About

I find women more interesting. They don't interest me just because they're oppressed – it's not that simple. The societal conflicts in women are more interesting because on the one hand women are oppressed, but in my opinion they also provoke this oppression as a result of their position in society, and in turn use it as a terror tactic. – Fassbinder

The title character in this brutal dissection of a bourgeois marriage takes her name from Martha Hyer, a star of 1950's Hollywood melodramas. But the Martha here (played by Margit Carstensen) is a meek, virginal librarian, vacationing in Rome with her domineering father. When he dies suddenly, Martha is released of one patriarchal hold only to find herself under the spell of another: her swift marriage to a wealthy, magnetic civil engineer (Peeping Tom's Karlheinz Böhm). Initially taken with Helmet's dominant personality, Martha accepts his insults and humiliation of her with no question. But as Helmet enacts a program of control that encompasses everything from Martha's taste in music to her diet and ultimately her entire body, Martha's submission turns her into a prisoner of Helmet's sadism. Fassbinder's baroque abstraction veers from social comedy to psychological horror with deftness, anchored by the forceful performances of Carstensen and Böhm.

M | Mature themes