World War One

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Die Rebellion (The Rebellion). 1993. Austria. Directed by Michael Haneke. With its silent-era aesthetic of sepia tones and muted color tints, and its interweaving of realism and fantasy, Haneke’s haunting adaptation of Joseph Roth’s expressionistic 1924 novel is an homage to the great Weimar cinema of G. W. Pabst and F. W. Murnau. In a heartbreaking performance, Branko Samarovski plays Andreas Pum, a soldier who loses his leg during the Great War and becomes an organ-grinder to earn a few coins a day. To this loyal citizen of the State, the veterans and firebrands who march in protest against society’s neglect are lazy, insubordinate “heathens.” But when an ugly tram incident condemns Pum to a life of penury and loneliness, his soul is awakened to the bitter waste of a life spent in duty to God and Empire. In German; 90 minRead More »

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Wooden Crosses (1932) – Hailed by the New York Times on its Paris release as “one of the great films in motion picture history,” Raymond Bernard’s Wooden Crosses, France’s answer to All Quiet on the Western Front, still stuns with its depiction of the travails of one French regiment during World War I. Using a masterful arsenal of film techniques, from haunting matte paintings to jarring documentary-like camerawork in the film’s battle sequences, Bernard created a pacifist work of enormous empathy and chilling despair. No one who has ever seen this technical and emotional powerhouse has been able to forget it.Read More »

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Wooden Crosses (1932) – Hailed by the New York Times on its Paris release as “one of the great films in motion picture history,” Raymond Bernard’s Wooden Crosses, France’s answer to All Quiet on the Western Front, still stuns with its depiction of the travails of one French regiment during World War I. Using a masterful arsenal of film techniques, from haunting matte paintings to jarring documentary-like camerawork in the film’s battle sequences, Bernard created a pacifist work of enormous empathy and chilling despair. No one who has ever seen this technical and emotional powerhouse has been able to forget it.Read More »

Plot
Marquise Berthe de Brabant got married to a French nobleman just before the beginning of World War I. Her husband gets severely injured in an attack against the Germans and hands over the bouquet of Berthe to a German officer, before dying without revealing his name. In turn, the German soldier gets injured and is sent to a military hospital, where Berthe is taking care of war victims. Unexpectedly he tells her everything. Will Berthe take revenge, or will she fulfill her duty as a nurse? (EFG)Read More »

Adaptation of Tolstoi’s “The Devil”, featuring Krystyna Janda.

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This drama is an expressive portrayal of sexual obsession, which eventually breaks down the personality of a wise and hard-working man and leads to tragedy. The film is based on Leo Tolstoy’s short story “The Devil”. The plot is set in Greater Poland (Wielkopolska), just before the outbreak of World War I. The protagonist is a man who is troubled by his own feelings. The protagonist is a man torn by passions, full of energy and plans for the future. He wants to use the knowledge he gained during his studies in Switzerland for economic purposes. He is a patriot who promotes poetry, infecting others with patriotic feelings. Paweł is a model of a positivist. His meeting with Dorota triggers an avalanche of passion, shattering reason and logic and leading to a tragic finale.Read More »

Richard Girard is part of a New Orleans family working closely with the English Warburtons. When Richard meets Mary Warburton she is engaged to Erik von Gerardt. He does wed Mary but their time in America is financially difficult.Read More »

Returning from his imprisonment in Russia during the First World War, Franz Ferdinand Trotta, a young KuK officer, discovers how much the defeat has transformed Vienna and his people. He is stunned by the new order of things. Having lost his entire fortune and his wife, who is having a sapphic relationship with a Hungarian artist, he tries to regain his place in a world that appears devastated.Read More »

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Considered by many to be the finest British film ever made, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is a stirring masterpiece like no other. Roger Livesey dynamically embodies outmoded English militarism as the indelible General Clive Candy, who barely survives four decades of tumultuous British history, 1902 to 1942, only to see the world change irrevocably before his eyes. Anton Walbrook and Deborah Kerr provide unforgettable support, he as a German enemy turned lifelong friend of Candy’s and she as young women of three consecutive generations—a socially committed governess, a sweet-souled war nurse, and a modern-thinking army driver—who inspire him. Colonel Blimp is both moving and slyly satirical, an incomparable film about war, love, aging, and obsolescence, shot in gorgeous Technicolor.Read More »

Edith, a young French woman, is in love with a poet but is forced by her father into a marriage with a much older man. Edith is captured by the Germans and endures multiple rapes that result in her becoming pregnant. Edith’s husband initially thinks that the poet is the father of her child, and the story ends in tragedy with both men seeing action in the trenches.Read More »