Seven mini-stories of adultery: “Funeral Possession,” a wayward widow at her husband’s funeral; “Amateur Night,” angry wife becomes streetwalker out of revenge; “Two Against One,” seemingly prudish girl turns out otherwise; “Super Simone,” wife vainly attempts to divert her over-engrossed writer husband; “At the Opera,” a battle over a supposedly exclusive dress; “Suicides,” a death pact; “Snow,” would-be suitor is actually a private detective hired by jealous husband.
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Tag Archives: german
Goya – oder Der arge Weg der Erkenntnis / Goya, or the Hard Way to Enlightenment (1971) Konrad Wolf, Donatas Banionis, Olivera Katarina, Fred Düren, Tatyana Lolova, Drama
As a painter in the court of King Carlos IV, Goya – played by the great Lithuanian actor Donatas Banionis (The Red Tent, Solaris) – has attained wealth and reputation. He believes in King and Church, yet he is also a Spaniard who dearly loves his people.
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Fluchtweg St. Pauli – Großalarm für die Davidswache / Hot Traces of St. Pauli (1971) Wolfgang Staudte, Horst Frank, Christiane Krüger, Heinz Reincke, Thriller
The dangerous violent criminal Willy Jensen flees from a prison in Hamburg and seeks shelter at his brother Heinz’ apartment. Heinz, an honest taxi-driver, believes in his innocence and helps him – until Willy kills another man in a robbery. After an argument Willy takes his wife Vera, who now lives with Heinz, as hostage on his further flight from the police.
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Wiener Blut / Viennese Spirit (1942) Willi Forst, Willy Fritsch, Maria Holst, Hans Moser, Comedy, Music
Willy Forst of course is famous for looking back on the ‘old Vienna’ in a mixture of nostalgia and gentle irony in his films, but “Wiener Blut” may be the one which most highlights the question of what makes the ‘true’ Viennese style. We get a first answer right at the beginning, when Forst himself masqueraded as a medieval alchemist mixes the ingredients for the brew of this film, which are ‘humour’, ‘frivolity’, ‘heart’, ‘history’ and most of all, ‘music’. And the film gets this mixture right.
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Die Flucht / The Flight (1977) Roland Gräf, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Jenny Gröllmann, Erika Pelikowsky, Drama, Thriller
When Dr. Schmith’s proposal for international research on infant mortality is rejected, he decides to leave East Germany and strikes a deal with an escape agency that promises him a leading position at a children’s hospital in West Germany.
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The Friend of Friends / Die Freunde der Freunde (2002) Dominik Graf, Matthias Schweighöfer, Sabine Timoteo, Florian Stetter, Drama, Romance
Set in the boarding school milieu, the film depicts the meeting of shy Gregor and mysterious Billie. Billie has a son, her husband is in jail. Arthur, Gregor’s friend, is a serial Lothario, forever unfaithful to his girlfriend Pia. Both Arthur and Billie have had a similar mystical experience related to someone’s death.
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Zombies from Outer Space (2012) Martin Faltermeier, Judith Gorgass, Florian Kiml, Siegfried Foster, Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi
Bavaria in the late fifties. Someday the life of Maria, a young girl, changes all of a sudden when she finds the body of a woman. The scientist Dr. Robert Hoelzlein and the American Captain John Welles, deployed in Bavaria, are commissioned to solve the apparently obvious murder case.
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Ich war Jack Mortimer (1935) Carl Froelich, Anton Walbrook, Eugen Klöpfer, Sybille Schmitz, Drama, Thriller
The jealous star conductor Montemayor knows that his beautiful younger wife, Winifred, is cheating on him with an American named Jack Mortimer. After the concert rehearsal, he takes a taxi to the train station, sees Mortimer and shoots him at an intersection from the backseat of his taxi.
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Träumerei (1944) Harald Braun, Hilde Krahl, Mathias Wieman, Friedrich Kayßler, Drama, Musical
Clara Wieck meets the talented Robert Schumann in her father’s Leipzig music school. And entirely against her father’s wishes, who thinks only of her future artistic career, she falls in love with Robert. The final break comes after a successful tour as a pianist at the side of Franz Liszt.
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Matto regiert / Madness Rules (1947) Leopold Lindtberg, Heinrich Gretler, Heinz Woester, Friedrich Braun, Crime, Drama
If any one man is responsible for the rejuvenation of the postwar Swiss film industry, that man was director Leopold Lindtberg. Matto Regiert (Madness Rules) was co-adapted for the screen by Lindtberg from a novel by Friedrich Glauser. Heinrich Gretler stars as Police Constable Studer, the hero of several of Glauser’s most popular works.
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