About

Please note: due to an unforeseen rights dispute, our screening of Bolwieser (The Stationmaster's Wife) has been cancelled. A free screening of Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn) 1978 will replace this screening. We apologise for any disappointment this cancellation may cause.

Love is the best, most insidious, most effective instrument of social repression. – Fassbinder

Based on a 1931 novel by German author Oskar Maria Graf (who published a letter declaring "Burn me!" when the Nazis did not include his work in their first book burning), Bolwieser takes place in a provincial Bavarian burg just before the rise of Adolf Hitler. Xaver Bolwieser (Kurt Raab) is a passive railway stationmaster, infatuated with his domineering wife Hanni (Elisabeth Trissenaar). She, however, is bored in the marriage and sets about on the romantic degradation of Bolwieser. Hanni turns him into a cuckold for the town's derision, embarking on a series of affairs that spell Bolwieser's own ruination. Fassbinder and his long-suffering collaborator Kurt Raab had a falling out while shooting Bolwieser, making the film the last of their 31 collaborations. Bolwieser was produced as a two-part miniseries for West German television, although it was also released theatrically in a truncated (but still legitimate) version which takes the title The Stationmaster's Wife.

Ages 15+