Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by tinear (A) on May 21, 2007 at 05:07:14

centering on German women attempting to survive immediately after WWII.
The film opens during Maria and Hermann's wedding: bombs destroy the registry during the ceremony and they sign the documents lying face down in the rubble. On the soundtrack, a baby cries interminably and papers from the office float about.
Almost immediately, the husband is sent off to the front and she receives no letters or word. She is reduced to patrolling the trains station with a placard asking for information about him.
Eventually, a man who served with him returns to tell her that her husband didn't survive an attack.
Now realizing she is all alone, penniless, and without hope, Maria (the truly radiant Hanna Schygulla) sets out to make a living the best way left to a woman in post-war Berlin.
Yes, the story seems rather melodramatic but, believe me, this is complex, burning, and frightful depiction of what the after effects of war, and more specifically, Hitlerian dogma, did to the German soul.
The industrialist, the brother-in-law, the husband, and of course the eponymous central character all brilliantly cast and consummate actors.
The depth-of-field in many scenes, the complexity of the film movements, and the color tones influenced a generation of cinematographers. The use of sound also was, well, ground-breaking, i.e off stage sounds, media, parallel conversations: all thrown into the Fassbinder blender.
Justly considered one of Germany's greatest films and, such is his stature, merely one of Fassbinder's best.
Interestingly, Schygulla had acted in many of Fassbinder's earlier films but had decided to pursue other avenues. For four years, she had lost touch with Rainer and had moved to an artistic community when, out of the blue, Fassbinder called her, asking her to star in a film. Quickly he reassured her that the role was quite different from her past ones and, apparently, his charm convinced her.
The other two parts of his trilogy, he had decided, would star different actresses.
They, too, are well worth viewing.