Tag Archives: Germany

César et Rosalie / Cesar & Rosalie (1972) Claude Sautet, Yves Montand, Romy Schneider, Sami Frey, Drama, Romance

Cesar et Rosalie (1972)
Rosalie is amicably divorced, dividing her time between her mother’s house, with her siblings and small daughter, and César’s. He’s self made, a scrap iron king, outgoing, amiable, in love with her. Enter David, an artist and Rosalie’s flame before her marriage. In a quiet, brooding way, he seeks to reclaim Rosalie. César’s jealous outbursts and attempts at cunning backfire and send Rosalie into David’s arms. César keeps trying: he buys Rosalie’s childhood seaside vacation home as a gift, wins her back, then must ask David to join them so Rosalie will be happy. When Rosalie discovers César and David’s complicity, she again asserts her freedom, leaving the men alone together.
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Toto le héros / Toto the Hero (1991) Jaco Van Dormael, Michel Bouquet, Mireille Perrier, Jo De Backer, Comedy, Drama

Toto le heros (1991)
Thomas and Alfred were born around the same time; a fire in the nursery had nurses scrambling to save the newborns. Because he felt that he deserved Alfred’s good fortune at being born into a wealthy family, Thomas conceives the idea that he and Alfred were switched at birth, and he can’t help seeing that his unhappiness should be Alfred’s, from the loss of his sister to his inability to have a relationship with the woman Evelyne. So, as his life is ending, he formulates a plan of revenge against his bitter enemy, his lifetime adversary, the man who stole his existence.
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Die Unberührbare / No Place to Go (2000) Oskar Roehler, Hannelore Elsner, Vadim Glowna, Jasmin Tabatabai, Drama

Die Unberuhrbare (2000)
Flanders, a famous female author, travels 1989 after the fall of the Berlin wall into the German capitol. She is deeply depressed of the events because she saw the communistic states as a very good thing that has now ended. In the joy of these days she finds no person to understand her, so she has to travel back to Munich. After meeting several people, known and unknown, it seems as if there will be no way to go.
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Messer im Kopf / Knife in the Head (1979) Reinhard Hauff, Bruno Ganz, Angela Winkler, Hans Christian Blech, Drama

Messer im Kopf (1979)
One night when seeking his estranged wife, Hoffmann goes to the youth center where she works. The police are there rounding up radicals who frequent the center – Hoffmann runs into the building and ends up being shot in the head. He awakens with brain trauma, partially paralyzed and unable to speak. The police accuse him of stabbing an officer; the radicals herald him as an innocent victim of police brutality. During his slow recovery at the hospital, Hoffmann must piece together his life and struggle to remember the events of that night.
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Stalingrad (1993) Joseph Vilsmaier, Dominique Horwitz, Thomas Kretschmann, Sebastian Rudolph, Drama, War

Stalingrad (1993)
“Stalingrad” follows the progress of a German Platoon through the brutal fighting of the Battle of Stalingrad. After having half their number wiped out and after being placed under the command of a sadistic Captain, the Lieutenant of the platoon leads his men to desert. The men of the platoon attempt to escape from the city which is now surrounded by the Soviet Army.
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Schachnovelle / Brainwashed (1960) Gerd Oswald, Curd Jürgens, Claire Bloom, Hansjörg Felmy, Drama

Schachnovelle (1960)
In 1938 Austria shortly after the Nazi occupation, a prominent Viennese intellectual, Werner von Basil, is arrested for smuggling art treatures out of the country and imprisoned by the Gestapo in a hotel room without any mental sustence of any kind to break him down to make him talk while a young ballerina, named Irene Adreny whom is the lover of the SS officer Berger playing mind games on von Basil, tries to intervene and help the poor intellectual keep his mind intact.
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Un amore a Roma / Love in Rome (1960) Dino Risi, Mylène Demongeot, Elsa Martinelli, Peter Baldwin, Drama, Romance

Un amore a Roma (1960)
Stormy love between young writer of a noble decayed family and a lazy amoral starlet. Between arguments and reconciliations, jealousies and acts of infidelity, the relation between Marcello and the femme fatale-ish heroine, Anna (played by luscious French starlet Mylene Demongeot), seems not to have future. Marcello says he wants to remain free but – deep inside – wants a traditional fiancée and wife while Anna, as an aspirant actress, is of a free and rebellious nature, not very tilted with sentimental attachments. He gradually understands that he could never have her and be her only man.
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L’ingorgo: Una storia impossibile / Traffic Jam (1979) Luigi Comencini, Alberto Sordi, Annie Girardot, Fernando Rey, Drama

L'ingorgo Una storia impossibile (1979)
A tremendous congestion hit the Roma highway ring. The biggest traffic jam ever seen endures for more than 36 hours. People blocked in their cars react at the beginning normally. But the more the time advance the more we are witness of personal dramas, hysteric reactions and more. All the episodes are linked like one only plot. Cars and their hosts are a microcosm of stories part of a major universe: the congestion.
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Rembrandt’s J’Accuse…! (2008) Peter Greenaway, Martin Freeman, Eva Birthistle, Jodhi May, Documentary, Mystery

Rembrandt's J'Accuse...! (2008)
An ‘essayistic’ documentary in which Greenaway’s fierce criticism of today’s visual illiteracy is argued by means of a forensic search of Rembrandt’s Nightwatch. Greenaway explains the background, the context, the conspiracy, the murder and the motives of all its thirty-four painted characters who have conspired to kill for their combined self-advantage. Greenaway leads us through Rembrandt’s paintings into seventeenth-century Amsterdam. He paints a world that is democratic in principle, but is almost entirely ruled by twelve families. The notion exists of these regents as charitable and compassionate entities. However, reality was different.
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Die verliebte Firma / The Company’s in Love (1932) Max Ophüls, Gustav Fröhlich, Anny Ahlers, Lien Deyers, Comedy

Die verliebte Firma (1932)
The story follows a movie crew who is filming a musical in a small and idyllic alpine village. After their temperamental leading lady drops out of the film, they decide to replace her with the village’s young post office clerk Gretl, who returns to Berlin with them. There she has to struggle with the movie’s all-male crew, who all try to woo and win her.
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Die Niklashauser Fart / The Niklashausen Journey (1970) Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Fengler

Die Niklashauser Fart (1970)
Can a small group of people start a proletarian revolution, asks the “Black Monk” in a leather jacket. The medieval shepherd, Hans Boehm, claims to have been called by the Virgin Mary to create a revolt against the church and the landowners. The “Black Monk” suggests that he would have more success if he dressed up Johanna and had her appear as the Virgin Mary.
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Sterne / Stars (1959) Konrad Wolf

Sterne (1959)
Bulgaria, 1943. A train carrying Greek Jews is bound for the Auschwitz extermination camp and stops over in a small town in southwest Bulgaria. The school is converted into camp. Passing by the barbed-wire fence, the the Nazi army sergeant Walter meets a young Jewess called Ruth and falls in love with her. His buddy, Lieutenant Kurt, who is in charge of the camp, has her brought to a party in the pub. There Walter has a chance to talk with her. Having grown indifferent to people suffering, he is now awakened to unsuspected emotions and experiences a change of heart. When he next meets the girl, Walter convinces her that Nazism and war. Her fate and love make anew man of him. He gives a package of medicine for the inmates of the camp to Petk, a Bulgarian antifascist worker, but the German find them and destroy them. Walter is making arrangements for Ruth’s escape. He asks Petko to hide her but it is too late. The train has left.
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