A profile of postwar Germany in the form of an old Joan Crawford-Barbara Stanwyck career-woman soap opera. There is an honest-to-God, blue-blooded "star" performance by Hanna Schygulla and a collection of dresses for this actress that even the estimable Edith Head would have trouble topping. But R.W. Fassbinder has here perhaps let his enthrallment with old Hollywood forms get the better of him, compelling him to carry out the soap-operatic plot at a length and with a patience that will sorely tax the majority of viewers, even if they try periodically to re-charge their waning interest by reminding themselves that this conventional rags-to-riches tale is, after all, a "metaphor" for Germany after Hitler. (1979) — Duncan Shepherd
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