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Hanna Schygulla stars as the youthful heroine in Fassbinder's tragic tale. It's one of the director’s most beautiful and dreamlike works, says Alex Davidson.

Effi Briest was a landmark film in the extraordinarily prolific career of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, made, unbelievably given its maturity, when he was still in his twenties. It was his first film based on a period story in this case, Theodor Fontane’s 1896 novel which he had wanted to adapt many years earlier. He later admitted he was glad he had had to wait, as his younger self would have made a much more straightforward work. The film gave one of his favourite actresses, Hanna Schygulla, her best role yet. Never more beautiful, she is remarkable as the doomed heroine.

Shot in exquisite black and white, it tells the story of Fontane’s young heroine, who as a teenager marries an aristocrat many years her senior. She is left alone for large stretches of time while her husband is away, and eventually enters into an affair with a debonair army major. When the liaison is discovered, Effi’s world changes forever.

This is one of the director’s most beautiful and dreamlike works. And while it is also one of Fassbinder’s most accessible films, his social comment is as bitterly acute as ever.

 

Alex Davidson on 21st September 2011
View all 216 of Alex Davidson's reviews

An utterly exquisite delineation of Nineteenth Century Prussia – both its society and natural landscape. The inner restraint and precision of each b&w scene – always ... more >

An utterly exquisite delineation of Nineteenth Century Prussia – both its society and natural landscape. The inner restraint and precision of each b&w scene – always fading to white – ensure Fassbinder’s ‘dream’ project is never less than meticulous in its rendering of the literary source. < less

View all 17 of Paul Scott’s reviews

 

It's hardly dreamlike. More like an account of what the beginnings of Fascism looked like in turn-of-the-century Prussia/Germany! more >

It's hardly dreamlike. More like an account of what the beginnings of Fascism looked like in turn-of-the-century Prussia/Germany! < less