Entertainment For Lively Minds
Deutsches Kino
Posted by doomah on 19 June 2009 - 9:46am.
In recent weeks I have been enjoying a few gems of modern German cinema. I finally managed to see The Counterfeiters and The Lives Of Others this week, and also watched The Baader Meinhof Complex recently. In the past I have watched The Edukators and Run Lola Run, and I have Goodbye Lenin and Downfall lined up to view in the very near future.
Can the Massive recommend any other German films?
- More from doomah.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Das Boot
Four hours in a U-boat. It does what I might have thought impossible, the Germans become "us". It's incredibly gripping, parts of it are so tense it's near unwatchable.
I have The Lives of Others in a pile of 30 or so yet-unwatched films. Should I bump it to the top of the list?
Yes!
Although I don't know what else is in your pile I would still say yes.
What's really hit home after recently watching these films is that I don't know much about post-war Germany. Sure, I know about the Cold War and all that, but The Lives Of Others and The Baader Meinhof Complex in particular have given me an impression of what it must have been like to live in a divided country, and how that may have affected the population. The Lives Of Others gives some insight to what it must have been like to live in the shadow of the Stasi. It's a remarkable film, with some great performances.
Das Boot: seconded
Also: Wings Of Desire. Apart from that, you've listed the exact German DVDs that I own.
Das Boot: Thirded
Make sure you get the 'proper' full-length version, not the cut down, dubbed English version that was released in the US.
Werner Herzog
Great places to start are:
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Nosferatu the Vampyre
Fitzcarraldo
All starring the certifiable but mesmerising Klaus Kinski.
Metropolis + M
directed by Fritz Lang - who went on to direct Hollywood Noir Classics such as "The Big Heat".
Alte Schule
Try Doctor Mabuse series from 30’s are classics about a master criminal with hypnotic powers.
No one who love cinema should not have seen M by Fritz Lang (yeah I know he’s Austrian): It’s the everyday tale story of a child murderer played Peter Lorre on the run from the local polices and the local criminals (darker version of Wrong arm of the law!!) and a very morally complex film.
Being a cheeky you can also check out the “Germans” in Hollywood Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, Lang himself.
The Tin Drum
If you can overlook (the novel's) author Gunther Grass's subsequent fall from grace, this is an excellent adaptation (by Volker Schlondorff) of a difficult book, with an amazing central performance by David Bennent as the boy who refuses to grow up in Nazi-occupied Poland.
fall from grace?
It recently became known that he served
in the Waffen-SS during World War II.
As I understand it he was conscripted and, I suspect in 1940's Germany you didn't say no when the call-up arrived.
The controversy is not so much that he served in the German armed forces, but that he then spent many years taking a high moral standpoint about the Nazi years, and those who also served.
Rainer Fassbinder
is the Mark E. Smith of German cinema.
He made a huge number of films (something like 40 full-length films in 20 years) and there's a lot of chod in there but when he got it right they were stunning.
The problem is, everyone would pick a different Top 5 Fassbinders.
A good plac eto start might be The Marriage Of Maria Braun (or 'Die Ehe der Maria Braun' if you want to sound like a film student (or, I guess, if you're actually German :)))
His Berlin Alexanderplatz series originally ran on TV but has recently been printed to 35mm and is being touted as a single 16 hour film. The Ring Cycle of German film-making :-)
Paris, Texas
Wim Wenders
Aguirre, Wrath of God
Werner Herzog
if you think Apocalypse Now is intense, try this
See above
comment on Herzog
Wintersleepers
Also by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run). I haven't seen RLR but enjoyed this movie. A set of coincidences intertwine the characters who at first seem unconnected with each other.
Some good recommendations here...
...thanks, people.
May have a splurge over the weekend. I've got my sights on Das Boot, M, and a couple of others not mentioned here - The Wave and Das Experiment.
Not sure about the Herzog recommendations. I always like reading articles about the man; undoubtedly he's an interminably absorbing character, but I've tried watching 'Aguirre, The Wrath of God' a couple of times now but can't get past the first half hour. If anyone could suggest a relatively accessible way into his canon, by all means, let me know.
Das Experiment
Good choice.
Saw it on TV and even my Mrs was hooked. Normally she loses patience with subtitled films within minutes.
This isn't exactly *modern*...
but it is perhaps the masterpiece of German Expressionist cinema - Das Cabinet Des Dr Caligari.
It really is extraordinary.
Heimat
Grab a Weißbier and settle in for 15 hours 24 minutes.