Product Description

Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 09/30/2003 Run time: 337 minutes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17863 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2003-09-30
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Box set, Black & White, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: German
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 339 minutes

Amazon.com
There is at least one certifiable masterpiece in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy, and one could argue that all three films qualify for that honor. Conceived as a series of sociopolitical melodramas set during West Germany's "economic miracle" of post-war recovery (roughly 1947-60), these exquisitely crafted films found the prolific Fassbinder (1945-82) near the end of his astounding career and at the height of his creative powers, depicting post-war Germany as a land of repressed memory and surging capitalism, repressively avoiding any connection to the horrors of its Nazi past. Women were Fassbinder's conduit to analyzing the BDR (Bundesrepublik Deutchland) and its effect on the German character, resulting in three of the most remarkable female characters ever committed to film.

As noted in an affectionate commentary track by Fassbinder's friend and fellow director Wim Wenders, The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) is Fassbinder's undisputed masterwork, a critical and box-office triumph that fulfilled Fassbinder's goal of creating a "German Hollywood melodrama" in the tradition of his director-hero, Douglas Sirk. Beautifully shot by Michael Ballhaus (who advanced to brilliant collaborations with Martin Scorsese), it stars Hanna Schygulla in her signature role as a newlywed whose missing husband returns in the mid-'50s, just as she's reinventing herself through opportunism, seduction, and blind ambition--a woman, like Germany, determined to forget her miserable past, with explosively tragic results. "BRD 2" is the wickedly satirical Veronika Voss (1982), filmed in black and white (a stylistic nod to German'y's post-war thrillers) and starring Rosel Zech as a faded film star-turned-morphine addict making futile attempts to revive her career. Set in 1957, Lola ("BRD 3," 1981) is Fassbinder's homage to Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel, and stars Barbara Sukowa as a cabaret singer and prostitute who, like Maria Braun, is for sale to the highest bidder--in this case a straight-laced official (Armin Mueller-Stahl) who discovers the high cost of ignorance.

Taken together, these films form an impressively coherent vision, compassionate and yet brutally honest, unsentimental, and provocatively critical of post-war Germany. In the established tradition of the Criterion Collection, extensive supplements explore the depth of Fassbinder's achievement. Three commentaries, each with their own uniquely personal and/or critical perspective, are among the finest Criterion has ever recorded. Interviews with Schygulla, Zech, Sukowa, and many of Fassbinder's closest collaborators pay latter-day tribute to Fassbinder and his extended family of on- and off-screen talent, while the 96-minute German TV documentary I Don't Just Want You to Love Me explores Fassbinder's tragically curtailed life and work through abundant film clips and interviews. A filmed 1978 interview with Fassbinder himself--at 49 minutes, the longest ever recorded--offers further insight into the psychology and chain-smoking intensity of a man who burned out from drugs and exhaustion at the age of 37. Along with the collected Adventures of Antoine Doinel, the BRD Trilogy is one of the most impressive DVD sets ever released, and a sparkling jewel in Criterion's crown. --Jeff Shannon

From the Back Cover
By 1978, thirty-three year old German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder had already directed twenty-two feature films. He then embarked upon a project to trace the history of postwar Germany in a series of films told through the eyes of three remarkable women. Fassbinder's three films The Marriage of Maria Braun, Veronika Voss, and Lola "the BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) Trilogy" would command the international acclaim he had always yearned for and place his name foremost in the canon of New German Cinema. The Criterion Collection is proud to present these films as a group for the first time ever on home video.

Customer Reviews

A Stunning Trilogy
Fassbinder's BRD trilogy is not a trilogy in the sense of being one continuous story spread over three films. Each film is separate and self-contained with different characters. Moreover all three films have a very different style. The link between the films is that they are all set in the period just after World War II and tell the story of the Federal Republic of Germany (BRD) and its recovery from the wreckage of defeat. Each film has as a central character a woman struggling to live in the new Germany. Fassbinder uses these women's lives to comment upon the history of the forties and fifties and especially to critique Germany's "Economic Miracle." The films however, are not politically heavy handed. Fassbinder may be critical of aspects of post-war German society, but his points arise naturally from the nature of the stories the films tell. He clearly saw that his first task as a filmmaker was to make films with strong stories, which were both intellectually and emotionally involving. He succeeds with the three films in the trilogy. One of the reasons for the success of these narratives is the acting. The performances, especially from the three main actresses, are superb. Furthermore these films show that Fassbinder did not forget that his audience should be able to comprehend his ideas. He avoids being cryptic or obscure.

The prints on the Criterion DVDs are very good. The films are presented in their original aspect ratios and look great. This is important especially for Lola with its unusual colour palette and for Veronika Voss with its stark black and white photography. Criterion also does very well in providing good subtitles to these films. Fassbinder often uses multiple layers of dialogue with, for example, characters talking while a radio plays one of Adenauer's speeches in the background. The difficult task of subtitling such scenes is carried out well.

This box set contains a huge amount of extras. Each film has a commentary and in addition there are over five hours of documentaries and interviews with the people involved in making the films. There is finally a fifty-page booklet about the trilogy. These DVDs are a great introduction to the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The films are enjoyable and thought provoking and essential for anyone interested in post-war German culture.

No real euphoria...
God bless Criterion for finally releasing Rainer Werner Fassbinder's most popular films on disc. The great underappreciated little madman of the New German Cinema and certainly the most ignored genius in film history, Fassbinder's trilogy of films are set in the fifties of the Federal Republic, where the beautifully detailed characters are tortured by post-war burns on society. In The Marriage of Maria Braun, the title heroine loses her husband to war after spending half a day and one night with him, only to have him return and demand from her the weight of obligation. In Lola, an idealist reconstructionist falls in love with a brothel singer and sacrifices his innocence to his obsession. And Veronika Voss tells the story of a former actress whose involvement in a murder plot leads to her undoing.

Featuring outstanding work by actors such as Hanna Schygulla and Armin Mueller-Stahl, gorgeously photographed by Michael Ballhaus and Xaver Schwarzenberger, the BRD Trilogy is an outstanding follow-up to Criterion's recently released Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (my personal favorite Fassbinder - pick it up if you haven't already). Fassbinder's agonized desire for art through life led to an independent revolution of absolute brilliance. Fourteen years, forty-four films and not one of them bad: the proof is right here in this amazing trio of brutally dark and romantic cinema.

A Snapshot Of A Time
As another reviewer has noted, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's so-called "BRD Trilogy" cannot be compared to other movie trilogies, which take the same characters and show them over different periods of time. Instead, it is a snapshot of the Bundesrepublik as it existed in the 1940s and 1950s, as seen through the stories of three different women.

"The Marriage of Maria Braun" starts immediately after WWII, and lasts through the creation of the Bundeswehr in 1954. We are introduced to a woman who is hardened by the war and its aftermath (or maybe, her innate strength enabled her to survive.) Maria Braun is tough, shrewd and manipulative -- and gets more so as the years pass. By and large, the story of this climber is engrossing and realistic. (One minor flaw -- no American will believe that the "American officer" running the ramshackle court in Maria's trial, early in the movie, is actually American. He sounds like a German affecting an American accent. Poor casting choice!) We do not find out until the end of the movie (and possibly not even then) whether and how the marriage of Maria Braun endured, or whether Maria changed so much as to make the marriage impossible.

"Veronika Voss" was the last to be filmed, but falls second in the trilogy in terms of time. Filmed entirely in black and white, it looks like a late-1940s film noir, and has the feel of a thriller. When the film opens (ca. 1956), Veronika is a washed-up actress from the Third Reich years, now addicted to morphine. Like Maria Braun, she too knows how to manipulate men, in this case, for money to buy drugs. As the film goes on, the mystery unfolds. Veronika is living in her dreams of the past, and two Holocaust survivors are attempting to flee from their own memories. This film, while not as widely acclaimed as "Maria Braun," is my personal favorite.

The third movie (actually made second) is "Lola," filmed in sharp, almost candy-colored tones. Like Maria Braun (but unlike Veronika Voss), Lola is a tough, strong, climber who moves up from prostitution to become the wife of a building inspector. The theme here is that under the faux "moral" patina of the town lies seething immorality and corruption.

Criterion gives you all this, plus a bonus disk with a documentary and an interview with Fassbinder, plus commentary on every one of the films. This is a great deal, and a fascinating look at the BRD in the 1950s -- a country running from, hiding, re-creating, and ultimately coming to terms with its past while building its future.