This is the tale (Directed by famous Director Fassbinder of German
cinema) of Maria Braun a woman in WWII Germany who succumbs to
taking a black man as her lover (he is a uniformed US "coloured
soldier" (as they were referred to back then)  part of the occupying
American forces on German soil. She was under the impression that
her husband away at the front, may have perhaps lost his own life
and for this reason felt abandoned enough to take on such an
extreme idea of a mate for a woman of her type in those times most
of all. Her husband does re-appear and this moment of joy returns
her sanity to the full extent that she turns back events in her own
idea of this and strikes the black man who was her lover and who
stood naked in the room with her and her husband, with an object to
his head which caused the instant death of the black man she had
taken on in her despair of having thought her husband lost forever
at the time. Her husband gallantly takes responsibility for the
accidental death of the black American soldier killed by dear Maria
Braun.

Later on a train when in the company of a nice seeming German
businessman, she is harassed by another black American soldier
who tells them both that he is looking for a fuck (SIC). She responds
that she could just give him one- in a stockade - by having him
arrested. He immediately flees the scene.  So an interesting look at
a clash between culture mores and race relations at the time the
war was just coming to an end and the folks in Germany under
enemy occupation of allied forces

Considered Fassbinder's best contribution to the cinema by most of
his fans it seems


Michael Rizzo Chessman
(moviesbyrizzo)