The BRD Trilogy

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was already an internationally respected filmmaker when he embarked on a trilogy of films that explored the history of post-war Germany and the Federal Republic of Germany (i.e., the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, or BRD) as seen through the eyes of three women—movies that became his first big commercial hits in Germany. Hanna Schygulla stars in The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) as a woman struggling to survive while awaiting the return of her husband, a soldier reported missing in battle. Maria’s rise to success parallels Germany’s development in the years between 1945 and 1954, but the personal costs to Maria belong to the operatic emotional world of melodrama. The gauzy beauty of the look in Maria becomes brighter, harder, and more decadently garish in Lola (1981), a spin on Heinrich Mann’s 1905 novel Professor Unrat and Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 film The Blue Angel. Fassbinder’s reworking casts Barbara Sukowa as the star attraction in a Bavarian brothel, with Armin Muller-Stahl as a self-righteous city bureaucrat whose fight against corruption is sidetracked when he falls for the calculating Lola. Shot in stark and striking black-and-white, Veronika Voss (1982) is kind of a Sunset Boulevard story set in the shadowy twilight of Munich some 10 years after the war. Rosel Zech stars an aging former movie star who is now a lonely, forgotten, drug-addicted victim of a predatory doctor who feeds her habit while systematically robbing her estate. The BRD Trilogy films rank among Fassbinder’s greatest and most accessible. Newly remastered from 4K restorations, extras include audio commentary on each film, cast and crew interviews, archival featurettes, and the feature-length 1992 documentary on Fassbinder I Don’t Just Want You to Love Me. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)