This lavish CinemaScope epic is a fitting testament to the enormity of Ophuls’ vision even though it was a commercial and critical disaster that was unceremoniously butchered by its producers to try to recoup theirContinue reading
Category: German Cinema
Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)
In collaborating with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard and blues musician Ry Cooder, whose soulful, improvised steel guitar licks so perfectly reflect the images on screen, Wenders is able to seamlessly transplant the deep introspectionContinue reading
The Student of Prague (Stellan Rye, 1913)
A precursor to cinematic expressionism and the horror film’s mixture of religious superstition and Freudianism, as well as an early example of the Teutonic obsession with the doppelgänger, this variation on the Faust legend featuresContinue reading
Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987)
Wenders’ magnificent metaphysical romance and philosophical/historical meditation is dedicated to “all the old angels, especially Yasujiro [Ozu], François [Truffaut], and Andrei [Tarkovsky]â€â€”cinematic masters who left an indelible impression on Wenders’ work. In Wings of Desire,Continue reading
Pandorum (Christian Alvart, 2009)
When Alvart sticks to his story’s central mystery, the film is an eerily effective mixture of ecological science fiction and horror. Unfortunately, it is constantly undercut by the perfunctory deployment of cannibalistic humanoids and inaneContinue reading
The Damned (Luchino Visconti, 1969)
A far cry from his neorealist roots, Visconti goes for broke in this extraordinary epic of high camp. History is thrown beneath the steady flow of Freudian pathology, sexual perversity, soap opera theatrics, and SirkianContinue reading
Vampyr (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1932)
Initially upstaged by Tod Browning’s Dracula, the great Carl Theodor Dreyer’s stab at genre filmmaking is an evocative masterpiece of hallucinatory imagery and dream-logic narrative. It makes sense that Dreyer’s horror film is so unnervinglyContinue reading
Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997; 2008)
Whether in its original 1997 Austrian version or the new, meticulous shot-for-shot English language remake, Michael Haneke’s meta-thriller is a masterful provocation. The story of a wealthy family held captive and tormented by a pairContinue reading