And that does not only include the title character, but also the co-lead played in a truly sinister manner by Katlheinz Böhm. 1974 was a great year for Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He made this 110-minute film here, but he also directed the equally brilliant "Angst essen Seele auf" and it's almost impossible for me to pick my favorite Fassbinder out of these two. I am generally not the biggest fan of the director, but these two are excellent pieces of filmmaking. In "Martha" we see one of the best combinations of writing and acting in the history of movies when it comes to sadist characters. And an equally brilliant portrayal of masochism. And still Carstensen's character occasionally tires to break free. This inner contradiction is probably also what got her the German Film Award nomination (she lost to Brigitte Mira from the movie I mentioned previously). No awards recognition for Karlheinz Böhm though although he was so so good If you have seen him in the Sissi movies, you can basically imagine the exact opposite and you will have his Helmut Salomon, a true psychopath.

There are so many memorable scenes in this film, the one about wishing the title character dead, another one about Salomon's favorite food or also the beginning with Martha's father dying. In that situation, she was weak anyway and it would not have been a challenge for Salomon to break her entirely. That's why he just didn't go for it back then. Basically, there are so many great scenes in here that I cannot list them all: the way he insults her constantly, for example during their meeting at the party, the way he talks about her music, about her hair, the way how he forces her to read the book about his job after what he did to her with her job, the cat scene. He will not even share her with a pet And finally, another scene that stands out very much is the sunburn scene (keep in mind how he did not wake her up when she fell asleep, maybe even gave her pills) and how he has sex with her despite her being in huge pain. That was really really painful to watch. He is absolutely turned on by her when she is at her weakest, her most fragile and there are more examples of that how he really wants her the most when she is suffering. A textbook sadist.

And then the ending: She flees from him and he is as collected and in control as always. Finally, she has a car accident that not only takes away the only person who sort-of helped her and with whom she could talk about her marriage, but it also takes away her ability to walk and that is how she becomes pretty much completely dependent on her husband. She cannot leave the house anymore as there is no way he will make it barrier-free for her and this is what he wanted from the start. In general, after such an accident it is often a reason people split and it can be considered as a true confession of love if a person does confess his love to his wife despite her new disability. But that's what he does and here it is not positive. It is love yes, but in the most sadistic manner one could imagine and I guess I really don't wanna see all the horrible things that will happen after this film from over 40 years ago ends. This is a very cruel movie. And at the same time, it is a triumphant character study about two people who are (not) made for each other. Highly recommended.

What makes Martha a difficult sit may be hard to communicate in words as the entire atmosphere that Rainer Werner Fassbinder creates is suffocating and strange and deliberately uncomfortable. It's his take on what one might see today actually in Fifty Shades of Grey to an extent, though there's no BDSM (some sex though, and extremely the rough kind),or also to a larger extent Gaslight. The thesis is this: when a woman meets a man who is completely incapable of really being a caring, empathetic person, one of two things will happen - the woman will leave the man (or, perhaps conversely, the man will leave the woman),or the woman will deal as was sort of indoctrinated into certain kinds of women (especially those who wanted a finer life and upper class mobility),and may have to go back and forth on whether to have any independence or to be a figurative door mat for the husband to step on.

The emphasis in Martha, which was apparently a made-for-TV movie that Fassbinder happened to squeeze out in the same year of his crushingly sad (and great) Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, is on, like in many of his films, the woman and how she has to somehow simply survive in the world of men and her circumstances. There may even be a slice of Bunuel here too, which I may be inferring with my critic hat on, as it's about this kind of perverse push-and-pull between this couple - Martha meets Helmut (frequent Fassbinder collaborator and muse during this melodrama period of films Margit Carstensen and Karlheinz Böhm respectively) after what is the first of many quasi- absurdly sad moments where her father dies of a heart attack on some steps in Rome - and how there's a slightly sado-masochistic side of things where it shouldn't make sense how she can stand him treating her... and yet, she does, and there's a perversely satirical edge to everything.

One should remember that Fassbinder during this time was submerged in Sirk influence too, though I don't know if I detected that so much, aside from some of the heightened melodramatic touches (and the ending, which is really TOO much, but hey, we're already there, why not). There's this underlying subtext to this all that made me think about rich, domineering men *and* the women who become subservient to them. Bohm, also from a few Fassbinder films as well as Peeping Tom, has the face of a man who may be a sadist, but in his mind does he think he's being *fair*? He has the attitude and demeanor of someone who probably would've been right at home in the Nazi party - not that his character espouses racist language so much - it's all in the demeanor and how he treats his wife. A key aspect though is we don't really see what he's like outside of Martha's purview: does he cheat on her (probably),does he act like this when he's off on his, uh, engineering gigs that he forces down Martha's throat (so he can, you know, talk with her about things that interest him),and what about that sexual appetite?

The moments where Helmut has his 'way' with Martha is telling, and it's the moments of the film (aside from when Martha really gets hysterical, per the hysteria of the script itself) where there's that Bunuelian sense of... oh, you rich folk, you're so wacky- depraved (and also, as part of the satire, lacking any compassion or soul). He is basically raping Martha to an extent - there's one scene where he kind of makes Martha sit out in the sun so she can 'tan', but her pale skin burns, she lies out naked, and he forces himself on her anyway. And what about Martha? Has she become traumatized by all of this behavior? The gas-lighting part shouldn't be overlooked, though that's only an element of the behavior he puts on her; when I mention 'Fifty Shades', obviously it's not as much a comparison in quality (this is Fassbinder in 1974 for godsakes AND Michael Ballhaus on camera) or in awareness. If 50 Shades knew what images it was really portraying and understood the pitch-black, barely traceable and might as well be a cold heartless drama worldview, it would look like Martha.

Oh, and Margrit Carstensen: like some of her work (though not all) for this filmmaker, at times she has a face where there's much more being said in the eyes, tension and fear and confusion and obedience and something that the character may be mistaking for love (or those few bits where it may be clear her father's death f***ed her up more than she's ever dealt with, not to mention her mother and her issues). What's remarkable is that Fassbinder, per the style he's going for which has some cold detachment and a provocation of the audience often to feel for the characters despite the coldness of the tone, still leaves room for Carstensen to make this woman all her own, and that she can find the unfolding tragedy (or tragedies) as each moment of this disaster of a marriage unfolds.

The story takes a little time to get going really - that scene at the amusement park on the roller coaster is what hooked me in - but once it does, Martha reveals itself as one of the sickest "comedies" about marriage ever made.

Good, nearly great Fassbinder about an adult woman who passes from the care of her controlling parents to the even tighter control of a bizarre husband. Margit Carstensen plays the woman and Karlheinz Böhm (whom you probably remember as the protagonist of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom) the husband. This is one of Fassbinder's better films. Jonathan Rosenbaum, who doesn't seem to be much of a Fassbinder enthusiast, cites it as his very favorite. It would rank as one of my favorites, too, but for a couple of reasons. It kind of makes its point fairly early on, especially after the marriage takes place. Then it gets a tad repetitive, and goes on for nearly two hours. The next year, Fassbinder made an even better film dealing with similar themes called Fear of Fear, which also starred Margit Carstensen. Carstensen's performance is exceptional in Martha (and just as good in Fear of Fear),and Böhm is quite good, too.