Martha
by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Barbara Valentin, Gisela Fackeldey, Karlheinz Böhm, Margit Carstensen, Peter ChatelDirector: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Brand: Music Video Dist
Cinematographer: Michael Ballhaus
Writer: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Editor: Liesgret Schmitt-Klink
Producer: Peter Märthesheimer
Writer: Cornell Woolrich
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); German (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 116 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-04-13
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Fantoma
Movie Reviews of Martha
Movie Review: Fassbinder is at his best in Martha.
Summary: 5 Stars
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Martha deserves a wide and appreciative audience. This film demonstrates the power of the visual image to tell a story completely. If you do not speak German and you turn off the subtitles, my guess is that you will understand most of the story just by watching closely what happens. Fassbinder's creative use of the camera to dramatize important moments of the plot development and his placement of his actors in each carefully constructed scene support and dramatize the spoken word.
Martha is a librarian who watches helplessly as her father dies of heart failure on the Spanish Steps in Rome. On her way for help to the German Embassy in Rome, she passes by a man who takes special notice of her. Fassbinder emphasizes this chance meeting by using a startling 360 degree camera shot. We know instantly that this encounter will have important consequences later in the story. In fact, Martha meets the man again at a wedding reception in Germany. After a brief courtship, she marries him and begins her slow descent into a living hell.
The man she marries is Helmut Salamon, a structural engineer who immediately begins to take complete control over Martha's life. He tenders her resignation at her job, establishes her in an old fashioned mansion which Martha hates, isolates her from friends and family, and finally asks that she not go out of the house at all. Sexually he abuses her with his violent passion which includes bites that are clearly visible and painful. He tells her to stop listening to her favorite music. Ironically, she loves Lucia de Lammermoor. He gives her Orlando di Lasso to listen to, which Martha says is boring. He even demands that she read a book on structural engineering. Finally, he removes the phone from the house completing Martha's isolation. Helmut slowly drives Martha insane and enjoys watching her steady deterioration into madness.
If this plot sounds familiar, it is. Fassbinder loved going to the movies as a child and began making his own films as a teenager. He gave his own original stamp to what might have been seen as an overworked plot. With Fassbinder, we come back again to where we have been before, but see with new understanding what we previously thought we had learned.
Margit Cartensen as Martha and Karlheinz Bohm as Helmut are both excellent as is the entire cast, but it is Fassbinder, the director, who is the real star of this show. His creativity and imagination in focusing our attention on what we see give new meaning to our understanding of the power of motion pictures.
Fassbinder died youg, but his legacy in film is secure with pictures like Martha.
Summary of Martha
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