At first I was anticipating an attack on yellow journalism akin to the same year's 'Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum'; but to me this film - with its title evoking Pudovkin's 'Mother', Piel Jutzi's 'Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück' and of course Brecht's Mother Courage - became more and more abstract and stylised as it progressed.
The film's pretty poster-paint colours and Brigitte Mira's depiction of stoicism in the face of adversity considerably soften the impact of what could have been an extremely harsh neorealist tract on the systematic abuse suffered by the downtrodden proletariat; and there are quite a few laughs. Very little actually seems to faze the put-upon Emma Küsters, who after receiving what would have been the shattering news that the circumstances of her late husband's death means the loss of her pension simply continues with equanimity her frugal existence assembling plugs in her dining room. Her treatment by a cynical journalist, well-meaning but ineffectual communists and - finally - violent nihilists suggests Fassbinder's mounting cynicism about the motives and effectiveness of the King Logs and King Storks that he had so far encountered offering solutions to society's ills, the ironic title effectively declaring the chances of the Mother Küsters of this world ever receiving a break in this world being zero.
