"Actor: Klaus Löwitsch"

• The Marriage of Maria Braun Blu-ray | Blu Ray | (04/04/2016) from £16.98   |  Saving you £3.00 (20.01%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Rainer Werner Fassbinder's penultimate film of the seventies was also his most successful. Popular with audiences and critics alike, among them Roger Ebert and François Truffaut, The Marriage of Maria Braun finally provided its director with the international breakthrough he had craved for so long. Maria Braun marries a young soldier amid the Allied bombing raids of World World II the day before he must return to the Russian front. Awaiting his return in 1945, she is informed of his death and must endure and navigate the post-war years alone. Mirroring the German Wirtschaftswunder (˜economic miracle'), she determinedly rises to prosperity as a self-made woman. Centred on an astonishing performance from Fassbinder regular Hanna Schygulla in the lead role, The Marriage of Maria Braun took over four million Deutschmarks in its home country and made over a million dollars in the US. Such success proved influential too without it we would likely never have seen Helma Sanders-Brahms's Germany, Pale Mother or Edgar Reitz's epic Heimat. Special Edition Features: Brand new 4K restoration from original camera negatives High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation Original uncompressed PCM mono audio Optional English subtitles Life, Love & Celluloid, a 1998 feature-length documentary on Fassbinder, written and directed by his regular editor, Juliane Lorenz Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1977, a candid 30-minute interview with the director The Fassbinder Family, an all-new featurette detailing the actors who worked with Fassbinder time and again throughout his career

• Despair | Blu Ray | (23/04/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Chocolate, cuckoldry and doppelganger delusion abound in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's stunning English language adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov interwar novel. The chocolate business has been good to Russian exile Hermann. He enjoys the good life with his beautiful wife Lydia. But Hermann is addicted to out-of-body experiences and when he meets a tramp on a business trip, he develops an insane plan of escape. Featuring international stars Dirk Bogarde (Death in Venice) and Andra Ferrol (La Grande Bouffe) and adapted by British dramatist Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love), Fassbinder’s Despair is a vivid off-kilter masterwork set against the background of the Nazis in ascendance. This fully HD restored version of Fassbinder’s ‘most optimistic film’ is accompanied by exclusive bonus material. Extras: Documentary “The Cinema and It’ Double” (70 minutes) Image gallery

• Despair | DVD | (23/04/2012) from £20.23   |  Saving you £-4.24 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Chocolate, cuckoldry and doppelganger delusion abound in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's stunning English language adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov interwar novel. The chocolate business has been good to Russian exile Hermann. He enjoys the good life with his beautiful wife Lydia. But Hermann is addicted to out-of-body experiences and when he meets a tramp on a business trip, he develops an insane plan of escape. Featuring international stars Dirk Bogarde (Death in Venice) and Andra Ferrol (La Grande Bouffe) and adapted by British dramatist Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love), Fassbinder’s Despair is a vivid off-kilter masterwork set against the background of the Nazis in ascendance. This DVD version of Fassbinder’s ‘most optimistic film’ is accompanied by exclusive bonus material. Extras: Documentary “The Cinema and It’ Double” (70 minutes) Image gallery