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German Film (5)
BROWSE GERMAN FILMS: Contemporary
German films 1 -
2 - 3 - 4
- 5 - 6
- 7 | New
releases | East German films
German film classics & collections
1 - 2
| German directors &actors
| Documentaries | German
movie soundtracks
Maybe ... Maybe not (US)
/ The Most Desired Man (UK)
/ Der bewegte Mann |
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Comedy (1994)
Director: Sönke Wortmann
Starring: Til Schweiger, Katja Riemann |
SYNOPSIS: This German sex farce
centers on characters who can't get anything "straight."Axel
has slept around one too many times for his girlfriend, Doro,
so she kicks him out of her house. Turning to his gay pal Norbert,
Axel finds a temporary place to live. To her shock, Doro later
learns she is pregnant. But when Doro goes to tell Axel the news,
she finds him in a compromising position with Norbert...
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Europa Europa
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(1990)
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Starring: Marco Hofschneider, René Hofschneider |
REVIEW: This wonderful film
by Polish director Agnieszka Holland (Total
Eclipse), based on an autobiography by Solomon Perel,
concerns a Jewish-German boy who manages to conceal his identity
from the Nazis and ends up a member of their Youth Party. An admirably
full experience, the film is both black comedy and horror show,
with the central character taking the full measure of everyone's
perspective on the war and Nazi crimes.
Review by Tom Keogh
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Heimat 2: A Chronicle
of a Generation / Heimat 2: Chronik einer Jugend |
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Drama (1992)
Director: Edgar Reitz, Robert Busch
Starring: Henry Arnold, Eva Maria Bayerwaltes, Edith Behleit
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DESCRIPTION: This
13-episode, 25-hour saga is the follow-up to the groundbreaking
Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany
of the pioneering German filmmaker Edgar Reitz. Beginning in the
year 1960, Heimat 2 follows Hermann Simon, who leaves
his village of Schabbach to settle in Munich. Over the next 10
years, Hermann becomes a talented musician, falls in love with
an enigmatic cellist, struggles as an acclaimed avant-garde musician,
and marries the girl next door. As in the original Heimat,
this deeply personal tale is set against a backdrop of turbulent
historical times—the decade of the 60s in this case. Hermann,
like many young Germans, is shaped by the political turmoil of
the era, influenced by the artistic explosion in Munich, and bewildered
by the aftermath of such a tumultuous decade. Epic yet intimate,
entertaining yet bittersweet, Heimat 2 offers a riveting
portrait of a generation caught up in the most amazing decade
of the twentieth century.
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The Nasty Girl
/ Das schreckliche Mädchen |
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Comedy / Drama (1990)
Director: Michael Verhoeven
Starring: Lene Stolze |
REVIEW: Filmmaker
Michael Verhoeven (not to be confused with Showgirls director
Paul Verhoeven) made one of the best films of the '80s with this
bold, 1989 German production about an adolescent girl, Sonja (Lena
Stolze of Verhoeven's The
White Rose), who researches the history of her hometown's
involvement in the Holocaust. The "nasty" of the title
doesn't refer to provocative behavior on the heroine's part but
rather Sonja's sudden reputation as a busybody, stirring up dirt
about her neighbors' sundry crimes against humanity and being
rebuffed or punished at every turn. Verhoeven makes a number of
inspired, artistic leaps in portraying Sonja's story (she grows
up and is a married woman before her quest is complete) as an
epic myth for post-war Germany. The director draws on thrilling
performance ideas from Bertolt Brecht and pursues heavy visual
stylization to bring an exciting immediacy to this tale of dangerous
secrets. Topping it all off is Stolze's sharp, likable, smart
acting.
Review by Tom Keogh
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Wings of Desire / Der Himmel
über Berlin |
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Fantasy / Drama (1987)
Director: Wim Wenders
Starring: Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin
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REVIEW: "There are angels
over the streets of Berlin," quotes the movie poster, but
these are like no angels you've ever seen. Bundled in dark overcoats,
they watch over the city with ears open to the heartbeat of the
human soul, listening to the internal musings and yearnings of
earthbound humans like existential detectives. In these delicate,
astounding scenes we float through the thoughts of dozens Berlin
citizens, from the weary and worn to the hopeful and young, as
the angels record the magic moments for some heavenly record.
But when Damiel (the empathic and sensitive Bruno Ganz) falls
in love with an angel of another sort, the lonely trapeze artist
Marion (willowy, sad-eyed Solveig Dommartin), he gives up the
contemplation and observation of life to experience it himself.
Wim Wenders's most purely romantic film is like poetry on celluloid,
a celebration of the transient and fragile moments of being human:
the warmth of a cup of coffee on a cold day, the embrace of a
friend, the touch of a lover, the rapture of love. Opening with
an angel's-eye view of Berlin in silvery black and white (delicately
captured by the great cinematographer Henri Alekan, who photographed
Jean Cocteau's Beauty
and the Beast 40 years earlier), it transforms into a
gauzy color world when Damiel "crosses over" by sheer
will. Peter Falk plays himself as a fallen angel with a special
sensitivity for celestial visitors ("I can't see you, but
I know you're there," he proclaims), and Otto Sander, whose
smiling eyes brighten a face etched by eons of waiting and watching,
is Damiel's partner. Wenders made a sequel in 1993, Faraway,
So Close, and Hollywood remade the film as City
of Angels with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan.
Review by Sean Axmaker
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Rosa Luxemburg
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Drama (1986)
Director: Margarthe von Trotta
Starring: Barbara Sukowa, Daniel Olbrychski
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SYNOPSIS: This film
biography is based on the life and letters of revolutionary Rosa
Luxemburg (1870-1919). The story follows her imprisonment
in Poland for subversive activities, her involvement in the aborted
1905 Russian Revolution, her pacifist opposition to the first
World War, and, finally, the dual murder of her and her lover
Karl Liebknecht in 1919. As Rosa Luxemburg, Sukowa gives the performance
of a lifetime.
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Men / Männer
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Comedy (1985)
Director: Doris Dörrie
Starring: Heiner Lauterbach, Uwe Ochsenknecht
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SYNOPSIS: After
12 years of marriage, Paula Armbrust comes to the realization
that she has had just about enough of Julius, her staid businessman
husband. So she embarks on a passionate affair with Stefan, a
good-hearted but underemployed fellow who still fancies himself
a hippie, even if the 60s have long since gone.
Even though Julius has had other lovers himself, he flies into
a tizzy at the news of his wife's infidelity: he obsessively spies
on her new love, and when it turns out Stefan can use a roommate,
Julius moves right in. Unaware of Julius' identity, Stefan happily
befriends him -- while the wily scorned husband sets into motion
a very original and comic plot to win back his wife's heart: turning
the freewheeling Stefan into a stodgy bureaucrat just like him.
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Heimat: A Chronicle of
Germany | Heimat: Eine deutsche Chronik |
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Drama (1984)
Director: Edgar Reitz
Starring: Marliese Assmann, Eva Maria Bayerwaltes, Helga Bender
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SYNOPSIS: Unlike
other feature-length versions of European TV miniseries, Heimat
loses nothing in its translation to the big screen. It was 15
1/2 hours on TV, and remained 15 1/2 hours in theatres! Produced
for German television over a 5-year period, Heimat details the
turbulent years between 1919 and 1982 through the eyes of the
citizens of a small, fictional German village. The central character
is Marita Breuer, who matures from a fresh-faced teen to a wrinkled,
grim-visaged survivor of the best and the worst life has to offer.
The final sequences, far removed from such traumatic collective
experiences as the inflation of 1923 and the war of the 1940s,
tend to be more sentimental than the earlier passages, but are
no less masterfully handled by director Edgar Reitz. Also worth
noting is cinematographer Gernot Roll's creative use of color,
often switching between hues and monochrome within a scene for
dramatic impact.
Review by Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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|
Das Boot |
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Drama / War (1981)
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Starring: Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, Klaus
Wennemann
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REVIEW: This 282-minute version
of Das
Boot is the full-length TV series, originally shown in
six parts but here edited into a seamless whole. Director Wolfgang
Petersen has since graduated to mega-budget Hollywood productions
(2004's Troy
for example), but has never managed to even come close to this,
his German-language masterpiece. Petersen and his sterling cast
(including Jürgen Prochnow in his best role as the U-boat
Captain) went to great lengths to ensure that this claustrophobic
depiction of life aboard the German sub U-97 while attacking British
convoys in the Atlantic is thoroughly authentic, and totally convincing.
Even the set itself, which is a replica of a U-boat interior,
had no false walls, so all camera angles are necessarily from
within its horribly narrow, overcrowded and sweaty confines. The
result is certainly the finest submarine drama ever made, and
one of the most compelling depictions of the physical, psychological
and emotional effects of warfare.
This miniseries is rather longer than the movie version, which
is also available on DVD
in a director's cut version. The differences are not in
matters of plot, but in the pacing: everything here takes longer
to happen, while the crew must sit around, bicker, swear, and
sweat it out--the agonizing searching for action, the tension
of the attack, the terrible stress of hiding from enemy destroyers.
Everything unfolds as if in real time, which is the great advantage
a TV production has over a movie (contrast, for example, Band
of Brothers with Saving
Private Ryan). This, therefore, is the definitive presentation
of a World War II classic.
Review by Mark Walker
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