EFFI BRIEST Movie Review

Fontane Effi Briest

In 19th-century Germany, a teenage girl (Hanna Schygulla in an exceptionally fine performance) is pressed into marriage with a much older Prussian diplomat (Wolfgang Schenck). Years later, in the far away Baltic port in which they live, Effi enters into a brief affair with a soldier (Ulli Lommel), the long term unexpected effects of which will alter the course of her future. Theodor Fontaine's acclaimed 1895 novel is the basis of this quietly devastating film from Germany's Rainer Werner Fassbinder; it paints a portrait of a woman's fate completely linked to an unbending and utterly unforgiving code of societal behavior. This is an uncharacteristically stately epic from Fassbinder, and its classical, visually resplendent images reinforce the rigidity of the world in which Effi lives. Yet the film's formal design, while chilling, in no way diminishes the heartfelt cry of despair at the movie's core.

NEXT STOP … The Merchant of Four Seasons, The Marriage of Maria Braun, Veronika Voss

1974 135m/B GE Hanna Schygulla, Wolfgang Schenck, Lilo Pempeit,Ulli Lommel; D: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; W: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; C: Jurgen Jurges, Dietrich Lohmann. M: Camille Saint-Saens. VHS NYF, PMS