This made-for-tv melodrama stars Margit Carstensen as the eponymous Martha, a librarian who meets her future husband Helmut (Karlheinz Böhm) on vacation abroad. Once married, Helmut’s domineering and sadistic behavior leads Martha to believe that her new husband is trying to kill her. Featuring the most famous tracking shot in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s oeuvre, this New German Cinema gem recalls paranoid women’s films from the 1940s and Douglas Sirk’s 1950s melodramas. Content note: depictions of emotional and physical abuse. Screened in German with English subtitles.

This event is part of the monthly German Film Series and is sponsored by the University of Michigan Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and the Max Kade House. See https://lsa.umich.edu/german for additional dates and films.

Each month, a German faculty, lecturer, or graduate student introduces and screens a different German-language film. Dinner will be provided at 6:30 pm, followed by the film at 7 pm.

Free and open to the public.