The film stars Hanna Schygulla as Maria, whose marriage to the soldier Hermann remains unfulfilled due to World War II and his postwar imprisonment.

Maria adapts to the realities of postwar Germany and becomes a wealthy industrialist's mistress while staying true to her love for Hermann.

To the surprise of Oswald and his lawyer, Senkenberg, she displays a ruthless instinct for business, closing deals with her sexual wiles and taking hard-line stances against labor movements.

As a radio announcer excitedly describes the German football team's victory in the World Cup, Maria and Hermann die in the explosion.

In August 1977, Märthesheimer and his partner Pea Fröhlich, a professor of psychology and pedagogics, were commissioned to write a screenplay based on the draft.

[6] Fengler planned to start shooting the film in the first half of 1978, as Fassbinder's next project Berlin Alexanderplatz was scheduled for June.

Due to Schneider's alcohol problems, fickleness, and demands, the role was then given to Hanna Schygulla, her first collaboration with Fassbinder in several years.

[11] Yves Montand also showed interest in the film, but wanted to play Hermann and not, as Fassbinder and Fengler suggested, Oswald.

Albatros Filmproduktion contributed only 42,500 DM, the public broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk 566,000, the German Federal Film Board 400,000, and the distributor 150,000.

[14] To sustain this schedule he consumed large quantities of cocaine, supplied by the production manager Harry Baer and the actor Peter Berling.

[12] The biographer Thomas Elsaesser called the production of the film "one of Fassbinder's least happy experiences" and Berlin "one of the decisive self-destructive episodes in Rainer's life".

[11] While also preparing for the production of Berlin Alexanderplatz, Fassbinder worked with film editor Juliane Lorenz on the editing and post-production of The Marriage of Maria Braun.

The screening, attended by Horst Wendlandt, Sam Waynberg, Karl Spiehs, Günter Rohrbach, and Filmverlag der Autoren's majority shareholder Rudolf Augstein, among others, was a success.

It was published in several weekly installments in the magazine Der Stern over three months beginning in March, increasing public interest in the film.

In the weekly newspaper Die Zeit Hans-Christoph Blumenberg called it "the most accessible (and thus most commercial) and mature work of the director".

[20] Karena Niehoff wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that The Marriage of Maria Braun "is a charming and even amusing film, at the same time extraordinarily artful, artificial and full of twists and turns".

In the Süddeutsche Zeitung Gottfried Knapp wrote that Fassbinder gave her a magnificent opportunity to display her talent, and that her character, emotions, charm, and energy had an enormous effect.

François Truffaut wrote in 1980 in Cahiers du cinéma that with this film Fassbinder "has broken out of the ivory tower of the cinephiles", that the film is "an original work of epic and poetic qualities" influenced by Godard's Contempt, Brecht, Wedekind, and Douglas Sirk, and that its idea of a man who looks on men and women with equal fondness is particularly touching.

[21] The French critic Jean de Baroncelli discussed the film's allegorical qualities in Le Monde, writing that it presents Maria with "shining simplicity" as an allegory of Germany, "a character who wears flashy and expensive clothes but has lost her soul".

He received a financing agreement for one of his favorite projects, based on Pitigrilli's novel Cocaine, and was able to increase the budget for Berlin Alexanderplatz.

In the course of legal proceedings Eckelkamp was ordered in 1986 to disclose the film's finances to the newly founded Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation.