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«The Marriage of Maria Braun» («Die Ehe Der Maria Braun»)

«The Marriage of Maria Braun» is a 1979 West German film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It was nominated for the 1980 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film. The film is the first in Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy, followed by Veronika Voss (BRD 2) and Lola (BRD 3).

During an Allied bombing raid on Berlin, in the later stages of World War II, a picture of Adolf Hitler is blown off a wall. Amidst the chaos, protagonist Maria (Schygulla) is being married to Hermann Braun in a rushed ceremony where Maria has to track down the official needed to sign their marriage certificate. After only "half a day and a whole night" together, Hermann returns to the front.

After the end of the war, Maria and her friend Betti (Elisabeth Trissenaar) visit the train station where women go to seek word of their soldier husbands, but Betti's husband returns home with news that Hermann has been killed. The film shows the daily privations and black market commodity exchanges that characterized Germany at this time; it also shows how debased Germany's proud cultural heritage has become.

Fassbinder, in a cameo, uses Beethoven's fifth as a signal to a lookout before he offers Maria the collected works of Kleist, which she refuses because books burn too quickly; she instead takes a black dress and some liquor.

The distraught Maria begins to work in a bar frequented by American soldiers, where she becomes the lover of an African-American soldier whom she calls Mr. Bill (George Eagles); when she meets him, Maria quips "better black than brown," in a reference to his ethnicity, her name, and possibly the Nazi brown shirts.

The relationship between the two is tender and loving until Hermann unexpectedly returns home to find Maria and the soldier undressing each other. Hermann momentarily knocks out Maria, but during the ensuing scuffle between the two men, when Hermann seems in danger, Maria hits the soldier over the head with a bottle and kills him.

Hermann takes the blame for the crime and is sentenced to imprisonment. Promising her husband that their life together will begin as soon as he is released, Maria focuses on attaining wealth. In the meantime Maria takes a trip to see a Doctor. Although it is not explicitly shown, it is clear she has aborted her child. On the train home, she meets a French businessman named Karl Oswald, who fled Germany during the war, but is now returning to rebuild his business in the shattered post-war economy. She is vulgarly propositioned by an American soldier on the train, but threatens him with the military police.

Through the good English that Maria learned "in bed," she becomes Oswald’s assistant and lover, and a successful senior manager in his firm, becoming the self-confessed "Mata Hari of the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle)".

Although she surrounds herself with furs and buys her own home, she grows distant from her family, and threatens her secretary (played by Fassbinder's mother) and her clients for breach of contract.

Oswald, who unknown to Maria has a terminal illness, secretly visits Hermann in prison and makes a deal: if, on his release, Hermann stays away from Maria until after Oswald's death, Oswald will leave him half of his wealth.

When Hermann is released from jail, he fulfils his promise to Oswald and goes to Canada, sending Maria a rose every month.

The film's final sequence, which includes radio commentary on the 1954 World Cup soccer final, sees Hermann finally return to Maria's house. He returns on Oswald's death, shortly before the executor Senkenberg arrives to read the will, interrupting an intimate moment between them, and Maria discovers the two men in her life have struck a deal behind her back.

But the gas from an unlit stove has filled the house, some time after Maria lit a cigarette, and the house is engulfed in flames. This occurs just as the sports announcer is celebrating West Germany's World Cup victory and shouting "Deutschland ist wieder was!" (Germany is something again). The film ends with a series of photographic negative portraits of West Germany’s post-war chancellors (excluding Willy Brandt and, shown in positive, the chancellor at the time of the film's production, Helmut Schmidt).

Guyana, 2000, Hanna Schygulla in «The Marriage of Maria Braun»