Lucie Mannheim
Based on extensive interviews, shot on 16mm in a series of static long takes, Filmemigration aus Nazideutschland, is one of the most fascinating examples of "Film history on film" ever produced. Straschek devoted years to researching the topic and accumulating both film and non-film materials. Apart from some radio features and articles, however, this 290-minute TV programme remains the only published trace of Straschek's lifelong work on the emigration of film personnel. He had intended to publish a three-volume book, encompassing all available data about 3,000 emigrants originating from the centre and peripheries of film production, but the book never materialised.
Based on Ivan Turgenev's novella, Erste Liebe is about two young lovers in czarist Russia. One is a 21-year-old woman, the other a young man of sixteen. Things take a tragic turn as the girl (Dominique Sanda as Sanaida) falls in love with the boy's father (Maximilian Schell). This film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1970's Academy Awards.
A woman reports that her young daughter is missing, but there seems to be no evidence that she ever existed.
A British flight officer plans to rescue an airline stewardess who is trapped in East Germany.
Director Wolfgang Staudte who left East Germany in 1953 to make movies in West Germany, takes a few swipes at the West German judicial system in this fairly effective courtroom drama about the murder of a four-month-old baby. Police almost immediately arrest the mother Ingrid (Ellen Schwiers) who is the mistress of the father, a rich business VIP married to another woman. His position and wealth keep him insulated from suspicion. A hot-shot lawyer (Hanns Lothar) has to overcome the unaccountably biased perceptions of the police, the judge, the prosecutor and almost everyone else in the judicial system. The defence lawyer, driven to an extreme, knows he has to find the real killer or his client will be convicted.
A doctor goes to meet a beautiful girl at a park bench near a wooded area. When he arrives, he finds her battered body lying next to a stream! He then finds himself to be the prime suspect. Who's the killer?
The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel is a British television series based on the adventure novel of the same name by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. The series, produced by the Towers of London for Incorporated Television Programmes, was created by writer Michael Hogan; it ran from 1956 for a total of eighteen episodes.
A meek teller thinks he's killed his boss. He flees with a box of cash hoping for a new life with his younger mistress.
An aging truck driver finds smuggled money and becomes involved with a hijacking crowd.
During World War II, German soldiers occupy the home of a beautiful Belgian girl and her mother.
A hunt for a spy, in an hotel in the South of France just before World War Two.
Jimmy Bancroft, a fighter pilot, who is recovering from injuries sustained during the Battle of Britain, and Hazel Court, a nurse, come across a pair of rare birds nestling in a field. After a run in with the army, and a couple of thieves, they, with the cooperation of the village people and the Ornithology Society, help the eggs to hatch. A wonderful look at life in a small village, during World War II.
In 1940 Sally Maitland is forced to leave England, ostracised as a Nazi sympathiser by everyone including her well-to-do family. On the ship to Halifax, Canada, she is courted by Polish aristocrat Jan Orloch and by awkward British navel intelligence officer Jimmy Garrick. She shows herself somewhat more amenable to Orloch's advances, and agrees to meet his mother in Halifax. Once there however, it becomes clear no-one is really who they say they are.
Anton Chekhov’s one-act comic play throws Elena Ivanonva Popova, a land-owning widow with dimples, on her cheeks up against Grigory Stepanovitch Smirnov, a middle-aged landowner. He arrives at her house claiming her late husband owed him money and he wants the debt repaid immediately. They argue and almost have a duel over the debt before they realise that they have fallen in love with each other.
Winding up his Hollywood film career in 1935, venerable British stage star George Arliss returned to his homeland for his last movie assignments. In East Meets West, the 68-year-old Arliss dons turban and monocle to portray an Eastern sultan who is inordinately proud of his son. The young man bids fair to break his father's heart by conducting an affair with the wife of a notorious criminal.
Richard Hannay stumbles upon a conspiracy that thrusts him into a hectic chase across the Scottish moors—a chase in which he is both the pursuer and the pursued—as well as into an unexpected romance with the cool Pamela.
This pre-WW II German costume drama chronicles the French Revolution with a particular focus upon Danton, Robespierre, and Marat. It depicts the dramatic downfall and execution of Georges Danton in 1794 at the hands of Maximilien Robespierre. The film also presents an interesting, if not historically inaccurate, portrayal of Louis XVI.
In a distant Teutonic village, people dance and drink merrily celebrating a wedding feast. However, an elderly man tells the villagers that the valley where they live wasn't always happy but sorrowful. This was due to the tyranny of the master of the mountains who ruled the valley despotically.
On the surface a straightforward tale of the search for a buried treasure, the film is a textbook example of German expressionism, with the passions of the protagonists conveyed as much through symbolism as action.
