Oskar Homolka
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.
Dr Jake Goodwin is the chief neurosurgeon at a busy city hospital. As he makes his rounds, Goodwin becomes involved in a vast array of medical cases. Problems arise when a top doctor is brought in seriously injured after a car crash, and Goodwin must deal with the doctor's own personal physician who wants to avoid a scandal. At the same time Goodwin's own son is brought in with a life threatening condition. This film was the pilot for the TV series Doctor's Hospital.
During a Caribbean holiday, a British civil servant finds herself falling in love with a Russian agent.
A British intelligence agent must track down a fellow spy suspected of being a double agent.
Like the play from which it derived, the film tells of the early struggles of composer Edvard Grieg and his attempts to develop an authentic Norwegian national music. It stars Toralv Maurstad as Grieg and features an international cast including Florence Henderson, Christina Schollin, Robert Morley, Harry Secombe, Oskar Homolka, Edward G. Robinson and Frank Porretta (as Rikard Nordraak). Filmed in Super Panavision 70 by Davis Boulton and presented in single-camera Cinerama in some countries, it was an attempt to capitalise on the success of The Sound of Music.
An eccentric Parisian woman's optimistic perception of life begins to sound more rational than the rather traditional beliefs of others.
A private eye is hired by an insurance company to investigate a shipping magnate suspected of deliberately sinking his own ships for the insurance money. He finds himself involved in a web of deception, double-crossing and murder.
A former British spy stumbles into in a plot to overthrow Communism with the help of a supercomputer. But who is working for whom?
Colonel Stok, a Soviet intelligence officer responsible for security at the Berlin Wall, appears to want to defect but the evidence is contradictory. Stok wants the British to handle his defection and asks for one of their agents, Harry Palmer, to smuggle him out of East Germany.
Carl Brown and Annie McGairy are in love. Their Irish immigrant parents knew each other in the old country - and Carl's parents want better for their son than Annie, who was raised in the slums. When Annie runs away to marry Carl while he's at college, they have many difficulties, including a college Dean that frowns upon married couples, Carl's angry parents, Carl's jealousy, and Annie's own problems with her sexuality.
Rolfe—a Viking leader with the cunning and devious mind of a pirate—tells other sailors of the mythical 'The Mother of Voices', a mammoth bell made of gold and as tall as three men, but he adds enough incorrect details to throw them off the proper trail. However, the leader of a group of ambitious Moors sees through Rolfe's story, and soon the two are in a breakneck race to be the first to find the precious bell.
The Grimm brothers Wilhelm and Jacob, known for their literary works in the nineteenth century, have their lives dramatized. In the movie they write a family history for a duke which includes reenactments of three of their stories including "The Dancing Princess," "The Cobbler and the Elves" and "The Singing Bone."
Fred, George, Doug and Howie are quickly reaching middle-age. Three of them are married, only Fred is still a bachelor. They want something different than their ordinary marriages, children and TV-dinners. In secret, they get themselves an apartment with a beautiful young woman, Kathy, for romantic rendezvous. But Kathy does not tell them that she is a sociology student researching the sexual life of the white middle-class male.
A young boy discovers the existence of a group called the Mooncussers - a gang of pirates that work at night and sends out false homing signals to ships at sea; the ships then crash on the shore, where they are looted by the gang.
A search for a winning lottery ticket in his dead father's grave causes Sardonicus' face to freeze in a horrible grimace, until he forces a doctor to treat his affliction--with even more grotesque results! The audience gets an opportunity to vote--via the "Punishment Poll"--for the penalty Sardonicus must pay for his deeds...
A young officer in the army of Empress Catherine of Russia is on his way to his new duty station at a remote outpost. During a blinding snowstorm he comes upon a stranger who was caught in the storm and is near death from freezing. He rescues the man and eventually brings him back to health. When the man is well enough to travel, the two part company and the man vows to repay the officer for saving his life. Soon after he arrives at his new post, a revolt by the local Cossacks breaks out and the fort is besieged by the rebels. The young officer is astonished to find out that the leader of the rebellious Cossacks is none other than the stranger whose life he had saved during the storm.
A trading company manager travels up an African river to find a missing outpost head and discovers the depth of evil in humanity's soul.
In wartime England, circa 1941, poorly-armed tugs are sent into "U-Boat Alley" to rescue damaged Allied ships. An American named David Ross arrives to captain one of these tugs. He's given a key by a fellow tugboat-man -- a key to an apartment and its pretty female resident. Should something happen to the friend, Ross can use the key.
A Farewell to Arms is a 1957 American drama film directed by Charles Vidor. The screenplay by Ben Hecht, based in part on a 1930 play by Laurence Stallings, was the second feature film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's 1929 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. It was the last film produced by David O. Selznick.
Hadrian comes home to find his family and home under the control of his overwhelming spinster aunt. Eventually, Emmie, the spinster, loses control over the family and pursues an unsuspecting Reverend.
Napoleon's tumultuous relations with Russia including his disastrous 1812 invasion serve as the backdrop for the tangled personal lives of two aristocratic families.
With his family away for their annual summer holiday, Richard Sherman decides he has the opportunity to live a bachelor's life. The beautiful but ditzy blonde from the apartment above catches his eye and they soon start spending time together - maybe a little too much time!
A London solicitor and a French detective investigate the mysterious death of an elderly woman suspected of being poisoned.
A British Sanitary Engineer, goes on holiday with a set of plans for a new secret weapon which he has mistaken for his new plumbing invention. Everyone is hunting for him, including the Russians. The Russians find him and offer him a job in the Kremlin doing research (on plumbing he believes). He accepts, arrives in Russia and falls in love with Tania, a secret agent. And then discovers the true nature of the plans he is carrying...
Mountain climbers in the Swiss Alps mull over past problems while trying to conquer a perilous peak.
A prostitute is thrown out of her house by her alcoholic father, and her scheming brother-in-law tries to devise a plan to marry her off and make some money in the process.
Norwegian immigrant Marta Hanson keeps a firm but loving hand on her household of four children, a devoted husband and a highly-educated lodger who reads Charles Dickens to the family every evening. Through financial crises, illnesses and the small triumphs of everyday life, Marta maintains her optimism and sense of humor, traits she passes on to her aspiring-author daughter, Katrin.
The French owner of an antique shop, Desius Heiss, (Oskar Homolka) has become disillusioned with society since his torture as a prisoner on Devil's island, since when he has allowed his shop to become a front for criminal activity, and he himself is a receiver of stolen goods.
Ambassador Joseph Davies is sent by FDR to Russia to learn about the Soviet system and returns to America as an advocate of Stalinism.
A group of academics have spent years shut up in a house working on the definitive encyclopedia. When one of them discovers that his entry on slang is hopelessly outdated, he ventures into the wide world to learn about the evolving language. Here he meets Sugarpuss O’Shea, a nightclub singer, who’s on top of all the slang—and, it just so happens, needs a place to stay.
Robert Montgomery plays a jealous man who plots to fake his death and incriminate his wife's suspected lover.
Kitty Carroll, an attractive store model, volunteers to become a test subject for a machine that will make her invisible so that she can use her invisibility to exact revenge on her ex-boss.
Beautiful chanteuse 'Bijou' (Marlene Dietrich) cascades through Malaysia's ports of call eventually landing in a handsome lieutenant's lap. As Bijou 'drifts through the standards', the fleet's Admiral reckons the US Navy "already has enough destroyers". A Marlene classic with songs by Frederick Hollander and a young and promising John Wayne.
In 1890, two British expatriates, Robert Herrick and Huish, and German Captain Jakob Thorbecke, are commissioned to sail a Yankee schooner called The Golden State , whose captain and crew have died of smallpox. From Tehua in the South Seas to Australia, they are to deliver a cargo of champagne. Thorbecke decides to head for Peru, however, so he can sell the merchandise and pocket the money. While sailing, Faith Wishart, daughter of the deceased captain, comes out of her hiding place on board and, by briefly holding Thorbecke at gunpoint, demands he make the delivery.
Rhodes of Africa is a 1936 British biographical film charting the life of Cecil Rhodes. It was directed by Berthold Viertel and starred Walter Huston, Oskar Homolka, Basil Sydney and Bernard Lee.
The story, starring Constance Bennett and Douglass Montgomery, involves a Canadian POW being hidden by a German citizen during World War I.
A young women causes a fatal accident. She flees the country, only to get caught in the net of brasilian traffickers.
Hokuspokus is a 1930 German comedy film directed by Gustav Ucicky and starring Lilian Harvey, Willy Fritsch and Oskar Homolka. It was an adaptation of the play Hokuspokus by Curt Goetz.
The story of Brennende Grenze (= Burning Border) starts after the end of WWI. Polish franctireurs invade the German bordering regions which are to be given to Poland as agreed on in the post-war peace treaties. Luise von Willkühnen's manor is invaded by Ladislaus von Zeremski, his lover Nadja and their gang. They treaten the inhabitants until Luise's son kills Zeremski.
Before road movies there were street films, a distinct cycle within German silent cinema. The essential ingredient - misalliance between bourgeois and slum dweller - is present here, though somewhat displaced by Asta Nielsen's star persona. She plays an aging hooker who falls for handsome Felix, a student who has rowed with his parents and ventured into the lower depths. Dreaming of a new life, she ejects her pimp and invests her savings in a cake shop. Even without that title, though, you wouldn't bet on a happy ending. Nielsen is a quite restrained sort of diva, and Rahn likewise soft pedals the melodrama, except for the grand finale. He died soon after making this, his contemporaries regretting the masterworks the cinema was thus denied. Well, maybe.
