Hanna Schygulla won the best actress prize at Berlin for her work in this romantic drama, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's most avowedly commercial film. The first instalment of his celebrated postwar trilogy, it owes much to the glossy 1950s melodramas of Douglas Sirk and works just as well as a soap opera as it does as a socio-political treatise. However, it's what lies beneath the surface that fascinates. The choices Maria makes for survival during her husband's prolonged absences clearly reflect those made by Germany in the post-Hitler era, and Fassbinder evidently disapproves of Maria's (and the nation's) notion of paradise postponed. Accessible, yet also complex and ambiguous.

Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone.