Drama

Germany 1934: The Nazi authorities in Hamburg need an executioner to put a group of political prisoners to death, otherwise Hitler won’t visit their town. Teetjen, the butcher, facing bankruptcy, agrees to do the dirty deed.
Adapted from the novel by German-Jewish author Arnold Zweig and co-scripted by Wolfgang Staudte (director of The Murderers Are Among Us, Rotation and The Kaiser’s Lackey) this important classic was directed by a former anti-Nazi resistance fighter, Falk Harnack.
Ironically the film, which starred concentration camp survivor Erwin Geschonneck in the lead role, was withdrawn after its release because its nuanced portrait of a Nazi perpetrator was considered too sympathetic.Read More »

Rebellious young Werther is passionately, but hopelessly, in love with Lotte. Although he knows that she is married to somebody who can offer her a secure future, Werther tries to be near her. Lotte cannot decide between these two men. She eventually rejects Werther, who does not survive her decision. Based on the novel by Goethe. Director Egon Günther and set designer Helga Schütz make cameo appearances.
—DEFA Film LibraryRead More »

PLOT
An aging rail worker, living a mononously quiet life with his wife, is asked to retire. The second of the two austere-looking, deliberately paced films Shaheed Saless made in Iran proved to be one of the turning points of Iranian cinema in the 70s.Winner of numerous prizes at the Berlin Film Festival in 1974, including the Silver Bear for Best Director, STILL LIFE examines the lot in life of an old man who guards a railroad crossing and his wife, who brings in a meager income weaving carpets. After 30 years in the same job, the man is forced into retirement by the arrival of the new guard. Finally, he is forced to a bleak epiphany of society’s indifference to his fate.Read More »

Paul Boyer (Gérard Blain), a jazz pianist in Paris, has lots of free time during the day, and spends it happily with his baby boy, Marc. But money is tight, and so, at his wife’s prompting, Paul takes a chance on running counterfeit dollars to New York for a big payoff. Caught at customs, he spends nine years in an American jail and returns home to find her remarried to a wealthy man and his own paternal rights revoked. The rest of the film—directed by Blain with the harrowing calm of an intimate confession—follows Paul in his obsessive, desperate, coldly calculated effort to see his son again. Though the story is part thriller, part family melodrama, part spiritual journey, part social drama, Blain purges it of all genre artifice: the purity of his method and his sentiments suggests the fresh, primal artistry of the early silent cinema. Released in 1973. In French. — Richard BrodyRead More »

One of two circus twins is cheated of an inheritance by his double, who sets himself up in a chateau.Only to be threatened by a sinister black hooded sect. Rollicking adventures follow, culminating with a big chase on the Eiffel Tower.Read More »

A young couple marry in France in the 1940s and the film follows the arc of their marriage over the next decade. As France recovers from the trauma of the war, the wife finds herself increasingly caught up in acquiring material possessions while the husband prefers a more traditional lifestyle.Read More »

Storyline
When Janet Furie’s scientist husband dies during an experiment gone wrong, she suspects that he was murdered by another scientist, Dr. Martin Becker. She hatches a clever revenge plan. By changing her looks and assuming a new identity, she insinuates herself into the life of Dr. Becker, all the while plotting to destroy his life and career. But is Dr. Becker really guilty?Read More »

Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is about the often uneasy but always beautiful relationship between music and love. It tells the story of a young Boston jazz musician who drifts from affair to affair, his trumpet the only constant in his life. He makes a promising connection with an aimless introvert named Madeline, who immediately takes to his music. Their relationship is cut short, however, when Guy leaves her for another, more outgoing love interest. The two separated lovers slowly wind their way back into each other’s lives, through a series of romances and near-romances punctuated by song.Read More »

Synopsis: The painter Balz, who sits jealously in Italy and harasses Clara, the actress, by telephone because of a lover. Balz wishes the rival all bad – and promptly he falls unhappily on his nose. When he succeeds in closing his mouth with a simple and very understandable wish, as required by his girlfriend, who has meanwhile arrived with him and is constantly babbling, the Italian driver realises that it is a brandy that helps his evil desires to come true. But she also discovers a magic potion that gives her the strength to transform things, day in night for example. She takes pleasure in taking advantage of it when Balz is at the wheel.Read More »