Ellen Umlauf
Austrian television director Fritz Lehner makes his feature debut with the big-budget drama Jedermann's Fest, based on the 1911 play by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which in turn was based on a medieval tale. Originated in parts of England, the myth of Jan Jedermann ("John Everyman") deals with a rich man on his deathbed coming to terms with his life's failures. Not following much of a plot, the modernized version involves famous fashion designer Jedermann (Klaus Maria Brandauer) imagining his last big gala event while rendered unconscious as a result of a car accident in his Ferrari. He is a success in Vienna but not in fashionable Paris, so he wishes to impress French elder stateswoman Yvonne Becker (Juliette Greco).
Herbert Krcal (Roland Düringer) und seine Frau Margit (Nina Proll) träumen den Traum vom Eigenheim. Am liebsten tun sie das in der "Blauen Lagune", einem Fertigteilhaus-Park im Süden Wiens, wohin sie regelmäßig mit ihrem Sohn Philipp pilgern. Ebenso regelmäßig müssen sie die bittere Wahrheit erkennen, daß sie sich das jeweils besichtigte Traumhaus eigentlich nicht leisten können.
A drama directed by Otto W. Retzer. It follows "Tierärztin Christine".
Senator Isaak Kohler shoots and kills Professor Winter in a crowded restaurant, while Winter is dining with the struggling idealistic young lawyer, Felix Spat. Kohler puts up no defense and is sentenced to twenty years. Kohler then gets his daughter Helene to pay the reluctant Spat to reinvestigate the case, on the assumption that Kohler is innocent. The newspapers pick up on this and begin to question whether Kohler was wrongly convicted.
A famous movie actor claims that he has written a book. As result, a real author, not a very well known writer, vengefully kills him but then dies as a result of an accident. Next, they both find themselves in after-life, where souls of all famous people are gathered.
The 30-years old Max is MD and engaged to the attractive Coco, who jealously keep watch over him. After he heard the lovely voice of an unknown misdialing woman, he starts a restless search ...
An ancestor of the famous vampire gets a job as a photographer shooting beautiful fashion models at the family estate.
The Serpent's Egg follows a week in the life of Abel Rosenberg, an out-of-work American circus acrobat living in poverty-stricken Berlin following Germany's defeat in World War I.
A deaf and dumb accountant suffers from a psychic trauma in his childhood. He is collecting puppets and mutilates female bodies in the mortuary. After his secret love died by an accident he starts to kill.
Werner Schroeter's rhapsody of excess leaps from 1949 Cuba to contemporary France to points in between, while its feverishly shifting visual style evokes and parodies everything from kitschy Mexican telenovelas to silent French art films.
Leo, the owner of the stocking product "Discrete", has driven his company into the wall; the company is virtually bankrupt.
Two women, one from Boston and one from Germany, flee their empty lives to seek fulfillment in Mexico. The Black Angel is a transitional film; on one hand, it is a companion piece to Willow Springs, featuring two Schroeter regulars as characters far from home and in extremis; on the other hand, it is a film essay about Mexico and as such a harbinger of Schroeter’s nonfiction work to come. While he clearly shares his characters’ fascination with Mexico, the filmmaker also savages touristic exoticism – the otherworldly appearances of his protagonists and their rapturous reactions to new surroundings contrast sharply with the sober perceptions of Mexican history and economics featured in the documentary segments and in the prosaic presence of a non-professional cast of locals. - Harvard Film Archive
A tribunal interrogates, tortures and murders "witches" and "heretics" during the Inquisition.
"A vivid, exciting look at the lives of vulnerable young girls who are hustled into the promised land of professional glamour"
Schroeter's virtuosic staging of the Oscar Wilde tragedy is a complex montage of image and sound, filmed on the grand steps of Baalbeck, the ancient Roman temple in Lebanon, and interweaving Lebanese and German folk songs with the music of Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, Mozart, Bellini, and Donizetti. Elfi Mikesch, the cinematographer of Schroeter’s later films, designed the film’s sumptuous costumes. A contemporary critic for Le Monde wrote admiringly of Schroeter’s depiction of "the deadly struggle between dark Christian morality and luminous paganism.“
Munich at night: Robert Susmeit, a 16-year-old teenager who is jealously obsessed with his mother Hilde, traces her and her latest lover at a mundane apartment building where he kills the man in the heat of the moment at a swimming pool. His fatal outburst is secretly witnessed by Moni Dingeldey, a girl of the same age as his. Fascinated by the shaken and devastated strange boy who she hopes to be a soul-mate, she hides Robert in her mother's apartment. Meanwhile, a crowd of policemen and reporters frantically comb through the building in search a murderer whose identity is known only to Robert's parents who are searching as well...
A man plans to kill his wealthy wife for her money and so he can be with his beautiful young mistress. However, things don't turn out exactly as he had planned.
In this comedy, set in an Austrian mountain village, the town leaders conspire to attract tourists by touting a mythical "fountain of love" that runs nearby the village. When the minister of tourism discovers this, she immediately sends her agents to check out the veracity of the potentially scandalous water. After the village mayor declares a 3-day ban on sexual activity, he then plugs up the fountain. When the agents come, they find nothing. One of the agents wants to have his boss come and check it out personally, but changes his mind after he drinks some of the water. It really is an aphrodisiac! Soon tourists are arriving by the hundreds to sample the mysterious water. Unfortunately, the minister finds out and claims the water for the state.
The actors Heinz Doll, Hans Stiegler and Werner Mack have failed to look after the end of the last season in time for a new commitment and are now unemployed. Since they are just right that the Salzburg mountain hotel "Zum Blaue Enzian" staff looking for.
"Wunderbar" takes on a new meaning in this routine satire by Bernhard Wicki about a bar that is miraculously transported by God Himself to a nearby, new location on an island. The nature of the miracle is a bit strange, but it comes in answer to Pater Malachias' prayers to get the sin-ridden place out of the center of the city. The good and naive Malachias is subtly played by Horst Bollimann. Once this miracle of relocation has occurred, the sharks and entrepreneurs, who would bilk both the faithful and the curiosity-seekers alike, crop up like an unwanted epidemic. The mercenary and the sacred clash, as many try to find deeper meaning in what has happened, and Pater Malachias starts to doubt the wisdom of his original prayer.
A mix between Italian neo-realism, German expressionism and Austrian exploitation.
