Martha

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.

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, sadomasochi... Read more