Gustavus Library Movie Guide: German Cinema (under construction)

"Unlike Fritz Lang and G.W. Pabst, the two other great directors of the German cinema, F.W. Murnau has been mostly loved and admired by a specialist minority. [At Murnau's funeral, Fritz Lang said] : 'Many centuries hence, everyone would know that a pioneer had left us in the midst of his career, a man to whom the cinema owes its fundamental character, artistically as well as technically. Murnau understood that the cinema, more than the theatre, was called to present life as a symbol: all his works were like animated 'ballads', and one day this idea would be triumphant.'" -from the introduction and conclusion

"From Max Ophuls, the legendary director of THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE comes this deeply moving, timeless tale of love and obsession. In early 20th century Vienna, Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan) is in the process of fleeing Vienna on the eve of a duel he wants no part of, however before he can do so, he receives an anonymous Letter from an Unknown Woman. Stefan is deeply moved by what he reads and starts to realize that the letters author is Lisa Berndl (Joan Fontaine), a young woman he's known, but disregarded for most of his life. Screenplay by Howard Koch (CASABLANCA) and produced by John Houseman (SORRY, WRONG NUMBER)." - from Amazon.com

"Roving with his dazzlingly mobile camera around the decadent ballrooms, bucolic countryside retreats, urban bordellos, and painter's studios of late nineteenth-century French life, Max Ophuls brings his astonishing visual dexterity and storytelling bravura to this triptych of tales by Guy de Maupassant about the limits of spiritual and physical pleasure. Featuring a stunning cast of French stars (including Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, and Simone Simon), Le plaisir pinpoints the cruel ironies and happy compromises of life with a charming and sophisticated breeziness." - from Criterion.com

"In Conversations with Wilder, Hollywood's legendary and famously elusive director Billy Wilder agrees for the first time to talk extensively about his life and work. Here, in an extraordinary book with more than 650 black-and-white photographs -- including film posters, stills, grabs, and never-before-seen pictures from Wilder's own collection -- the ninety-three-year-old icon talks to Cameron Crowe, one of today's best-known writer-directors, about thirty years at the very heart of Hollywood, and about screenwriting and camera work, set design and stars, his peers and their movies, the studio system and films today. In his distinct voice we hear Wilder's inside view on his collaborations with such stars as Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, William Holden, Audrey Hepburn, and Greta Garbo (he was a writer at MGM during the making of Ninotchka. Here are Wilder's sharp and funny behind-the-scenes stories about the making of A Foreign Affair, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Love in the Afternoon, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and Ace in the Hole, among many others. Wilder is ever mysterious, but Crowe gets him to speak candidly on Stanwyck: 'She knew the script, everybody's lines, never a fault, never a mistake'; on Cary Grant: 'I had Cary Grant in mind for four of my pictures . . . slipped through my net every time'; on the 'Lubitsch Touch': 'It was the elegant use of the super-joke.' Wilder also remembers his early years in Vienna, working as a journalist in Berlin, rooming with Peter Lorre at the Chateau Marmont -- always with the same dry wit, tough-minded romanticism, and elegance that are the hallmarks of Wilder's films. This book is a classic of Hollywood history and lore." - from the publisher

"Garbo plays a dour, severe Soviet official who comes to Paris on business involving the sale of some czarist jewels. But soon business turns to pleasure as she discovers the special magic of Paris and finds herself succumbing to the charms of a suave Frenchman named Leon D'Algout (Melvyn Douglas). The plot bubbles merrily as Ninotchka chooses between romance and duty--and must even confront a rival for Leon's affection in the exiled Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire)."

"Has dialogue ever been more perfectly hard-boiled? Has a femme fatale ever been as deliciously wicked as Barbara Stanwyck? And has 1940s Los Angeles ever looked so seductively sordid? Working with cowriter Raymond Chandler, director Billy Wilder launched himself onto the Hollywood A-list with this epitome of film-noir fatalism from James M. Cain’s pulp novel. When slick salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) walks into the swank home of dissatisfied housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck), he intends to sell insurance, but he winds up becoming entangled with her in a far more sinister way. Featuring scene-stealing supporting work from Edward G. Robinson and the chiaroscuro of cinematographer John F. Seitz, Double Indemnity is one of the most entertainingly perverse stories ever told and the standard by which all noir must be measured." - from Criterion.com

"Writer Don Birnam (Ray Milland) is on the wagon. Sober for only a few days, Don is supposed to be spending the weekend with his brother, Wick (Phillip Terry), but, eager for a drink, Don convinces his girlfriend (Jane Wyman) to take Wick to a show. Don, meanwhile, heads to his local bar and misses the train out of town. After recounting to the bartender (Howard da Silva) how he developed a drinking problem, Don goes on a weekend-long bender that just might prove to be his last."

"Pursued by creditors, Joe swerves into a driveway of a seemingly abandoned Sunset Boulevard mansion. He finds Norma, an ex-screen queen dreaming of a dramatic comeback and her husband/servant living there. She takes a fancy to Joe and, learning that he is a scriptwriter, persuades him to help her with her comeback screenplay. Being broke he accepts. He falls in love with a young script reader, but Norma breaks up their romance, setting tragedy into motion."

"Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole is one of the most scathing indictments of American culture ever produced by a Hollywood filmmaker. Kirk Douglas gives the fiercest performance of his career as Chuck Tatum, an amoral newspaper reporter who washes up in dead-end Albuquerque, happens upon the scoop of a lifetime, and will do anything to keep getting the lurid headlines. Wilder’s follow-up to Sunset Boulevard is an even darker vision, a no-holds-barred exposé of the American media’s appetite for sensation that has gotten only more relevant with time." - from Criterion.com

"Chauffeur's daughter Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn) returns home from two years in Paris a beautiful young woman, and immediately catches the attention of David (William Holden), the playboy son of her father's rich employers. David woos and wins Sabrina, who has always been in love with him, however their romance is threatened by David's serious older brother, Linus (Humphrey Bogart), who runs the family business and is relying on David to marry an heiress in order for a crucial merger to take place."

"Frank Flannegan, an American playboy infamous for his scandalous affairs is smitten by Ariane, the beautiful, innocent daughter of the worldly detective, hired by a man who believes that Frank is carrying on with his wife. Frank turns out to be no match for Ariane and they stumble through one of the funniest seductions."

"One of the most beloved films of all time, this sizzling masterpiece by Billy Wilder set a new standard for Hollywood comedy. After witnessing a mob hit, Chicago musicians Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, in landmark performances) skip town by donning drag and joining an all-female band en route to Miami. The charm of the group’s singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe, at the height of her bombshell powers) leads them ever further into extravagant lies, as Joe assumes the persona of a millionaire to woo her and Jerry’s female alter ego winds up engaged to a tycoon. With a whip-smart script by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond, and sparking chemistry among its finely tuned cast, Some Like It Hot is as deliriously funny and fresh today as it was when it first knocked audiences out six decades ago." - from Criterion.com

"How far will a man go to climb the corporate ladder? C.C. 'Bud' Baxter, a lowly insurance clerk, has a trump card: his apartment. He "loans" it out to married company executives for secret trysts. In return, he's well looked after, although he does grapple with his conscience. One day he asks out one of the elevator girls, Miss Kubelik, but she stands him up because of a crisis in her relationship with the big boss, Mr. Sheldrake. On Christmas Eve, Miss Kubelik realizes she is only the most recent in a long line of girls, with possibly disastrous consequences. Bud intervenes, which may give each of them a chance to be more than another faceless employee in a heartless corporation."

"Berlin, after the Second World War: C.R. MacNamara presides over the German branch of Coca-Cola, dreaming of being promoted to London, by capturing the untapped Russian market. His plans for advancement run into a snag, when he is asked to watch over the boss' ditsy, impulsive 17 year-old daughter Scarlett on her European vacation. Unsurprisingly, she almost immediately gets into trouble of the worst kind by slipping across the border to East Germany, to marry the violently anti-Yankee Communist Otto. When the home office headman decides to visit his daughter, Cagney masterminds an elaborate masquerade that backfires."

"One of the world’s most influential and provocative filmmakers, the Oscar–winning Austrian director Michael Haneke diagnoses the social maladies of contemporary Europe with devastating precision and artistry. His drama Code Unknown, the first of his many films made in France, may be his most inspired work. Composed almost entirely of brilliantly shot, single-take vignettes focusing on characters connected to one seemingly minor incident on a Paris street, Haneke’s film—with an outstanding international cast headlined by Juliette Binoche—is a revelatory examination of racial inequality and the failure of communication in an increasingly diverse modern landscape." - from Criterion.com

"Without warning, happy, successful Parisian couple Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne Laurent (Juliette Binoche) receive anonymous videos suggesting that they are being stalked. The tapes are followed by disturbingly violent, if childish, drawings. Georges, a well-known literary talk show host, shrugs off the mysterious messages, but Anne grows increasingly distressed and fearful for their teenage son. She grows to suspect that an incident in Georges' past is behind the increasing torment."

"Like a Twilight Zone episode directed by Antonioni, The White Ribbon weaves an unsettling and enigmatic spell. Michael Haneke's film is set just before World War I in a village in northern Germany, where a series of strange occurrences take place over several months. These occurrences are sinister and cruel and often involve the children of the village--not merely as victims (although child abuse seems to be a far-from-isolated event) but also as perpetrators. At least that's the way it appears. Nothing is completely spelled out in Haneke's scheme, which hints and insinuates and thoroughly gets under the viewer's skin over the course of 144 edgy minutes. We might notice the children are of an age that will make them mature participants in the horror of Germany in the 1930s and '40s, but even this is left as an unemphasized point. Since Haneke is an expert at denying explicit conclusions for his projects (see also Caché and Funny Games for more on the subject), we shouldn't be surprised that he withholds the answers to the questions he poses, or that the film is even more powerful because of this withholding. Adding to the effect is Christian Berger's Oscar-nominated black-and-white cinematography, which has a ghostly quality appropriate to the topic. In the end, all the strange happenings of the village are absorbed into the town's rhythm of life--which might be the most disturbing conclusion of all." - Robert Horton, Amazon.com

"Goes behind the scenes in the making of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man's attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Filmmaker Les Blank captured the production, made perilous by Herzog's determination not to use models or special effects."

"A hard-hitting Southern drama tempered by a story of powerful, life-changing love. Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) is an embittered prison guard working on Death Row who begins an unlikely but emotionally charged affair with Leticia (Academy Award winner Halle Berry), the wife of a man he has just executed."

"This charming account of a period in the life of author J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) reveals the real relationships and events that served as the basis for the author's most iconic work, "Peter Pan." After Barrie develops a platonic relationship with the widowed Sylvia (Kate Winslet) and her four sons, he is inspired to write a play about a group of children who don't want to grow up. The work proves a hit and winds up bringing Barrie and the children together in a way he had never expected."

"A mentally unstable IRS auditor (Will Ferrell) hears an author's (Emma Thompson) voice in his head and discovers that he is the ill-fated protagonist of her latest work. While a book-company employee (Queen Latifah) tries to cure the author's case of writer's block, the auditor and a professor (Dustin Hoffman) set out to find the woman and make her change her story."

"Is there solace in revenge? Reeling from the events of Casino Royale, 007 is determined to find out who was pulling the strings. Bond pursues the agents of an assassination attempt on "M," and all those roads lead to Dominic Greene, a world-renowned developer of green technology. MI-6, upset by Bond's investigative methods, denounces him. So Bond must call in favors and partner up with the mysterious and feisty Camille, a woman with a mission of her own. Bond follows the trail that begins in Italy, with stops in Haiti, Austria, Panama, and finally to Bolivia, while 'M' wonders if she can trust Bond, or if vengeance possesses him."

"In a divided country on the verge of war, two childhood friends, Amir and Hassan, are about to be torn apart forever. It's a glorious afternoon in Kabul and the skies are bursting with the exhilarating joy of a kite-fighting tournament. But in the aftermath of the day's victory, one boy's fearful act of betrayal will mark their lives forever and set in motion an epic quest for redemption. Now, after twenty years of living in America, Amir returns to a perilous Afghanistan under the Taliban's iron-fisted rule to face the secrets that still haunt him and take one last daring chance to set things right."

"The young boy, who loved taking adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood with a gang of spirited and lovable stuffed animals, has grown up and lost his way. Now it is up to his childhood friends to venture into that world and help Christopher Robin remember the loving and playful boy who is still inside."