The Marriage of Maria Braun is the “German Hollywood film” Fassbinder had long dreamed of making. A heartbreaking study of a woman picking herself up from the ruins of her own life, as well as a pointed metaphorical attack on a society determined to forget its past.

Starring Hanna Schygulla in an award-winning performance, this scandalous melodrama is a flagrant vision of what women do on the spoiled peripheries of war. Wrecking sentimental ideas of devotion, Rainer Werner Fassbinder scored his biggest box-office success with this indecently magnificent film.