The Marriage Of Maria Braun

First film of the loosely collected BRD strand (three films) from Rainer Werner Fassbinder, this was 1979. All related for Germany's post-war 'miracle', the moral compromises, how the political is the personal.
Warm colours are used by Fassbinder, the suggestion that they are washed out is true to an extent but shouldn't be overdone. This is a 70's film, full of that era's simplistic spaces in its use of film stock that gives a certain bright blankness.
The use of music and the radio to obscure sound is interesting here, as though the changing world and the industrial clangs are overwhelming the attempt at communication.
This is further emphasised in the obscuring camera uses, where we can at times fail to see the front of faces or what wethe singified of the story is. This works with the long dolly shots that track across distances, not quite voyeuristically but in a manner of a frind, rather than direct indentification. This non-direct identification is mirrored in the story, where we have a variety of different strands. Maria is the centre but the camera and scenes don't always follow her. The woman as the centre of the piece is good early feminist cinema, though as more of a symbol than a character, it can seem so at times. The again, most of them are.
The content at its most obvious is quite clear; high capitalism effecting personal relations, driving to mania, combined with psychonanalytic fetishes that have an object which, at the last analysis, they don't really want.
There are some sensational constructions and individual scenes in this film. When the husband returns, nearly every scene with the G.I., has a slightly uneasy, wondrous transcendental sense. As a whole, there's a lot here, but also the sense that there may be even more than the sum of its (impressive) parts. Fassbinder, for all his impressive shots, is also playing hide and seek to an extent here.
An impressive film, not too far from the mainstream, with the suggestion of more.