(Extreme spoiler to The Marriage of Maria Braun:)
"while Maria, when she finds out the profound extent to which she – self-proclaimed "Mata Hari of the Economic Miracle" – has been not only outfoxed but regarded as nothing more than a sexual commodity duplicitously exchanged between Hermann and Oswald, takes revenge – or is it justice? – into her own hands. Maria's explosive end, in Fassbinder's universe, is no less ironic, and horrible, than Mildred's."


So that's what the ending meant. Creating one's own destiny. And not being subservient to any man.

And then you go and kill yourself when you realize how nice people have been trying to be to you.

The negatives of militant feminism.

Of course they didn't think of her as a sexual commodity at all. And he only kept quiet for her sake, as she was so intent on hiding the truth from him, thinking it would devastate him when actually he was OK with it.

This prewar Visconti sounds interesting.