Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1974 • West Germany
Starring Margit Carstensen, Karlheinz Böhm, Barbara Valentin
One of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s first forays into the classic melodrama style of his hero Douglas Sirk is a brilliantly perverse, operatically stylized portrait of a woman (Margit Carstensen) caught in a strange, sadomasochistic relationship with a monstrous husband (Karlheinz Böhm), whom she begins to suspect may be trying to murder her. Loosely based on a story by pulp-fiction master Cornell Woolrich, MARTHA finds Fassbinder tearing the institution of marriage to shreds with savage, subversive glee.
Up Next in Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
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Fear of Fear
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1975 • West Germany
Starring Margit Cartensen, Ulrich Faulhaber, Brigitte MiraA woman in a stable-but-passionless marriage suddenly begins to lose her mind when she becomes pregnant with her second child.
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Fox and His Friends
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1975 • West Germany
Starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Chatel, Carl BoehmA lottery win leads not to financial and emotional freedom but to social captivity, in this wildly cynical classic about love and exploitation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Casti...
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Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1975 • Germany
Starring Brigitte Mira, Ingrid Caven, Margit CartensenOne of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s most provocative (the Berlin Film Festival banned it) variations on the Sirkian melodrama takes subversive, darkly comic aim at the media, polit...
