Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #96186 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-09-27
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: German
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 111 minutes

Amazon.com
The Stationmaster's Wife, a drama of post-WWI Bavaria based on Oskar Maria Graf's novel Bolweiser, was originally presented as a three-hour-plus event for German television. In preparing his theatrical cut, director Rainer Werner Fassbinder shaved away the subplots and supporting characters to focus tightly on the story of railway stationmaster Bolweiser (Kurt Raab) and his philandering wife Hanni (Elisabeth Trissenaar). Set in late-1920s Bavaria, Bolweiser is a Nazi party man surrounded by grotesque, toadying underlings at the station but is pathetically servile to his increasingly frustrated, unhappy wife. Disgusted by her weak-willed husband, she finds passion in the arms of the butcher. Bolweiser ignores the town gossip and even perjures himself to defend his wife in a trial--an act which later dooms him. Exquisitely photographed (by Michael Balhaus) and beautifully designed, Fassbinder's lush, romantic style suffuses his caustic portrait of the self-destructive Bolweiser (a painfully perfect performance by Raab), and the petty small-town citizens who seal his fate. Even as Bolweiser sinks to the depths of self-pity, Fassbinder's gorgeous, shimmering canvas makes the small-minded doings look so much more tawdry. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Martha in reverse
By 1976 Fassbinder had perfected his unique visual style. Michael Balhaus, the virtuosic director of photography, was at his peak and he seemed more in tune with what Fassbinder was trying to convey in his cinema. 'Stationmaster's Wife' would be one of Fassbinder's hardest hitting films of the period. The look of the movie anticipates the dark soft lighting of Berlin Alexanderplatz, yet uses the same successful plot techniques of earlier gems like 'Martha', 'Merchant of Four Seasons', 'Ali', etc. The final scenes, in particular, remind me of the first scenes of 'Berlin Alexanderplatz' in which Franz Biberkopf is released from prison after 4 years (Bolweiser is also sentenced to 4 years) - and somehow I can imagine Bolweiser having an equally difficult time returning to society. This is clearly the beginning of Fassbinder's final phase as a director. He is starting to confront Germany's past in a way that had not been done since Luchino Visconti's 'The Damned' (one of Fassbinder's favorite movies).

The Stationmaster's Wife: When Love Becomes Colder than Death.
Film critic Roger Ebert was wrong when he wrote in 1983 review: "When Rainer Werner Fassbinder is good, he is very, very good. And when he is bad, he makes 'Bolweiser'." Based on an Oskar Maria Graf novel, Fassbinder's 111-minute film was originally produced as a three-hour drama for German television. Set in late-1920s Bavaria, it tells the story of a pathetic railroad stationmaster, Bolweiser (Kurt Raab), and his promiscuous wife, Hanni (Elisabeth Trissenaar), who beds both the town butcher and her hairdresser. Because of his unwavering love and trust for his selfish wife, Bolweiser refuses to believe town gossip about his her affair, and even perjures himself in Hanni's defense, thereby resulting in his own self-destruction. The lesson of Fassbinder's first film was that Love Is Colder Than Death. Bolweiser learns the same lesson in The Stationmaster's Wife. He is ultimately destroyed by his love for Hanni. Photographed by Michael Balhaus, The Stationmaster's Wife easily ranks among Fassbinder's most beautiful and haunting films.

G. Merritt

The scandal, the pity and the failure!
No other German filmmaker assumed the life with such Dionysian intensity and created such original scripts around the complex affective feminine universe like him. The women were for R.W.F., the central nucleus and the men simple puppets turning around her, like untiring planets over and over falling in love with them but being incapable to understand their anguishes and inner contradictions.

The station master's wife is an acerbic story, recreated on the Geramny of the twenties but based on the emblematic "Madame Bavary" . In this time, the dramatis personae turns around a bore man Bolweiser, chief commander of a station railroad who is happily married Hanni, until the existential boredom appears. She is an alluring woman who needs much affection. He is a cold and distant human being, who only compliments her around the delicious food and his unstoppable thirst of animal love, lack of tender charm.

She is owner of an enviable inheritance, and so she becomes pawnbroker of Merkl, who eventually will seduce her. The tragic thread of the happenings will be involving us more and more in this dark labyrinth of untamed passions, desperation, blame, affective blackmail and double cross that eventually will lead him to become a living wreck.

A fine and zealously photographed film, with bites of comedy at the first half of the film and a devastating tragedy at the end.

A remarkable work into the vast and audacious artistic trajectory of this unforgettable and inimitable icon of the cinema.