THE STATION-MASTER'S WIFE Movie Review

In Weimar Germany, a provincial stationmaster's wife (Elisabeth Trissenaar) expresses her boredom with her ineffectual, servile husband (Kurt Raab) by entering into a series of shallow sexual affairs. Both a stylized portrait of dead-end marital despair and a thinly veiled political parable about a Germany too hedonistically self-absorbed to grasp the dangers fast approaching, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Stationmaster's Wife was originally filmed as a three-and-a-half hour miniseries for German television (the original title was Bolweiser, the stationmaster's name), and was edited into its current 111-minute length for international theatrical release. Though overall it's one of Fassbinder's less compelling chamber-pieces, Trissenaar's full-bodied, sensation-hungry Hanni and Raab's frustrated, sexually sub-servient husband are indisputably potent characterizations, and the cinematography by Michael Ballhaus (Goodfellas, The Fabulous Baker Boys) is magical.

NEXT STOP … The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Berlin Alexanderplatz, The Blue Angel

1977 111m/C GE Elisabeth Trissenaar, Kurt Raab, Gustal Bayrhammer, Bernard Helfrich, Udo Kier. Volker Spengler; D: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; W: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; C: Michael Ballhaus; M: Peer Raben. VHS NYF, FCT