The Stationmaster’s Wife

Produced in two parts for German television and released theatrically with 90 minutes shorn, Fassbinder’s account of a Bavarian railway stationmaster (Kurt Raab) and his unfaithful, manipulative wife, Hanni (Elisabeth Trissenaar), was adapted from Oskar Maria Graf’s 1931 novel Bolwieser: The Novel of a Husband. With echoes of Madame Bovary, the story follows Hanni’s affairs and ruination of her husband’s life as a reaction to provincial emptiness; the gullibility and fecklessness of civil servant played by Raab also emblematizes the breakdown of order that ushered in the Third Reich. Featuring Udo Kier as a hairdresser who dallies with Hanni. Longtime Fassbinder collaborator Raab, who also contributed to the set design, had a falling out with the director during production and the two never worked together again.