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German-born turned American
film actress Marlene Dietrich
appears on the sleeve of the
Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band album.
Marlene Dietrich
Documentary:
(1984)
Director: Maximilian Schell
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German Film (8)
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
If you're interested in the development and history of film, you'll
appreciate these classics, too:
| Fassbinder's
BRD Trilogy / BRD Trilogie |
 |
1. The Marriage of Maria
Braun / Die Ehe der Maria Braun (1979)
2. Veronika Voss / Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (1982)
3. Lola (1981)
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Traces the history of post-war Germany in a series of films told
through the eyes of three remarkable women. |
There is at least
one certifiable masterpiece in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's BRD
Trilogy, and one could argue that all three films qualify
for that honor. Conceived as a series of sociopolitical melodramas
set during West Germany's "economic miracle" of post-war
recovery (roughly 1947-60), these exquisitely crafted films found
the prolific Fassbinder (1945-82) near the end of his astounding
career and at the height of his creative powers, depicting post-war
Germany as a land of repressed memory and surging capitalism,
repressively avoiding any connection to the horrors of its Nazi
past. Women were Fassbinder's conduit to analyzing the BDR (Bundesrepublik
Deutchland) and its effect on the German character, resulting
in three of the most remarkable female characters ever committed
to film.
[...] In the established tradition of the Criterion Collection,
extensive supplements explore the depth of Fassbinder's achievement.
Three commentaries, each with their own uniquely personal and/or
critical perspective, are among the finest Criterion has ever
recorded. Interviews with Schygulla, Zech, Sukowa, and many of
Fassbinder's closest collaborators pay latter-day tribute to Fassbinder
and his extended family of on- and off-screen talent, while the
96-minute German TV documentary I Don't Just Want You to Love
Me explores Fassbinder's tragically curtailed life and work through
abundant film clips and interviews. A filmed 1978 interview with
Fassbinder himself--at 49 minutes, the longest ever recorded--offers
further insight into the psychology and chain-smoking intensity
of a man who burned out from drugs and exhaustion at the age of
37. Along with the collected Adventures of Antoine Doinel, the
BRD Trilogy is one of the most impressive DVD sets
ever released, and a sparkling jewel in Criterion's crown.
Review by Jeff Shannon
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| Find film at alibris
|
Fritz Lang Epic Collection |
|
Director: Fritz Lang
Black/white silent film classics. |
1. Metropolis
(1927)
2. Die Nibelungen / Part 1: Siegrieds Tod & Part
2: Kriemhild's Revenge (1924)
3. Woman in the Moon / Frau im Mond (1929)
4. Spies / Spione (1928)
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|
The Murderers are among
us / Mörder unter uns |
|
Drama (1946)
Director: Wolfgang Staudte
Starring: Hildegard Knef, Elly Burgmer
Black/white |
Ranked by critics as one
of Germany’s most important films, The
Murderers Are Among Us offers a wrenching look at history
and humanity. The first feature film produced in Germany after
World War II, it is set in Berlin just after the surrender, and
the city is still being battered by air raids. The characters
move through the half-destroyed husks of old buildings, and even
simple acts like serving a meal at a table take on new meaning
as the people try to put their lives back together. Susanne Wallner
is a concentration camp survivor, eager to taste life again after
her living death. Dr. Hans Mertens is a former German officer,
unable to live with the guilt of what he and his former comrades
have done. The two must quite literally learn to live side by
side as they come to terms with the past and start to look toward
the future. The film is beautifully and sensitively made, and
possesses a shining optimism that is surprising for its time.
Review by Ali Davis
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|
Triumph of the Will /
Triumph des Willens |
|
Documentary / Propaganda
(1934)
Director: Leni Riefenstahl
Starring: Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring
Black/white |
Triumph
of the Will is one of the most important films ever made.
Not because it documents evil--more watchable examples are being
made today. And not as a historical example of blind propaganda--those
(much shorter) movies are merely laughable now. No, Riefenstahl's
masterpiece--and it is a masterpiece, politics aside--combines
the strengths of documentary and propaganda into a single, overwhelmingly
powerful visual force.
Riefenstahl was hired by the Reich to create an eternal record
of the 1934 rally at Nuremberg, and that's exactly what she does.
You might not become a Nazi after watching her film, but you will
understand too clearly how Germany fell under Hitler's spell.
The early crowd scenes remind one of nothing so much as Beatles
concert footage (if only their fans were so well behaved!).
Like the fascists it monumentalizes, Triumph
of the Will overlooks its own weaknesses--at nearly two
hours, the speeches tend to drone on, and the repeated visual
motifs are a little over-hypnotic, especially for modern viewers.
But the occasional iconic vista (banners lining the streets of
Nuremberg, Hitler parting a sea of 200,000 party members standing
at attention) will electrify anyone into wakefulness.
Review by Grant Balfour
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|
The Testament of Dr.
Mabuse / Das Testament der Dr. Mabuse |
|
Horror / Mystery (1933)
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Otto Wernicke
Black/white |
The
Testament of Dr. Mabuse is Fritz Lang's sequel to his
flamboyant Dr. Mabuse two-part epic of the 1920s, this time adding
subtle use of sound to the creepy effects developed for the earlier
film. Once a Moriarty-like mastermind, the haggard Dr M (Rudolf
Klein-Rogge) has become an autistic asylum inmate who scrawls
plans for daring crimes in his cell and exerts an unhealthy influence
on his psychiatrist. Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke), the jolly
policeman from Lang's M
, is puzzled by a series of daring crimes that bear the Mabuse
signature, and a gang of thugs take instructions from a shadowy
figure who claims after the doctor's death to be Mabuse reborn
and is staging a reign of crime apparently designed to bring about
the ruin of all law-abiding society.
Though it works best as a textbook thriller, some commentators,
including Lang, suggested that the pulp plot was intended to allegorize
the evil influence of the Nazi party, with a crime boss who rants
like Hitler. The many impressive set-pieces still work, too: the
pursuit of a spy through a grinding print-works, an assassination
at a traffic light, hero and heroine trapped in a room with a
bomb cutting a water main to flood their way to freedom, the persecution
of the asylum head by a phantom of his patient, and a last-reel
night-time chase.
Review by Kim Newman
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|
M |
 |
Crime thriller (1931)
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut, Otto Wernicke
Black/white |
Peter Lorre made film history
with his startling performance as a psychotic murderer of children.
Too elusive for the Berlin police, the killer is sought and marked
by underworld criminals who are feeling the official fallout for
his crimes. This riveting, 1931 German drama by Fritz Lang--an
early talkie--unfolds against a breathtakingly expressionistic
backdrop of shadows and clutter, an atmosphere of predestination
that seems to be closing in on Lorre's terrified villain. M
is an important piece of cinema's past along with a number of
Lang's early German works, including Metropolis
and Spies.
(Lang eventually brought his influence directly to the American
cinema in such films as Fury,
They Clash by Night, and The
Big Heat.) M
shouldn't be missed. This original 111-minute version is a little
different from what most people have seen in theaters.
Review by Tom Keogh
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|
The Blue Angel / Der
blaue Engel |
|
Drama / Musical (1930)
Director: Joseph von Sternberg
Starring: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich
Black/white |
For director Josef von Sternberg
and Marlene Dietrich it all began with The
Blue Angel, one of the masterpieces of Germany's Weimar
cinema. This landmark film thrust the sultry and unrestrained
Dietrich on an unsuspecting international film audience. She plays
the prototypical role of Lola, the singer who tempts repressed
professor Emil Jannings (the king of expressionist actors) into
complete submission night after night at the Blue Angel nightclub.
The film perfectly captures the masochism and degradation of the
Weimar Republic, just before the rise of Adolf Hitler. And yet
the moral confusion exhibited by Jannings is really due to his
own torment. Dietrich is merely an instrument of his innermost
desires, standing on stage in top hat, stockings, and bare thighs
singing "Falling in Love Again." This is the original German version,
newly remastered and subtitled.
Review by Bill Desowitz
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|
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