Martha (1974 film)

Martha
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Written by	Rainer Werner Fassbinder from Cornell Woolrich
Cinematography	Michael Ballhaus
Editing by	Liesgret Schmitt-Klink
Release date(s)	28 May 1974 (West Germany) 24 September 1994 (US)
Running time	116 min.
Country	West Germany
Language	German

Martha is a 1974 drama film made for German television which was directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It features Margit Carstensen in the title role with Karlheinz Böhm as her abusive husband. It is one of the earliest of Fassbinder's films to be influenced by the American work of Douglas Sirk. The plot was loosely based on a short story ("For the Rest of Her Life") by Cornell Woolrich.

Plot

Martha Heyer, a virginal 31 years old librarian, is on vacation in Rome with her domineering unloving father. He is a fastidious man who refuses to be touched. At their first stop while touring the city, the Spanish Steps, the father suffers a heart attack dying in Martha’s arms. Martha soon discovers that her purse, containing all of her money, has been stolen in the confusion. She reaches for help at the German embassy and phones her mother giving her the bad news. Leaving the embassy, Martha crosses the path of a gentleman, who catches her eye – and she his. They are mutually mesmerized but keep going their own ways.

Back in her hometown, Constance, Martha is ill received by her mother who blames her for her father’s death. Martha’s mother, an alcoholic, takes openly to drinking, tranquilizers and drawing mustaches on old photographs of her deceased husband. Martha turns down an offer of marriage from her boss at the library, who immediately proposes to her colleague Ilse. During the wedding celebration, Martha is formally introduced to Helmut Salomon, a wealthy civil engineer, who was the man she crossed glances leaving the German embassy. On their first conversation Helmut insults her by detailing her physical failings, and Martha meekly accepts these and responds by kissing him.

Helmut takes her to an amusement park and insists that they take a ride together on the roller coaster, despite Martha being terrified of the idea. After the ride, she vomits and he proposes marriage. Martha, her face streaked with tears and vomit, thanks him and gleefully accepts. Martha's mother, in a hysterical reaction to the news that her daughter intends to marry, swallows an overdose of pills and collapses to the floor. Helmut takes the opportunity to have Martha’s mother institutionalized.

The couple goes on honeymoon to the Italian coast. Helmut in addition to starting to control Martha’s diet refuses to allow her to apply suntan oil, deliberately ensuing that she gets sunburned. Once they are in their hotel room he has sex with the painfully sunburned Martha who screams. On they return to Constance, Helmut proves to be both sadistic and domineering. His sadism takes the form of bites on her neck and shoulders and his becoming aroused whenever she is in emotional or physical pain. Martha reaches out tentatively for guidance from her friend Marianne, but is unable to explain Helmut’s behavior. Marianne in any case is not much of a help.

Helmut insists that they move out of Martha’s childhood home so that they can start anew. Without consulting her, he arranges for her to leave her job; he works at changing her musical tastes; he insists on her reading and memorizing an engineering text related to his work; he tries controlling her contact with the outside world; finally he has the telephone disconnected and does not allow her to leave the house anymore. Martha submits to her husband will with increasing reluctance. His violent sexuality is not stopped by her hysterical acts of resistance. When she tries to please him with some spontaneous gesture of giving, such as his favorite dinner or a new hairdo, she is ridiculed for her foolishness. Helmut frustrates Martha’s hopes at every turn. She wishes to start a family but her husband refuses to have children that can be deranged like Martha’s mother. After much begging Helmut allows her to have a pet cat, but shortly afterwards she finds the cat dead.

One day, Martha finds Helmut waiting at home for her and he announces that he has a present for her in the bedroom. She interprets this as his intending to kill her. She races out and runs away, ultimately ending up looking for help with Mr. Kaiser a friend and colleague who she had trained at the library. He agrees to take her for a ride. She has become so paranoid, now, that she imagines that the car behind them is Helmut in pursuit. She grabs the wheel of the vehicle that she and Kaiser are in, causing the car to crash. Martha wakes up in the hospital and soon learns that Kaiser died in the accident and that she herself will be paralyzed for life in her lower body. She is told not to worry, however. Helmut is not the kind of man to abandon her in need. Helmut takes Martha out the hospital in her wheel chair.

Cast

• Margit Carstensen - Martha
• Karlheinz Böhm - Helmut Salomon
• Gisela Fackelde – Martha’s mother
• Peter Chatel – Mr. Kaiser
• Adrian Hoven - Martha’s father
• Barbara Valentin - Marianne
• Ingrid Caven - Ilse

Production

Martha was filmed in 1973 immediately prior to the shooting of Fear Eats the Soul but broadcast after the latter's theatrical release. It was shot in the summer of 1973, during the last three months of a year long break while filming Effi Briest.^[1] It was produced by WDR at a cost of approximately 500.000 DM.^[1] Fassbinder had more than his usual budget for the making of Martha and this allowed him to film the Italian scenes and to incorporate an elaborate camera style with some creative visual effects like the circular pan, when Martha and Helmut first cross paths in Rome. Originally made for German television Martha was shot in 16 mm and broadcast on ARD television on May 28 1974.^[2] The film was restored and has its theatrical premiere in 35 mm at the Venice Film Festival in September 1994 and was released in Germany on 18 November 1994.^[2]

DVD release

The film was released on Region 1 DVD in the U.S.A. on 13 April 2004 in German with English subtitles. The extras include the documentary Fassbinder in Hollywood. A Region 2 release followed in 2007 as part of a boxset.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Watson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, p. 168
2. ^ ^{a b} Watson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, p. 297

Bibliography

• Braad Thomsen, Christian Fassbinder: Life and Work of a Provocative Genius , University of Minnesota Press, 2004, ISBN 0816643644
• Watson, Wallace Steadman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Film as Private and Public Art, University of South Carolina Press, 1996, ISBN 1570030790

External links

• Martha at the Internet Movie Database