Tag Archives: Germany

Visible only to those like them and to human children, Damiel and Cassiel are two angels, who have existed even before humankind. Along with several other angels, they currently wander around West Berlin, generally on their own, observing and preserving life, sometimes trying to provide comfort to the troubled, although those efforts are not always successful. Among those they are currently observing are: the cast and crew of a movie – a detective story set in WWII Nazi Germany – which include a sensitive and perceptive Peter Falk; an elderly man named Homer looking for eternal peace; and the troupe of a financially failing circus, which has closed early for the season because of those financial problems. One day, Damiel tells Cassiel that he wants to become human, to feel not only the sensory aspects of physical beings, but also emotional aspects. He embarks on this thought with the full realization that there is no turning back if he decides to do so. His thoughts are largely …
Read More »

In Faraway, So Close! angels watch over the people of Berlin. The world weighs heavily upon these men and women. Their attachment to things diminishes their desire for the invisible. As one angel laments, “It’s so exhausting to love people who run away from us.”
Read More »

Following Shark!, Sam Fuller’s luck getting films funded didn’t change much; Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street is Fuller’s only film of the ’70s. Technically, it’s not even a proper film, but if you didn’t know it was made as an episode of the German cop series Tatort (which is amazingly still running), you’d never have guessed it. Where American television stifled Fuller’s creative spirit and made him conform to the norms of whatever show he was working on, the producers of Tatort allowed Fuller the freedom to make whatever he wanted. He took this freedom and ran with it, crafting a unique, exciting picture unlike anything else in the Fuller catalog. Part crime thriller, part farcical comedy, Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street is a hidden gem in Fuller’s filmography.
Read More »

Der Herrscher (The Sovereign) was based on Before Sunset, a play by Gerhart Hauptmann. The great Emil Jannings stars as Mathias Clausen, a self-made businessman who is forced to do a great deal of soul-searching when his wife unexpectedly dies. Determining to start life anew, he falls in love with his secretary Inken (Marianne Hoppe) and impulsively takes a vacation to Italy. Clausen’s selfish grown children, not wishing to share their father’s affections – nor his money – with his new wife-to-be, go to court demanding that Clausen be declared mentally incompetent. Upon finding this out, Clausen flies into a rage, leaving the audience to wonder whether or not he really as gone off his trolley.
Read More »

Three girls are arrested under false pretenses and transferred to a small private prison that caters white slaves to rich sheiks.
Read More »

Post WWII yarn about a young GI abducted by the Soviets in West Berlin and hauled off to the East. His recovery gets complicated as Colonel Steve Van Dyke (Peck) tries to sort out the usefulness of informants, spies, bureaucrats, and the abductee’s influential father (Crawford)!
Read More »

After a nasty argument with her boyfriend Carl, young Gaby spontaneously accepts her girlfriend invitation to join her on a vacation to Manila. Her plans to forget about Carl succeed very rapidly as she meets Dr. Andreas Witzig, a young scholar who plans to marry his fiancee on the island. During the following days, Gaby tries her best to convince the man of her dreams to change his mind.
Read More »

Vienna glove-sales-lady Christl falls in love to Czar Alexander. Metternich tries to use this to keep him out of the conferences of the Vienna Congress from 1815.
Read More »

A Chinese detective breaks up a drug smuggling ring and tries to find the “Daffodil Killer.” The drug smugglers had devised the ingenious method of smuggling heroin from Hong Kong in the stems of daffodils.
Read More »

Eine bescheidene Provinz Schauspieler, fast unbekannt, steigt schnell auf die Höhen der Popularität dank seiner Heirat mit einer berühmten Schauspielerin. Sie leben ein glückliches Jahr, bis die physikalischen Eigenschaften zu verlieren, seine Frau aus dem künstlerischen Leben zurückzuziehen hat, während ihr Mann berühmter als je zuvor, Art und Weise der Schauspieler im Film ist. Dieser Abstand Ehe ihm eine schreckliche Reaktion von Reue und Verzweiflung verursachen, die ihm Verzicht auf den Beruf zu vervollständigen geführt, bis schließlich die Krise dank der Anwesenheit seines Sohnes zu überwinden verwaltet.
Read More »