In his 1966 book From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer posited that such early German cinema masterpieces as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, M, Metropolis and Nosferatu, with their themes of totalitarianism, bloodlust and madness, presaged the rise of fascism and the horrors of the Third Reich. On its face, such a thesis suggests these directors possessed psychic powers, but not when one considers the tumultuous German political landscape that informed these works. As the Weimar Republic began to wane and the economy collapsed, a nation grew susceptible to the promise of a new, more powerful republic.
Half a century later Germany was still reeling from the ramifications of World War II. The mixture of guilt, anger and confusion, not surprisingly, led to denial. No one was more sensitive to the odd roiling potion of the national consciousness than the wunderkind director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In the late 1970s he noted, “They can’t have forgotten [the Holocaust]; they must have had it in their minds when they were creating their new state. If a thing of so much significance could be forgotten or repressed, then something must be pretty wrong with this democracy and this ‘German model.’”
So troubled was Fassbinder by this shared selective memory that he created a trilogy of films in response. Known collectively as the BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) Trilogy, The Marriage of Maria Braun, Veronika Voss and Lola portrayed the post-war era through the experiences of three women and offered a deeply human piece of dramatic historiography. Now a four-DVD set brings these three films together with excellent supporting material that adds depth to the context of the films, as well as Fassbinder’s truly unique and self-destructive personality.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
