Germanic Literature & Cinema

Directed by Werner Herzog.
94 minutes; released 1972.
A ruthless Spanish conquistador searches for gold in post-Inca Peru. Starring Klaus Kinski.

Directed by Max Färberböck.
125 minutes; released 1999.
Two women — one Jewish and the other German — begin a torrid love affair in World War II Germany. In German with optional English subtitles.

Directed by Lewis Milestone.
130 minutes; released 1930.
A group of young World War I German recruits pass from idealism to disillusionment with war. Based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque.

Directed by Werner Herzog.
96 minutes; released 1970.
An asylum is taken over by its dwarf inmates.

Directed by Wim Wenders.
125 minutes; released 1977.
A Hamburg picture framer who suffers from leukemia is offered money to assassinate a Mafia figure in Paris. Based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith. Starring Dennis Hopper. In German with optional English subtitles.

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
93 minutes; released 1974.
A middle-aged German woman falls in love with a young Arab. In German with optional English subtitles.

Directed by Uli Edel.
149 minutes; released 2008.
Bombings, robberies, kidnappings and assassinations--all these were committed by the Red Army Faction, a German terrorist group in the late 1960s and 1970s. In this story of the group, children of the Nazi generation grow up fighting a violent war against what they see as the new face of fascism: American imperialism supported by the German establishment. In German with optional English subtitles.

Directed by Sandra Nettelbeck.
106 minutes; released 2001.
The head chef at a busy restaurant, Martha's solitary ways are complicated when her eight-year-old niece moves in and the restaurant hires a charming Italian chef. In German with English subtitles.

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
940 minutes; released 1980.
This epic work by filmmaker Fassbinder tells the story of an ex-con's attempt to lead an honest life in the Weimar-era Germany. Based on the novel by Alfred Doblin.

Directed by Walter Ruttmann.
62 minutes; released 1927.
Beginning with a train entering Berlin at 5 in the morning, this film focuses on one day's bustle in 1920s Berlin from dawn till dusk.

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders.
109 minutes; released 1995.
Four stories of love and illusion are told from the perspective of a wandering film director. Starring John Malkovich, Irne Jacob and Sophie Marceau. In Italian or French with optional English subtitles.

Directed by Josef von Sternberg.
2 discs, 106 and 94 minutes; released 1930.
A middle-aged professor is degraded by his obsession with a tawdry cafe entertainer. Based on the novel by Heinrich Mann. Starring Marlene Dietrich. Disc 1 in the original German with English subtitles; disc 2 in the original English.

Directed by Volker Schlöndorff.
142 minutes; released 1979.
On the eve of World War II, a boy decides on his 3rd birthday to remain a child to protest against an increasingly violent government and its increasingly passive population. Based on the novel by Günter Grass. In German with optional English subtitles.

Directed by Eric Till.
90 minutes; released 2000.
This film dramatizes the last years of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran minister who spoke out against Hitler, participated in the German resistance, and paid for his convictions when the Nazis hanged him in 1945. Starring Ulrich Tukur, Johanna Klante, Robert Joy and R.H. Thomson. See also the documentaries: Hanged on a Twisted Cross and Bonhoeffer.

Directed by Andreas Dresen.
98 minutes; released 2008.
A 67-year-old married woman rediscovers her passion and her sexuality when she unexpectedly falls in love with a 76-year-old man. In German with English subtitles.

Directed by Roberto Rossellini.
71 minutes; released 1948.
Set in the years following World War II, Germany Year Zero depicts the devastation of postwar Berlin through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy as he tries to help his family survive. In Italian with English subtitles.

Directed by William Dieterle.
106 minutes; released 1941.
Having promised his soul to the Devil in exchange for good fortune, Jabez Stone asks the talented lawyer Daniel Webster to get him out of the bargain. In English.

Directed by Josef von Sternberg.
75 minutes; released 1928.
A ship's stoker finds a necklace next to a dead body in an alley and soon gets mixed up in the murder, as well as a mystery involving a European royal family. He also becomes the real killer's target. Silent with English intertitles and musical accompaniment.

Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.
155 minutes; released 2004.
This Oscar-nominated feature plunges the viewer into the claustrophobic world of Hitler's bunker during his final days in power. In German with optional English subtitles.

Directed by G. W. Pabst.
110 minutes; released 1931.
Social satire set in Victorian London in which both government and underworld are portrayed as amoral and polluted by economic and political chaos. The daughter of the king of the beggars opens a bank in the belief that legal thievery is more profitable than larceny. In German with English subtitles. Based on the play by Bertolt Brecht.

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
120 minutes; released 1979.
Attempting to rebuild her life in post-WWII Germany, a young woman finds herself immersed in capitalism.
Starring Hanna Schygulla and Klaus Lwitsch. In German with English subtitles.

Directed by Doris Dörrie.
105 minutes; released 1999.
Two brothers going through mid-life crises decide to visit a Zen monastery in Japan. In German with optional English subtitles.

Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.
119 minutes; released 2001.
A dramatization of the controversial 1971 "Stanford Prison Experiment" which tested the psychological effects of prison life. Twelve men volunteered as prisoners, eight as guards. The laws by which the outside world are governed soon give way to a twisted morality based on fear and dominance; after six days, the two-week experiment is aborted. In German with English subtitles.

Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky.
99 minutes; released 2007.
When a notoriously successful counterfeiter is arrested and placed in a Nazi concentration camp, he is offered the chance to save his life, in exchange for counterfeiting bank notes to fund the Nazi war effort. Winner of the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In German and French with English subtitles.

Directed by Volker Schlöndorff.
98 minutes; released 1976.
Set in Latvia in 1919 at the end of the Russian civil war, a Prussian soldier rejects the advances of an aristocratic woman. Based on the novel by Marguerite Yourcenar. In French and German with optional English subtitles.

Directed by Peter Cohen.
119 minutes; released 1989.
Looks at the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany from the perspective of Hitler's use of the arts in Nazi policy and propaganda. Audio-track in German with optional English subtitles.

Directed by Walter Ruttmann.
62 minutes; released 1927.
Beginning with a train entering Berlin at 5 in the morning, this film focuses on one day's bustle in 1920s Berlin from dawn till dusk.

Directed by Martin Doblmeier.
90 minutes; released 2003.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young German theologian and pacifist who opposed Hitler, was hanged two weeks before the war was over. Using archival footage, extensive research, and interviews with people who knew him, this documentary brings to life the theologian's story. Bonhoeffer's words read aloud by Klaus Maria Brandauer.
See also: Hanged on a Twisted Cross and Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace.

Directed by Les Blank.
95 minutes; released 1982.
Goes behind the scenes in the making of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man's attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Filmmaker Les Blank captured the production, made perilous by Herzog's determination not to use models or special effects. In English, German, Spanish and indigenous Peruvian languages with optional English subtitles.

Directed by David Grubin.
60 minutes; released 1993.
Describes Nazi attacks on the avant garde and the destruction of modernist art culminating in the 1937 exhibition of "Entartete Kunst" (degenerate art) in Munich.

Directed by Jan Schütte.
87 minutes; released 2000.
This film is a character study of German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Taking place during a single day in the late summer of 1956, The Farewell follows Brecht as he prepares to return to Berlin for the fall theatre season while maintaining relationships with three mistresses

Directed by Arnold Schwartzman.
83 minutes; released 1981.
This documentary about the Holocaust, narrated by Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles, received an Oscar for best documentary in 1982.

Directed by Werner Herzog.
104 minutes; released 2005.
Using interviews and archival footage, acclaimed German director Herzog explores the life and death of amateur grizzly bear expert and wildlife preservationist Timothy Treadwell, who lived unarmed among grizzlies for 13 summers.

Directed by T.N. Mohan.
120 minutes; released 1996.
Using rare archival footage, documents and visits to original locations, this documentary provides an intimate portrait of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and minister who resisted the Nazis when the Roman Catholic Church would not. Hanged on a Twisted Cross introduces viewers to the life, times and thought of Bonhoeffer, whom the Nazis executed in 1945. Narrated by Ed Asner.

Directed by Mark Jonathan Harris.
118 minutes; released 2000.
A documentary about the Kindertransport, the successful rescue of 10,000 German, Austrian, and Czechoslovakian Jewish children just prior to the outbreak of World War II. Narrated by Judi Dench.

Produced by The Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2004.
He was only a humble monk and Bible professor, yet he sparked a religious rebellion that changed history. This 24-lecture course explores Martin Luther's theology and the Reformation after he posted his famous 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517. This course by Professor Phillip Cary of Eastern University will help you reach your own conclusions as you explore, in depth, Luther's subtle, challenging and sometimes disturbing theology.

Directed by Sidney Bernstein.
60 minutes; released 1985.
In 1945, British and American film crews accompanied Allied troops as they liberated Nazi death camps. These crews witnessed and captured Nazi atrocities firsthand. The resulting film, directed in part by Alfred Hitchcock but left unfinished, was discovered by PBS Frontline in 1984 and rebroadcast.

Produced by Artsmagic.
85 minutes; released 2006.
Newsreels created in Germany under the influence of the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda, which allow unique insight into how the period leading up to and including World War II was presented to the German people.

Directed by Leni Riefenstahl.
204 minutes; released 1938.
Riefenstahl's visually stunning portrait of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany.

Directed by Jean-Pierre Isbouts.
76 minutes; released 2008.
Using rare color footage, painstakingly created dramatizations, detailed computer graphic reconstructions, and exclusive interviews with leading historians, this documentary presents the definitive record of what happened before, during, and after these pivotal events. Produced by William A. Schwartz.

Directed by Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender.
100 minutes; released 2002.
Narrated by Ian Holm, this documentary tells the true story of Kurt Gerron, a well-known German-Jewish actor, director and cabaret star in 1920s and '30s Berlin who was captured by the Nazis, sent to a concentration camp, and ordered to write and direct a pro-Nazi propaganda film.

Produced by The Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2005.
Beginning in 1347, the plague in its several forms would eventually kill up to half the population of Europe, initiating a catastrophic economic depression, peasant revolts, and fierce power struggles among the nobility. Yet from this near total disaster, a new spirit arose. In this course, you will explore the political, social, cultural, and economic revolutions that transformed Europe between the arrival of the Black Death in the 14th century and the onset of the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century.

Produced by Video Artists International & VAI Audio.
77 minutes; released 2005.
German and English interpretations of various Brecht/Weill musical numbers by Lotte Lenya (1958), Gisela May (1972), and Martha Schlamme (1963/1970).

Directed by Leni Riefenstahl.
120 minutes; released 1935.
Commissioned by Adolf Hitler, this film records the 1934 Nazi party rally in Nuremberg. Gatherings, marches, parades, and speeches by Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, and Hess are included as well as samples of monumental architecture designed by Albert Speer. In German with optional English subtitles.

Produced by The Teaching Company.
30-minute lectures; released 2003.
Examines the fundamental question of our times: why was the 20th century so violent? It looks at the ideologies that promised utopias and total solutions to social problems and relates the terrible human toll of attempts to realize these ideas.