Editor Reviews:

Amazon.com:
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film begins with young Effi Briest (Hanna Schygulla) recounting how her mother, though in love with a young man, married an older one with an established position. That young man--now older and well-off--comes back to their town and asks for Effi's hand in marriage, which her parents grant. But gradually her husband's aloof behavior leads her into an affair with a handsome soldier--a brief affair, but one that comes back to haunt Effi when she thinks she's left it far behind. The gorgeous black-and-white cinematography of Effi Briest captures the stark, stratified world of Effi's life; Schygulla's delicate performance expresses her sad and tender heart. Though the movie is perhaps too tied to the slow rhythms of the novel from which it was adapted, its elegant style and meticulous analysis of a rigid and hypocritical society has won great acclaim. --Bret Fetzer

Rating : - Domesticity against freedom!
The stifling domesticity of the german society is superbly adapted by Rainer Werner Fassbinder supported by the novel of Theodor Fontane.
A teenager (17) tries to escape from a hell marriage with a count too much older than her , when she decides to establish a love affair with a soldier.
Once more the simultaneous views with other similar themes such as Madame Bovary , Anna Karenina or Tess is the best proof that the prejuices of the european society didn't change too much . The adultery is the only way : and the prize you 've to pay deserves in much the masquerade of trying to convince herself and the society an imaginary hapiness.
We know this story believe or not , still lives : the situations may be different but the meaning essence is real. There are so many unhappy couples not necesarily married who prefer to keep united instead to give a jump to a unknown universe . They prefer the security before the emotional independence .
A latinoamerican writer told once : * The love when it doesn't exist , you need to invent it *.
Fassbinder seems to walk in the border of the soap melodram , but it never falls in it . This is the first movie who shows the huge admiration felt by Fassbinder through Douglas Sirk.
Warning for instance the unexpected casualities among these two brilliant film makers. Both of two lived in a febrile existence and certainly lived faster his biologic time . Sirk made twenty nine films in just sixteen years : while Fassbinder made thiry six pictures in eighteen years.
However Fasssbinder was a more human film maker : he never made a judgement about any of his characters : he loved them instead his faults : the humanity and the huge perception of the female soul is supported in an interview given for the lovely and gifted actress Hanna Shygulla where she stated that they never agree about the tragic pathos who loaded the soul of Fassbinder , she thought that it was possible in a couple , go beyond all the circunstances and deserve the triumph, while he always denied it. She afirmed that this point of view was due the homosexual condition of Fassbinder.
This film is a gem of thousand carats. 140 min run before the viewer without you realize.
This work is an artistic triumph! and one of my top favorites of this german film maker.
After you watch it , you'll remember this sentence of Erich Fromm : The man has achieved undeniable technological progress but emotionally , he still keeps in the age stone.