Germany

Synopsis wrote:
One of the last great German Expressionist films of the silent era, Joe May’s Asphalt is a love story set in the traffic-strewn Berlin of the late 1920s. Starring the delectable Betty Amann in her most famous leading role, Asphalt is a luxuriously produced Ufa classic where tragic liaisons and fatal encounters are shaped alongside the constant roar of traffic.

thespinningimage.co.uk wrote:
In Berlin, a policeman called Holk is summoned to a jeweller’s shop, where a beautiful young woman has tried to steal a diamond. En route to the police station, the woman takes Holk back to her apartment on the pretext of collecting some papers and ends up seducing him. Soon he finds himself caught between his duty and the woman he is falling in love with.Read More »

One dramatic event marked the life of the great German artist in particular. At the beginning of the First World War she was already world famous for her etchings, lithographs, carvings and drawings. To her horror, her youngest son, Peter, volunteered to go to war. Within a few weeks she received the dreadful news Peter fell in Flanders. Käthe Kollwitz, who had always sided with the common people, became a committed pacifist and even a socialist. She lived with her husband, a doctor to the poor, in the Berlin working-class quarter of Prenzlauer Berg, where a central square is now named after her. The bloody end of the November Revolution destroyed her hope for swift improvements in living conditions, but strengthened her convictions. The excellently cast DEFA film shows impressive images from the life of a woman who was later to be a vehement foe of National Socialism and whose work still impresses the world today.Read More »

Lotte is impulsive, rough around the edges and leads a colourful life on the streets of Berlin, stumbling from man to man and flat to flat. One night in her local bar she bumps into Marcel, an almost forgotten acquaintance. Just after he recognises her Lotte takes flight, finding refuge in the flat of her friend Sabine. The following day, the events of the previous evening still grate on Lotte and she cannot seem to shake them off, even during her work at the hospital. A young girl, Greta, is brought in, Lotte takes care of her and a gentle affection develops between them. But this happiness is short-lived because, a little later, Lotte witnesses an encounter between Greta and Marcel. The three catch sight of each other and Lotte realises she will not be able to run away this time.Read More »

Synopsis:
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. While Gregor believes that an elective affinity between two people preordains their lives, Arthur does not even subscribe to any possibility of romantic feelings between the sexes.
Arthur is a failure at school and becomes mixed up with criminal elements, Gregor goes on to attend university, and remains in pursuit of Billie who passes in and out of his life on several occasions.Read More »

Quote:
This totally forgotten film is adapted from a story by Franz Nabl who also provided the basis for Der verzauberte Tag. The story is about a rich murderer (Siegfried Breuer) who killed his wife out of jealousy nd tries to start a new life. He meets a young woman (Gusti Huber) and marries her without telling her the secret directly. She feels there’s something wrong and things get complicated when a dubious individual not only gets the legal papers which prove the husband has been a convict, but also falls in love with the young woman.
The film not only boasts an intelligent script and great performances, but is very well shot and directed. The lighting is often elaborate, intertwining with the sumptuous set design, while an inquisitive camera slides through the rooms. This one is a must see and should be a strong incentive for German users to consider buying the box.Read More »

IMDB:
Austrian sex comedy about the head of the Meier Automobile company who’s trying to sell his new talking sex cars to horny customers to have sex in them. He also has a sex robot modeled after his niece that helps customers test the cars.Read More »

Margot, who lives in a comfortable middle class apartment, fears that she is losing her mind after having had her second child. Her husband Kurt, who is busy studying for an exam, does not understand her situation. Her mother-in-law and sister-in-law Lore are openly hostile to her. She resorts to valium and drink, and looks for sympathy, but to no avail.Read More »

The non-fiction author Walter falls for the physics student Agnes. He is fascinated by her extreme attitude towards life and her reserved appearance, which is quite the opposite of his quiet and regular life. When Agnes encourages him to follow his passion for writing fiction, he starts to work on a book, a portrait of how he sees her.Read More »

Quote:
If Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is, as I contend, an exegesis on the human tendency to contextualize life through custom – not to mention, of course, the inculcative parallels through which both we and less domesticated species glean long-term behavioral patterns – then his 1976 work, Heart of Glass, is an admonishment on holding such traditions in too high of sentiment. Despite revolving ostensibly about an 18th century Bavarian village, the director appears to be simply employing this milieu as but a microcosm for any culture that’s extinction draws nigh, painting progress and evolution as more reliable entities than ritual and superstition. Heart of Glass’s diaphanous narrative is laden with hints to such contemplations, though in the end, none reads as poetically oblique as the opening sequence: A formal and spoken manifestation of death.Read More »