Donatas Banionis Movies

In this stylish reworking of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Suicide Club, the Russian filmmakers stripped the book down to its essence while also devising comic subplots that are not in the original work. Prince Florizel (Oleg Dal), a ruler of some small fictional Middle-European country, finds his stay in London extremely boring. Every night he and his buddy Colonel Geraldine (Igor Dmitriev) go out looking for some adventures and excitement. One night they find themselves under the spell of a suicidal painter who leads them to The Suicide Club, run by the shadowy 'Chairman' (Donatas Banionis). The rules of the Suicide Club are simple: the members, all well-bred citizens with a penchant for death, decide the murderer and victim from a draw of the cards. The Chairman quickly and ruthlessly dispatches with those who do not want to abide by the rules and soon the prince finds himself sucked into real danger. ~ Rovi

This western was made in the Soviet Union. It follows the attempts of a miner, a reporter, and a nightclub singer to save other gold miners from greedy claim jumpers who have found oil on the miner's land. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This East German film swoops into discrete days in the composer Ludwig von Beethoven's life in Vienna, beginning in 1813, when he first became aware of being deaf. The film follows him through the time of his death in 1827. By that time, he had been completely deaf for over eight years. In this film, as he suffers, Beethoven (Donatas Banionis) also shares his thoughts, especially the fact that he was no fan of the industrial revolution or of the bourgeois middle-classes it engendered. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi