When I was at university in Montreal in the 1980s, my friends and I frequented the repertory cinemas in our leisure time, gorging on European films. I remember Fitzcaraldo, by Werner Herzog, starring Klaus Kinski as a man determined to bring culture to the Amazon jungle. Kinski’s daughter Nastassja appeared as a platinum blonde peep-show hostess in one of the most original movies of the decade – Paris, Texas, by Wim Wenders. We were obsessed with German cinema, if not always rightly informed. One summer a friend returned from visiting relatives in Germany insisting that Margareta von Trotta was a man.
But it was Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his favorite leading lady Hanna Schygulla who captured my imagination. I am still convinced that it is impossible to understand the post-war German trauma or the German psyche without considering Fassbinder. The Marriage of Maria Braun is still probably my favorite movie. In it, Hanna Schygulla plays a louche lady in wartime Berlin who survives with her dignity intact despite the liaisons she leaves in her wake. We watched her in Lili Marleen, but it was in the role of Maria Braun that her sleepy sexiness, intelligence, and grace shimmered most. My favorite line: “I love my husband, but I’m very fond of Bill.” Now when I watch it in German and hear Schygulla’s warm, earthy voice, I am amazed how harmless the quote sounds.
We watched the movies with English subtitles. None of us spoke a word of German. We read Günter Grass, Thomas Mann, and Hermann Hesse in translation. As far as I remember, none of us had ever even been to Europe. But when I first came to Germany, Fassbinder’s films had so thoroughly informed my perception of the country that I half expected to find a society of gay filmmakers in leathers and nightclub singers in corsets and garters. I was more than a little disappointed to find instead stern housewives in aprons sweeping their stoops. Maybe I was in the wrong city. Maybe I would have found traces of Fassbinder in Munich and Maria Braun in Berlin.
After university I went to China where I met my husband, a German. As university lecturers, we lived on campus in Beijing, and took our meals in the cafeteria. One hot summer day I appeared at lunch with my hair pinned up in a loose bun, wearing a floral skirt and olive silk blouse. Peter said, “You look like a woman from a novel by Fontane.” He pronounced Fontane to rhyme with Montana. Maybe he was thinking of Hanna Schygulla as Effi Briest in the film by Fassbinder. Had I known that particular Fassbinder film at the time, I would have been flattered.
