By STEPHEN HOLDEN
In its most unsettling scenes, set at a castle being used as a military training school for Hitler youth, Volker Schlondorff’s film “The Ogre” suggests the stirring cinematic equivalent of a Wagner opera.

As you watch hundreds of adolescent boys being hyped with a messianic blend of heroic German mythology and Nazi ideology and participating in torch-lit rituals and athletic contests, you sense of the thrill of being a boy swept up in the demented pageantry and passion of the Nazi cause.

“The Ogre” — made by the director of “The Tin Drum,” “The Handmaid’s Tale” and, most recently, the overripe American film noir, “Palmetto” — is just the sort of grand, tortured allegory in which Central European filmmakers have long specialized. Adapted from Michael Tournier’s novel “The Erl King,” the film poses knotty questions about good and evil and innocence and guilt, focusing many of them on an ambiguous (and pathetic) symbolic figure named Abel (John Malkovich) who narrates the movie.

When we first meet Abel, he is a misfit and troublemaker at a strict French boarding school. One day, while on his way to be disciplined for disrupting a chapel service, he prays that the school burns down. As if by magic, fire suddenly breaks out in the chapel, distracting the headmaster and saving Abel from a severe beating but killing his best friend.

As a result of this incident, Abel grows up with an inordinate sense of personal power and the rightness of his own destiny, even though he is consistently treated as an outcast.

When a little girl he has befriended falsely claims he molested her, Abel avoids prison by going to the front in 1939 as World War II breaks out. Captured by the Germans, he becomes a lackey to a group of high-ranking German officers. One of them is Hermann Goering (Volker Spengler), whom the movie portrays as a grotesquely charismatic supermacho caricature, a Prussian giant obsessed with German mythology and with hunting wild animals.

When it is discovered that Abel has a talent for making friends with children, he is sent into the countryside to find young boys and lure them to the castle as military conscripts. Abel’s escapades earn him the nickname “the Ogre” in the neighborhood.

In the film’s climax, the last-ditch Nazi fantasy of a heroic children’s crusade against the invading Russian army collapses in a fiery Gotterdammerung as the Russian tanks arrive at the castle.

Schlondorff treats this fantastical story as an expressionistic fable with some scenes shot in sepia, others in color and still others in black and white.

As Abel, Malkovich gives an understated performance that captures the ambiguity of a character who does monstrous things yet remains a tender-hearted innocent, a kind of idiot savant who identifies with children and animals. Malkovich, who speaks in the soft, halting voice of a man-child, moves through the film with a blankly questioning, slightly cross-eyed stare. What’s odd about his performance, and about the movie in general, is that a film this European, teeming with references to Goethe and German mythology, should have been made in English.

“The Ogre” has strong supporting performances by Armin Mueller-Stahl as a count involved in a plot against Hitler, and Gottfried John, as Goering’s fanatically loyal henchman and chief forester.

But for all its ambitions and moments of brilliance, “The Ogre” doesn’t feel unified or even complete. Episodic and vaguely surreal, it is the antithesis of a Hollywood film that tells us what to feel. Having unfolded an ever-widening series of moral questions, it deliberately leaves them hanging.

1.64GB | 1h 57m | 704×400 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/73A693277E6E480/The_Ogre.mkv

Language(s):English,German,French
Subtitles:English,Spanish

The post Volker Schlöndorff – Der Unhold aka The Ogre (1996) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
Jakob arrives at the Institute Benjamenta (run by brother and sister Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta) to learn to become a servant. With seven other men, he studies under Lisa: absurd lessons of movement, drawing circles, and servility. He asks for a better room. No other students arrive and none leave for employment. Johannes is unhappy, imperious, and detached from the school’s operation. Lisa is beautiful, at first tightly controlled, then on the verge of breakdown. There’s a whiff of incest. Jakob is drawn to Lisa, and perhaps she to him. As winter sets in, she becomes catatonic. Things get worse; Johannes notes that all this has happened since Jakob came. Is there any cause and effect?

2.50GB | 1 h 45 min | 960×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/3F7AB9BB4328DD3/Institute_Benjamenta_(1995)_–_Stephen_Quay,_Timothy_Quay.mkv

Language:English, German
Subtitles:English, French, Spanish, Russian (muxed)

The post Stephen Quay & Timothy Quay – Institute Benjamente (1995) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Elvira Weishaupt, once a burly working-class butcher named Erwin, has made an enormous sacrifice for love. She has undergone a sex change for a romantic interest who has abandoned her, and she now must struggle to reconcile her past life with her present identity. The emotionally fractured Elvira visits influential acquaintances and old haunts in hopes of putting the pieces of her life back together — and of confronting her lost love.

2.76GB | 2 h 4 min | 956×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/CCBEDA015C71F9B/In_a_Year_of_13_Moons_(1978)_-_BluRay_576p.mkv

Language(s):German, English (commentary)
Subtitles:English

The post Rainer Werner Fassbinder – In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden AKA In a Year of 13 Moons (1978) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Stories about workers determined to use their own initiative

On October 29, 1972, the first part of Fassbinder’s five-part family series flickered across West German TV screens. Over the next months, the public broadcaster ARD showed all five episodes, in each case on a Saturday evening in the prime-time slot: I. Jochen and Marion, (October 29, 1972), II. Grandma and Gregor (December 17, 1972), III. Franz and Ernst (January 2, 1973), IV. Harald and Monika (February 18, 1973), and V. Irmgard and Rolf (March 18, 1973). Ratings during this time ranged between 45 and 60%, figures comparable with those for the broadcaster’s top-rating crime series TATORT.

Eight Hours is made up of stories from the working lives of a group of toolmakers. The main character is the resourceful and committed Jochen (Gottfried John), whose workmates include Manfred (Wolfgang Zerlett), Jürgen (Hans Hirschmüller), Rolf (Rudolf Waldemar Brem) and assistant foreman Franz (Wolfgang Schenck). In the course of the series, this group is arbitrarily denied a promised performance bonus. Following the death of foreman Meister Kretzschmer (Victor Curland) Franz applies to take over his position but the firm’s management appoints the outsider Ernst (Peter Gauhe). Jochen and Marion (Hanna Schygulla), who works for a newspaper, want to marry. Harald (Kurt Raab) and Monika (Renate Roland) are already married and have a daughter, Sylvia (Andrea Schober), but Monika wants a divorce. When the series begins, Grandma Krüger (Luise Ullrich) is living with her son-in-law but then moves in with her boyfriend, the widowed pensioner Gregor Mack (Werner Finck). Together they set up a kindergarten. Fräulein Erlkönig (Irm Hermann) and her boyfriend Rolf move in with Jochen und Marion.

In EIGHT HOURS ARE NOT A DAY Fassbinder melded the popular genre of the middle-class family series with the themes and milieu of the so-called worker film. He himself said of the series he made for WDR: “What distinguishes Jochen und Marion and Grandma and Gregor and a few of the others from what people imagine workers to be like and from the image sold on TV and elsewhere is the fact that these characters have still not been beaten down.” (“Ein paar unordentliche Gedanken zu Jochen und Marion und …,” in: Fernsehspiele Westdeutscher Rundfunk, July-December 1972)

Filming took place over 105 days from April till August 1972, with production costs totaling 1,375,000 DM. The series was shot in, among other places, Wuppertal, although it was set in Mönchengladbach and Cologne. Scripts were written for a total of eight episodes, but after the fifth it was decided not to continue filming. The head of WDR’s television play department, Günther Rohrbach, claimed at the time that the reason for this decision was that the series was not realistic enough.

In 1973, the series producer Peter Märthesheimer was awarded West German television’s Grimme Prize for his concept for the series.

All the episodes of EIGHT HOURS ARE NOT A DAY were shown for the final time in 1995 by the broadcaster 3sat to mark Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s fiftieth birthday

The Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation is now planning a complete restoration of the 470-minute, five-part series to be completed in 2015 in order to be able to present it once again to the viewing public.

14.17GB | 8h 16m | 790×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/E12EA54AA75A573/Acht.Stunden.sind.kein.Tag.AKA.Eight.Hours.Dont.Make.a.Day.Episode.1.1972.mkv https://nitro.download/view/FC7C3A3DAF19985/Acht.Stunden.sind.kein.Tag.AKA.Eight.Hours.Dont.Make.a.Day.Episode.2.1972.CC.576p.BluRay.x264.AAC.1.0-dps.mkv https://nitro.download/view/C19AE829BE5F009/Acht.Stunden.sind.kein.Tag.AKA.Eight.Hours.Dont.Make.a.Day.Episode.3.1972.mkv https://nitro.download/view/2378F7464058C3B/Acht.Stunden.sind.kein.Tag.AKA.Eight.Hours.Dont.Make.a.Day.Episode.4.1972.mkv https://nitro.download/view/A793E7A0C9E5242/Acht.Stunden.sind.kein.Tag.AKA.Eight.Hours.Dont.Make.a.Day.Episode.5.1972.mkv

Language(s):German
Subtitles:English

The post Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Acht Stunden sind kein Tag AKA Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day (1972) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Plot Outline: Dark fairytale about a demonic doctor who abducts a beautiful opera singer with designs on transforming her into a mechanical nightingale.

Quote:
To watch The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes is to enter the fabulist universe of the Brothers Quay, as unique and arcane as any imaginable. These identical twins have made some of the most original films of the last two decades, including Street of Crocodiles, selected by Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animated films of all time.

Here, the goal was to make a poetic science fiction film inspired by the novella “The Invention of Morel” by the Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares, although the final product bears closer resemblance to Jules Verne’s “Le Château des Carpates.” The story concerns Malvina (Amira Casar), a famous opera singer abducted on the eve of her wedding by the obsessive Dr. Droz (Gottfried John), who takes her away to the Carpathian Mountains. An innocent piano tuner (Cesar Sarachu) is summoned to the mad Droz’s secluded villa to service his strange musical automatons. When he learns of the doctor’s plans to stage a “diabolical opera,” he sets out to save the beautiful Malvina.

The scene is set by a quote from ancient Roman historian Sallust: “These things never happen but are always.” What follows is a magical treat full of the brilliant images for which the Quays are justly lauded. Moving from animated shorts to live-action features, their films have become more complex; animation is still present, with the Quays describing the startling, novel synthesis as “having live actors walk around puppet sets.” This film is haunted by the crazed doctor’s toylike mechanical creations. Visual references abound – in particular Arnold Böcklin’s painting “Island of the Dead” – and the brothers also cite Antonioni and Magritte. Music here is crucial, as Droz is a failed opera composer, and the Quays have assembled an hypnotic soundscape that mixes elements of Vivaldi with music from composer Trevor Duncan, whose work was used in Chris Marker’s La Jetée.

The end result is an evocative dream, part fairytale and part nightmare. The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes is a daring trip into a world half-recognized and half-remembered, but impossible to forget.

– Piers Handling

Stephen Quay & Timothy Quay - (2005) The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 34 min
Size: 	1.06 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	702x432 ~> 1015x432
Aspect ratio:  	2.35:1
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	1 397 kb/s
BPP: 	0.184
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/ED2454BCB7BE3C8/Stephen_Quay_&_Timothy_Quay_-_(2005)_The_PianoTuner_of_EarthQuakes.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese, English
Subtitles:English

The post Stephen Quay & Timothy Quay – The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes (2005) first appeared on Cinema of the World.