
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)
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