In Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s MARTHA (1973), Margit Carstensen (The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant) plays the title role, a middle-aged virgin whose powerful father has recently passed away. Locked in a nightmarish vision of a matriarchy where her sisters marry men at the drop of a hat and self-worth is measured by the size of a wedding ring, shy Martha doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself – until she meets Helmut, the man of her dreams.

Prim Martha, like some kind of twisted Cinderella, has little ammunition to resist him, for not only does he like the same dinners as father, but he’s everything her sisters would have wanted for themselves. And this is how Martha exists – making decisions based on what is desired by others. Eventually poor Martha ends up in a wheelchair, where she can be manipulated more easily. But the question is, could she really have resisted her fate? Wasn’t the society that created Martha already in place, long before she met her Helmut? Fassbinder creates another dark tale, laughingly critical with its operatic stylization, of the dynamic between a man and a woman, and how freedom has become, or always was, an impossibility. Fassbinder spares no one, for he makes it clear that even Martha is a victim who has chosen her victimhood for the comfort of middle class existence.