Word: schygulla
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Hanna Schygulla as his lover is as enigmatic as ever, replacing her, more familiar vamping with a staunch mother figure. An evidently barren woman who has inexplicably taken Lebanon as her own country, her sole desire is to adopt a native child. Yet she evokes no more sympathy exudes no more warmth than Laschen. In fact, while Laschen becomes increasingly anesthetized by the violence she remains consistently numb...
...facts as any star biopic from Hollywood's heady days. Fassbinder built his reputation with films (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, The Marriage of Maria Braun) that played high-voltage melodrama as deadpan farce; here he has turned Lale's tale into what Hanna Schygulla, who impersonates her in the film, calls "a Nazi fairy tale." As the new star gorges on her celebrity, making love to her mirror image in a palatial white bedroom, her countrymen starve to win the war and her country's enemies are paraded to death. Told that her song...
...FRENCH HAVE a word for people with an uncanny knack for getting along: they call them debrouillards. Maria Braun, played by Hanna Schygulla and heroine of Reiner Fassbinder's latest film, The Marriage of Maria Braun, is a debrouillarde...
Maria Braun, Effie Briest, and The Merchant of Four Seasons are Fassbinder's masterpieces; significantly, Hanna Schygulla starred in all three. She is to Fassbinder what Giancarlo Gianini is to Lena Wertmuller: a charismatic presence who carries the entire film. Despite arresting cinematographic touches--chilling musical inserts, the startling shot of an unidentified man pawing a women's breasts in the foreground--and solid performances by other actors, The Marriage of Maria Braun depends for its success upon the all-pervasive influence of Schygulla. The film has already garnered prizes at this year's Berlin Film Festival...
There is nothing wrong with this familiar yet entertaining tale, or with Hanna Schygulla's finely shaded and often sensuous portrayal of the protagonist. The trouble stems from Fassbinder's belief that Maria can serve as a damning metaphor for modern Germany's Economic Miracle. Since his style expresses complex emotions and ambiguous political history in broad theatrical gestures, he never makes his case. Eventually the strain between form and content becomes irritating. The final shot is a portrait of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who is thus equated with the film's opening image of Hitler...