This is the best of the 43 films that Rainer Werner Fassbinder made; his most successful at least. He was one of the leading directors in the New Germany after WWII.<br /><br />Hanna Schygulla was magnificent as the cold, calculating Maria Bruan, who lost her husband to the War, found him after she took an American soldier as a lover, lost him again after he went to jail for her, and found him agin at the end. Her day and a half marriage before he disappeared was longer than their time together at the end.<br /><br />Such is life. Things come and go, and you do the best you can. You can give up or adjust you way of thinking to survive. Even though Maria adjusted her thinking and did what she had to do, she never stopped loving Hermann, which makes the end such a tragedy.<br /><br />Excellent drama.