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During a leave in Berlin, Lieutenant Paul Wendlandt, a young Luftwaffe pilot, falls for Anna Holberg, a famous singer, who returns his love. But in time of war it is hard to live on love only. The lovers keep being separated on account of Paul’s missions and their intended marriage ceremony is constantly postponed. To cap it all, misunderstanding sets in between Paul and Anna. Will they ever become the happy couple they deserve to be?Read More »
China 1839. Because the British imports of opium into Southern China are creating such widespread medical and economic problems, the weak Manchu emperor Tao Kuang is forced to take action that precipitates the ‘Opium War’.Read More »
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In the Salta Province in 1817 during the War of Independence, the irregular forces commanded by General Martín Güemes carry out a guerrilla action against the Spanish army. The commander of a Spanish army contingent, Lieutenant Villarreal, is wounded, captured by the guerrillas, and put under the medical care of Asunción, the mistress of an estancia. She finds out from his idenfication paper that the Lieutenant, though serving in the Spanish army, was born in Lima. She persuades him of the justice of liberating America from Spain. The patriot forces receive help from the sacristan of a chapel located next to the grounds of the royalist troops. The sacristan fakes loyalty to the king, but during the battles he sends messages to the gaucho guerrillas hiding in the mountains by means of a messenger boy and by ringing of the bell.Read More »
Edith, a young French woman, is in love with a poet but is forced by her father into a marriage with a much older man. Edith is captured by the Germans and endures multiple rapes that result in her becoming pregnant. Edith’s husband initially thinks that the poet is the father of her child, and the story ends in tragedy with both men seeing action in the trenches.Read More »
Based on the true story of a band of gypsies in occupied Poland during World War II and their struggle againt the Nazi invaders. Half a million gypsies died as they fled in a vain attempt to escape. The film follows the story of Dymitr, a Polish gypsy violinist, as he tries to lead his family and friends to safety in Hungary. A tragic and moving film with a wonderful authentic soundtrack of Gypsy music.Read More »
One of the worst of many inhuman aspects of World War II were the “penalty” battalions in the German army, dramatized in this excellent film about several men serving in these units. Director Harald Phillipp spares no ounce of realism in first relating what kinds of men are conscripted, and then how they are treated. One man’s crime was not returning to his unit on time, another did not follow unscrupulous orders, yet another supposedly mutilated himself in order to escape the draft. Once in a penalty battalion, the assignments and the superior officers are brutal. The men are sent to the most dangerous battle fronts, they are asked to de-mine without equipment, and no one balks at leaving them without weapons if a hasty retreat is in order. Sobering and well-photographed, the men’s stories are engrossing from beginning to end.
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The war exploits of French captain Conan and his men during World War I and during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.Read More »
Fuller admitted that he was obsessed by war and that he wouldn’t have made war movies unless he’d seen combat (he did, with distinction). This movie plays like a gutsy draft of his cherished project, The Big Red One, and looks as if it could have influenced Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (compare the steady destruction of the entrenched Japanese as the men advance on them). Merrill’s men are in Burma on a pitiless mission that we are dragged into emotionally, then almost physically, by Fuller’s up-front direction, as we gradually realize its suicidal nature.Read More »
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The British Film Institute has been unable to locate a print of the film for inclusion in the BFI National Archive, and classes it as “missing, believed lost”. There is increasing interest by film historians in Gréville’s directorial career, with the same year’s Noose being particularly highly regarded. The current absence of But Not in Vain represents a crucial gap in Gréville’s filmography, and the BFI lists the film as one of its “75 Most Wanted” missing British feature films.Read More »