Tag Archives: german subtitles

“Who are you?” the dwarf Mordecai (Billy Curtis) asks Clint Eastwood’s Stranger at the end of Eastwood’s 1973 western High Plains Drifter. “You know,” he replies, before vanishing into the desert heat waves near California’s Mono Lake. Adapting the amorally enigmatic and violent Man With No Name persona from his films with Sergio Leone, Eastwood’s second film as director begins as his drifter emerges from that heat haze and rides into the odd lakefront settlement of Lago. Lago’s residents are not particularly friendly, but once the Stranger shows his skills as a gunfighter, they beg him to defend them against a group of outlaws (led by Eastwood regular Geoffrey Lewis) who have a score to settle with the town. He agrees to train them in self-defense, but Mordecai and innkeeper’s wife Sarah Belding (Verna Bloom) soon suspect that the Stranger has another, more personal agenda. By the time the Stranger makes the corrupt community paint their town red and re-name it “Hell,” it is clear that he is not just another gunslinger. With its fragmented flashbacks and bizarre, austere locations, High Plains Drifter’s stylistic eccentricity lends an air of unsettling eeriness to its revenge story, adding an uncanny slant to Eastwood’s antiheroic westerner. Seminal western hero John Wayne was so offended by Eastwood’s harshly revisionist view of a frontier town that he wrote to Eastwood, objecting that this was not what the spirit of the West was all about. Eastwood’s audience, however, was not so put off, and an exhibitors’ poll named Eastwood a top box-office draw for 1973.
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Sidney Lumet directed this film version of Peter Shaffer’s dramatic play, transforming theatrical symbolism into cinematic realism. Richard Burton received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his performance as Martin Dysert, a psychiatrist determined to unravel the disturbed mind of Alan Strang (Peter Firth), a young stableboy. In a fit of rage, Strang has blinded a stable of six horses. The court then assigns Dysert to probe the young man’s mind in order to understand why he committed such a violent act. But the doctor, who is battling demons of his own, wonders if he can save the boy–and whether saving him at all is the right thing to do. Joan Plowright stands out as Dora Strang, the young boy’s mother.
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Ford is prison escapee Dr. Richard Kimble, a Chicago surgeon falsely convicted of killing his wife and determined to prove his innocence by leading his pursuers to the one-armed man who actually committed the crime. Jones is Sam Gerard, an unrelenting bloodhound of a U.S. Marshal. They are hunted and hunter. And as directed by Andrew Davis, their nonstop chase has one exhilarating speed: all-out. So catch him if you can. And catch an 11-on-a-scale-of-10 train wreck (yes, the train is real), a plunge down a waterfall, a cat-and-mouse jaunt through a Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade and much more. Better hurry. Kimble doesn’t stay in one place very long!
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A young man, Gabriel Fouquet, arrives in a coastal town in Normandy to visit his daughter, who is staying in a boarding school. He ends up lodging in a guesthouse run by the aged Albert Quentin and his wife Suzanne. To forget his troubles, Gabriel hits the bottle, not realising that the teetotal Albert was once a heavy drinker. Twenty years ago, the latter pledged never to touch alcohol again if he and his wife survived the war. Through his friendship with Gabriel, Albert becomes nostalgic about his past, recalling his time as a sailor on an expedition to China. To drown their sorrows, the two men embark on a drinking binge which quickly gets out of hand…
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France, 1798. In a forest, hunters discover and capture a 12 year old boy who appears to have spent his life living like a wild animal. He is taken to a school for deaf and dumb children in Paris, where is maltreated and used as an object of scientific curiosity. An eminent doctor, Jean Itard, takes an interest in the strange child and resolves to educate him. Little by little, the feral child, whom Itard christens Victor, responds to his benefactor’s patient attempts to civilise him.
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In this sequel to the immensely popular tearjerker LOVE STORY, Ryan O’Neal reprises his role as poor little rich boy Oliver Barrett. This time, Oliver’s in love with someone every bit as wealthy as he is–the recently divorced career woman Marcie Bonwit (Candice Bergen). The two young professionals are perfectly suited for each other yet shy away from commitment due to their respective losses. But as the couple edge closer and closer to a relationship, they begin to once again embrace life and and the possibility of new love.
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Rosalba, a young tourist guide, suffers from a strange ailment: the very least melody sets off in her gesticulation and she beings to dance, as suddenly as uncontrollably. Despite her ruses to hide her eccentricity, this uncontrollable body might well seduce her surprising co-worker, Alain.
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Isa is beaten up after being accused of stealing $50. When his landlord demands the back rent, Isa gets angry and shoots him. The police round up the tenants, but are not suspicious of him. Back in his room, Isa collapses and is helped by his pretty neighbor Meryem, who also pays the $50 when the thugs return. Isa promises to do anything for her, and tells her about his job as a TV extra. Meryem’s husband has left her with her two young children, while he is away working. When her husband returns and beats Meryem up, she asks Isa to kill him.
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Peter is a composer and a likable sad sack who’s devastated when his girlfriend of five years, Sarah Marshall, the star of a cheesy CSI-style crime show, dumps him. He weeps, he rails, he mopes. Finally, his step-brother Brian suggests Hawaii, so Peter heads for a resort on Oahu where, as he’s checking in, he sees Sarah and her new beau, Aldous, a polymorphously perverse English rocker. The weeping and moping start again, until Peter is rescued by Rachel, a thoughtful hotel clerk who invites him to a luau and to hang out. Although he constantly runs into Sarah and Aldous, Peter starts to come alive again. Will Sarah realize what she’s lost, and what about Rachel?
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Bliss – directed by Doris Dörrie and adapted from the short story by Ferdinand von Schirach – recounts the tale of Irina, who leaves her war-torn country to become a prostitute on the streets of Berlin and Kalle, also living in on the streets of the German capital. These two individuals are alone and lost in the world until they are brought together through a chance encounter. As their relationship blossoms, a cataclysmic event threatens to destroy their fledgling love, with Kalle forced to extreme measures in order to preserve their happiness.
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