Germany

Also known as Donauwellen.
No written credit. All titles are spoken like the other Oswald film Dreyfus (1930).

Filmed on location in Vienna, this German operetta was originally titled Wien, Du Stadt Die Lieber [sic]. Popular tenor Max Hansen carries most of the plot (what there is of it), singing his heart out to the delight of such delectable leading ladies as Charlotte Ander, Irene Ambrus and Grete Natzler (who, as Della Lynd, would later co-star with Laurel and Hardy in Swiss Miss). For some reason, it was decided to surround the nominal hero with seven top German comic actors, all of whom mugged and glowered outrageously. The worst offender (and the funniest of the batch) is Paul Graetz, who seemed to be having a great deal of fun letting loose. Evidently City of Songs was quite successful, inasmuch as it remained in distribution well into the late 1930s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Note: In this document, this movie was called City of Songs.Read More »

A documentary about the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall which makes no use of vocal commentary but instead focuses on visual elements. From the Potsdamer Platz to the Brandenburg Gate, the camera captures the historic events from all sides and different angles: on the one hand there are news reporters and tourists from all over the world taking pictures, children selling pieces of the wall to passers-by, and people celebrating New Year’s Eve, on the other we see abandoned subway stations and officials with blank looks on their faces.Read More »

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In Berlin, an alcoholic man, recently released from prison, joins his elderly friend and a prostitute in a determined dream to leave Germany and seek a better life in Wisconsin.

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Who else but Werner Herzog would make a film about a retarded ex-prisoner, a little old man and a prostitute, who leave Germany to begin a new life in a house trailer in Wisconsin? Who else would shoot the film in the hometown of Ed Gein, the murderer who inspired “Psycho” (1960)? Who else would cast all the local roles with locals? Who else would end the movie with a policeman radioing, “We’ve got a truck on fire, can’t find the switch to turn the ski lift off, and can’t stop the dancing chicken. Send an electrician.”Read More »

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The film is an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House. The film uses Ibsen’s alternate ending where the unhappy couple are reconciled at the end.Read More »

Shortly after the end of the war in 1945 in Germany: the doctor and former scientist Karl Rothe (Peter Lorre) works under a false name in a refugee and reception center. He is a “lost” man who has taken personal guilt on himself. He meets a newcomer named Nowak (Karl John). This was already in the war year 1943 his coworker and is actually Hösch. In flashbacks one learns that Rothes then fiancée, Inge Hermann (Renate Mannhardt) spied for the Allies and forwarded information to England. She agreed to an affair with the opportunist Hösch. Rothe killed his lover, more out of jealousy than loyalty to the line. But he was not punished for this crime. Hösch covered him out of “higher” interest. His research was more important to the Nazis than the atonement of murder. The terrible beginning of a deadly spiral …Read More »

Christoph Heider is caught as he abducts the body of his wife from the cemetery chapel. Marianne Heider allegedly died in a bathtub accident, but Heider considers her current partner Wilhelm Jordan guilty and would like to have her autopsied again abroad.Read More »

Der Prozeß. Eine Darstellung des Majdanek-Verfahrens in Düsseldorf
Teil 1: Anklage
Teil 2: Beweisaufnahme
Teil 3: Urteile

In über 8jähriger Arbeit entstand der Film DER PROZESS über die juristische Aufbereitung der Nazi Verbrechen im Konzentrationslager Majdanek. Es war das erste große Arbeits- und Todeslager, das von den Russen befreit wurde. Innerhalb von drei Jahren wurden dort mindestens 250 000 Menschen umgebracht: erschossen, vergast, erschlagen.Read More »

Commissioned by the ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), this is an experimental essay on the city of Paris shot in 16mm in Les Halles district with an entire section devoted to the construction of the Centre Pompidou in 1976. An urban hell, full of noise and fury.Read More »

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Fascinating and rich with wry humor, Exile Shanghai is an extraordinary cultural odyssey that affectionately conjures up the lost Jewish world of Shanghai. In the dark days of the 1930s, the Chinese metropolis was the last refuge for Europe’s persecuted Jews—a place that did not demand a visa. Those who managed to find refuge there brought with them the social and gastronomic delights of Vienna and Berlin. Ottinger’s four-and-a-half-hour mosaic features interviews with former members of the Shanghai expatriate Jewish community (many of whom relocated to Northern California), and her ever-curious camera cruises the city in search of its lost synagogues, schools, and salons.Read More »