1979 Gottfried Knapp wrote that the director gave her a magnificent opportunity to display her acting talent, and that her character, emotions, charm and energy had an enormous effect. The film and Hanna Schygulla were also praised by foreign film critics. In The New Yorker, David Denby called Schygulla "an improbable cross between Dietrich and Harlow". Schygulla, too, was the runner-up for the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress that year, losing to Sally Field for Norma Rae. François Truffaut commented in 1980 in the Cahiers du cinéma that with this film Fassbinder "has broken out of the ivory tower of the cinephiles", and that the film is "an original work of epic and poetic qualities" influenced by Godard's Contempt, Brecht, Wedekind and Douglas Sirk and particularly touching is his idea of a man who looks on men and on women with equal fondness. The French film critic Jean de Baroncelli discussed the allegorical qualities of the film in Le Monde on 19 January 1980 and wrote that the film presents Maria Braun with a "shining simplicity" as an allegory of Germany, "a character, that wears flashy and expensive clothes, but has lost her soul". Roger Ebert added the film to his Great Movies collection. The New York Times placed the film on its Best 1000 Movies Ever list. Commercial success and aftermath The Marriage of Maria Braun was not only a critical, but also a commercial success. From its release until October 1979 more than 900,000 tickets were sold in West Germany, and was shown for up to 20 weeks in some film theaters. In West Germany alone the film grossed more than $3 million. In the same year of its German release the distribution deals for 25 countries were negotiated. In August 1981 the film was the first film by Fassbinder to be shown in East German film theaters. In the United States, the film was the highest-grossing German film ever and grossed $2.6 million. The film was not the official German submission to the 51st Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. Instead Hans W. Geißendörfer's The Glass Cell was chosen to be the official German submission. Almost one year later the film was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 37th Golden Globe Awards, but this success was overshadowed by the success of Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin