Heinrich George

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If you’ve read the book, this film version comes as a surprise – how does it manage to make so little of so much? Or is it so much of so little? Döblin co-authored the screenplay, which compresses his sprawling novel into a breathless eighty-eight minutes. Of course, much is sacrificed, but the skeleton plot still compares favourably to that of many modern movies. Technically, too, this flick has aged magnificently – considering this is one of the first German films with sound, what we see and hear is a lot smoother than I’d expected. The cinematography is astonishing by the standards of the decades that followed…Read More »

France in the 15th Century: The country is marked by the wars with England and internal power struggles. King Charles sees himself powerless against the state. Suddenly a young woman named Johanna emerges from the people, who claims that the Archangel Gabriel appointed her to save France. First the king doubts her words, but he sees that the people, through her are gaining new courage.Read More »

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History of the legal scandal involving the French Captain Alfred Dreyfus who was convicted of treason and sent to the penal colony at Devil’s Island in 1894 because of an anti-Semitic conspiracy in the war ministry. Supported by the writer Emile Zola Dreyfus’s wife Lucie fights for his release. In 1899, the verdict against Dreyfus was repealed and shortly after, Dreyfus was pardoned. But it took another six years until Dreyfus was fully exonerated. (filmportal.de)Read More »

Young Heini Volker has a problem. His unemployed father demands he joins Berlin’s young communists. But his heart belongs to the Hitler Youth. As violence escalates between these camps, Heini’s quandary deepens. How he finds his way to National Socialism is the story of Hitlerjunge Quex. Produced in 1933, just after Hitler’s ascension to power, this movie draws from the real-life story of Herbert Norkus, a Hitler Youth killed by communists in 1932. With its vivid recreations of Depression-era misery, it offers a fascinating portrait of Berlin’s working-class life viewed through the transformative lens of Nazi ideology. An immediate box office success, the film became a Nazi propaganda staple, viewed by 20 million by 1945.Read More »

In this notorious Nazi propaganda historical costume melodrama, a conniving, ambitious Jewish businessman, Süß Oppenheimer, snares a post as treasurer to the Duke of Wurttemburg by showering the corrupt duke with treasure and promises of even greater riches. As the Jew’s schemes grow more elaborate and his actions more brazen, the dukedom nearly erupts into civil war. Persuaded by the Jew, the Duke all but scuttles the constitution and alienates the assembly by lifting the local ban on Jews in Stuttgart. In a final outrage, the Jew rapes a wholesome German girl and tortures her father and fiancée. When the Duke succumbs to a sudden heart attack, the assembly of Elders try the Jew and sentence him to death for having “carnal knowledge of a Christian woman”.Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
Most modern-day viewers are familiar with German author Alfred Doeblin’s naturalistic novel Berlin Alexanderplatz from its epic TV miniseries presentation, directed in 1980 by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The Doeblin work was previously filmed on the very brink of the Nazi takeover in 1933, with Heinrich George as the ex-convict protagonist. Yearning for respectability, George finds he cannot escape the influence of his old criminal cohorts. When George refuses to pay “hush money” to the mob, his faithful wife Margarete Schlegel is killed. George resignedly returns to a life of crime, ultimately descending into madness. The 1933 adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz ran a brisk 90 minutes; Fassbinder’s 1980 TV version ran ten times longer.Read More »