93% (3) Metropolis 153 min, Not Rated, [Drama, Sci-Fi] [Fritz Lang] [13 Mar 1927]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 83%, Rotten Tomatoes: 99%, Metacritic: 98%, External Reviews
Awards: 6 wins & 5 nominations.
Actors: Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm, Fritz Rasp, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Writer: Thea von Harbou (screenplay), Thea von Harbou (novel)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Website Language: German Country: Germany
Plot: Sometime in the future, the city of Metropolis is home to a Utopian society where its wealthy residents live a carefree life. One of those is Freder Fredersen. One day, he spots a beautiful woman with a group of children, she and the children quickly disappear. Trying to follow her, he is horrified to find an underground world of workers who apparently run the machinery that keeps the Utopian world above ground functioning. One of the few people above ground who knows about the world below is Freder's father, John Fredersen, who is the founder and master of Metropolis. Freder learns that the woman is called Maria, who espouses the need to join the "hands" - the workers - to the "head" - those in power above - by a mediator who will act as the "heart". Freder wants to help the plight of the workers in their struggle for a better life. But when John learns of what Maria is advocating and that Freder has joined their cause, with the assistance of an old colleague. an inventor called Rotwang, who turns out to be But their nemesis goes to works towards quashing a proposed uprising, with Maria at the centre of their plan. John, unaware that Rotwang has his own agenda., makes plans that include shutting down the machines, with the prospect of unleashing total anarchy both above and below ground.
Rotten Tomatoes: In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Scroll To: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% [ / 5]
90% (2) Diary of a Lost Girl 79 min, [Drama] [Georg Wilhelm Pabst] [11 Apr 1930]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 80%, Rotten Tomatoes: 100%, External Reviews
Actors: André Roanne, Fritz Rasp, Josef Rovenský, Louise Brooks
Writer: Margarete Böhme (novel), Rudolf Leonhardt
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: German Country: Germany
Plot: Thymiane is a beautiful young girl who is not having a storybook life. Her governess, Elizabeth, is thrown out of her home when she is pregnant, only to be later found drowned. That same day, her father already has a new governess named Meta. Meinert, downstairs druggist, takes advance of her and gets Thymiane pregnant. When she refuses to marry, her baby is taken from her and she is put into a strict girls reform school. When Count Osdorff is unable to get the family to take her back, he waits for her to escape. She escapes with a friend and the friend goes with the Count while she goes to see her baby. Thymiane finds that her baby is dead, and the Count has put both girls up at a brothel. When her father dies, Thymiane marries the Count and becomes a Countess, but her past and her hatred of Meta will come back to her.
Rotten Tomatoes: German filmmaker G.W. Pabst and Hollywood expatriate Louise Brooks re-team after the success of Pandora's Box for the silent film Diary of a Lost Girl. On the day of her confirmation, innocent young Thymiane Henning (Brooks) is given a lockable diary as a present. She's distraught because the housekeeper Elisabeth (Sibylle Schmitz) is leaving under curious circumstances and turns up presumably dead. Her duties are taken over by the conniving Meta (Franziska Kinz), who accepts the advances of Thymiane's pharmacist father (Josef Ravensky). Trying to understand Elisabeth's fate, Thymiane agrees to meet her father's assistant, Meinert (Fritz Rasp). She passes out, he carries her up to her room, and by the next scene she has borne a child by him. Meta snoops in Thymiane's diary and finds out it was Meinert's baby, so she suggests they get married. Thymiane refuses, so they throw her in a creepy reformatory for fallen women and leave her baby with a midwife. While in the reformatory, she meets Erika (Edith Meinhard), with whom she eventually escapes. To escape from poverty and homelessness, the girls then become nominal prostitutes in a brothel and are "sexually liberated." ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
Scroll To: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% [ / 5]
76% (1) The Love of Jeanne Ney 100 min, [Drama, Romance] [Georg Wilhelm Pabst] [30 Jan 1928]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 76%, External Reviews
Actors: Brigitte Helm, Fritz Rasp, Uno Henning, Édith Jéhanne
Writer: Ilja Ehrenburg (novel), Rudolf Leonhardt, Ladislaus Vajda
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: German Country: Germany
Plot: In the Crimea, the Reds and the Whites aren't done fighting, and Jeanne discovers that the man she loves is a Bolshevik (when he kills her father). Penniless, she returns to Paris where she works for her uncle. Soon after, her lover Andreas is in France to organize the sailors in Toulon. So also is a thief, traitor, and libertine, Khalibiev, who wants to seduce Jeanne. His schemes, Jeanne and Andreas's naivete, and a lost diamond bring the lovers to the brink of tragedy.
Rotten Tomatoes: Before plunging headlong into the Freudian sexuality of Pandora's Box, German filmmaker G. W. Pabst offered the impressionistic social document Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney (The Love of Jeanne Ney). Based on a sturm-und-drang story by Ilya Ehrenberg, the film travels from the Crimea to Paris and back again in unfolding a sprawling tale of sociological upheaval. The events are seen through the eyes of Jeanne Ney (Edith Hehanne), who is forced to flee her Russian homeland when her Communist lover kills her diplomat father. The romance between Jeanne and her politicized paramour irrevocably links the lure of radicalism with the call of the flesh. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Scroll To: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% [ / 5]
71% (1) Emil und die Detektive 75 min, [Adventure, Family, Drama, Thriller] [Gerhard Lamprecht] [26 Dec 1931]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 71%, External Reviews
Actors: Fritz Rasp, Käthe Haack, Rolf Wenkhaus, Rudolf Biebrach
Writer: Erich Kästner (from the novel by), Billy Wilder (screenplay), Erich Kästner (screenplay)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: German Country: Germany
Plot: Emil goes to Berlin to see his grandmother with a large amount of money and is offered sweets by a strange man that make him sleep. He wakes up at his stop with no money. It is up to him and a group of children to save the day.
Rotten Tomatoes: No less a scrivener than Billy Wilder adapted the Erich Kastner novel Emil and the Detectives for its first film version. The story concerns a young boy named Emil who has been packed off to visit relatives in Germany. While en route on the train, Emil's money is stolen by a penny-ante thief. The boy enlists the aid of a group of pre-teen youths who fancy themselves ace detectives. The kids get in deeper than expected when it turns out that the thief is part of a criminal gang planning a big heist. The 1931 Emil and the Detectives is perhaps the best of the four film versions of the Kastner story, benefitting from some cheerful glimpses of a sunshine-drenched Berlin that disappeared forever during World War II. Subsequent versions of Emil would be filmed in England in 1935, in West Germany in 1954, and by Walt Disney (who couldn't resist the temptation to "Americanize" the characters) in 1964.
Scroll To: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% [ / 5]
68% (1) Somewhere in Berlin 77 min, [Drama] [Gerhard Lamprecht] [18 Dec 1946]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 68%, External Reviews
Actors: Charles Brauer, Fritz Rasp, Harry Hindemith, Hedda Sarnow
Writer: Gerhard Lamprecht
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: German Country: Germany
Plot: After WWII, Berlin lies in ruins. For Gustav, Willi and their friends the rubble provides an adventurous, dangerous playground. Especially for Gustav, it helps pass the time, as he longs for his father's return from a POW camp. One day a stranger arrives, looking helpless and hopeless... Gerhard Lamprecht built his reputation during the 1920s and '30s with films like Emil and the Detectives (1931, script Billy Wilder) and socially-critical Berlin films based on the drawings of Heinrich Zille. In Somewhere in Berlin-his first postwar film, made just months after the cessation of hostilities-he portrays the people of the shattered city with precision and psychological realism.
Rotten Tomatoes: Filmed on location in the bombed-out titular city, this film details the horrendous plight of postwar German citizens, who were as much victims of Hitler's Third Reich as any conquered nation. The film concentrates on a gang of street kids who stumble across a cache of black-market fireworks.
Scroll To: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% [ / 5]