owns amongst many other institutions in the town a brothel too.
The film adapts its main story line from the 1930, Josef von Sternberg-directed, Heinrich Mann written and Marlene Dietrich starring classic “The blue angel”.
Similar here, the building inspector von Bohm is falling for the nightclub/ brothel/ cabaret performer Lola and has to compromise with Schuckert.
Unlike in Maria Braun, the role and importance of the woman is already different in German society at this point in time, she obeys the men in bed, but at the actual power struggles she is not involved anymore. She merely becomes the reward of the winner, and is given the brothel in order to make things work for the men, who are now leading the country again. Fassbinder cleverly points out how the new power cartel was created within the post-war Adenauer years, where profit became the only standard of making politics. Protests as they happen in the film from more liberal, critical people are invain, the general adaptation to the rules set out by an ultra-capitalistic society cannot be stopped.
Lola is shot in almost kitsch tone, with high emphasis on colours.
All films star women as the main character, partially because they can easier break out of laid out rules from society as men, and hence become more interesting as characters. But certainly also to demonstrate the position of power and its subsequent loss post World War 2.
Fassbinder is often regarded as rather pessimist, I however feel that he is rather realistic.
All films are great within their own way and work incredible as a series, showing the dark sides of Germany at a given point in time, with the focus on human exploitation, both, emotionally and economically.
A Snapshot Of A Time
As another reviewer has noted, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's so-called "BRD Trilogy" cannot be compared to other movie trilogies, which take the same characters and show them over different periods of time. Instead, it is a snapshot of the Bundesrepublik as it existed in the 1940s and 1950s, as seen through the stories of three different women.
"The Marriage of Maria Braun" starts immediately after WWII, and lasts through the creation of the Bundeswehr in 1954. We are introduced to a woman who is hardened by the war and its aftermath (or maybe, her innate strength enabled her to survive.) Maria Braun is tough, shrewd and manipulative -- and gets more so as the years pass. By and large, the story of this climber is engrossing and realistic. (One minor flaw -- no American will believe that the "American officer" running the ramshackle court in Maria's trial, early in the movie, is actually American. He sounds like a German affecting an American accent. Poor casting choice!) We do not find out until the end of the movie (and possibly not even then) whether and how the marriage of Maria Braun endured, or whether Maria changed so much as to make the marriage impossible.
"Veronika Voss" was the last to be filmed, but falls second in the trilogy in terms of time. Filmed entirely in black and white, it looks like a late-1940s film noir, and has the feel of a thriller. When the film opens (ca. 1956), Veronika is a washed-up actress from the Third Reich years, now addicted to morphine. Like Maria Braun, she too knows how to manipulate men, in this case, for money to buy drugs. As the film goes on, the mystery unfolds. Veronika is living in her dreams of the past, and two Holocaust survivors are attempting to flee from their own memories. This film, while not as widely acclaimed as "Maria Braun," is my personal favorite.
The third movie (actually made second) is "Lola," filmed in sharp, almost candy-colored tones. Like Maria Braun (but unlike Veronika Voss), Lola is a tough, strong, climber who moves up from prostitution to become the wife of a building inspector. The theme here is that under the faux "moral" patina of the town lies seething immorality and corruption.
Criterion gives you all this, plus a bonus disk with a documentary and an interview with Fassbinder, plus commentary on every one of the films. This is a great deal, and a fascinating look at the BRD in the 1950s -- a country running from, hiding, re-creating, and ultimately coming to terms with its past while building its future.
A box of the good ole' B.R.D - Incredible!
I highly recommend this box set to anyone who enjoys movies, and particularly to anyone with an interest in Germany. Despite the serious and tragic aspects of these stories, they are extremely enjoyable to watch.
Maria Braun: What a lady! Though it ultimately destroys her, Maria uses life to her own ends rather than allow it to make mincemeat of her. Like Wedekind's Lulu, she effortlessly climbs the ladder, innocently using the men who love her. The pace of this movie takes one's breath away.
Veronika Voss: Poor dear! Already drug-addicted at the outset of the film, she cannot let go of what she had before the war. She is simply a pathetic shell of a woman that crumbles with a whimper at the end. Fun to watch? Well, Rainer and Xaver made a black and white stunner.
Lola: Try to resist her! Is it an act or is she really that innocent? After deceiving a building commissioner into falling in love with her, the truth destroys both their idealized pictures of love. The close of the film is devastating. Beautifully shot, and even more fast paced than Maria Braun.
The special features are fascinating, and, if you had them, you could spend hours with the 2 long documentaries, 8 interviews (including one with a ravished-looking Fassbinder), and 3 commentaries. Well worth the coin amazon asks!
Related DVD's Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy (The Marriage of Maria Braun / Veronika Voss / Lola) - Criterion Collection
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