George Tabori Movies

George Tabori's farcical stage play detailing Adolph Hitler's early years as a failed artist is adapted for the screen by director Urs Odermatt and producer/screenwriter Martin Lehwald. Departing from the Austrian province in 1910 to seek his fortune as a world famous painter, Hitler rents a room in Vienna homeless shelter and applies to get into the Academy of Fine Arts. Later, after receiving a rejection letter from the Academy and turning suicidal, Hitler's roommate - a Jewish bookseller named Schlomo Herzl - recommends that the passionate young man pursue a career in politics. Little did Schlomo realize that the fire burning inside of the frustrated artist had grown too powerful to contain, and before long Hitler has begun gaining power as the head of a notoriously violent radical group with diabolical ambitions. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Two cursed sisters are haunted by familial ghosts in this Hungarian drama. Olga and Marta are finally able to return with their children to their family mansion, a rundown home recently occupied by the Communist Party. The widowed Olga finds herself sexually attracted to Marta's husband Viktor, an artist. Meanwhile, Marta is being haunted by her nanny's ghost. She also learns disturbing secrets about her wise uncle, Gabor. Reality and her memories soon intermingle, and trouble ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

An American filmmaker travels to modern day Berlin to make a film based on a real-life incident from 1942 in which 13 Jewish prisoners from a concentration camp were promised freedom if they appeared in a German propaganda film. Unfortunately, the Germans lied. The psychological process undergone by the modern filmmaker while shooting the story provides the basis of this arty and challenging film. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This drama contains a strongly anti-military message as it presents the supposed abuses that go on inside US military stockades. The story is set in the fictitious Fort Nix (based on Fort Dix, New Jersey where many of the accounts the film is based on came from), and contains scenes of graphic violence as it tells the prisoners' tales. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This psychologically twisted tragedy begins when the boozy prostitute Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) encounters a young woman on a London bus. Cenci (Mia Farrow) looks very much like Leonora's late daughter. The two lonely women start talking and seem to get along quite well, so Cenci invites Leonora to stay at her house. The two return to the rambling Gothic mansion that appears to be haunted. The wealthy younger woman plays the daughter and Leonora the mother, developing a close (maybe too close) relationship. With the return of Cenci's stepfather Albert (Robert Mitchum), he reveals to Leonora that Cenci is a mentally disturbed nymphomaniac who contributed to the breakup of her mother and himself. Cenci orders Leonora to leave before she commits suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. A shaken Leonora pays tribute at the coffin of her dead companion, but the sight of the lecherous Albert causes her to pick up a knife and attack him in this macabre murder melodrama. Farrow was coming off the immense success of Rosemary's Baby. Taylor reprised her role of the pill popping, booze guzzling whore that she played in Butterfield 8 , for which she won an Oscar, and the drunken, promiscuous professor's wife in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolf?. Taylor's off screen behavior at the time of this release has to raise the question; Does art imitate life, or is it the other way around? Either way, on or off the screen, Elizabeth Taylor always puts on a memorable performance. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

The two romantic leads in this standard but well-acted political drama renew a famous pairing that began with The King and I in 1956. Deborah Kerr is Lady Diana Ashmore, caught at the wrong side of the Hungarian-Austrian border in 1956, and Yul Brynner is Major Surov, a Russian commander who works at the border crossing. With the outbreak of the 1956 rebellion, the Budapest airport is shut down and Diana, along with other international travellers, are forced to reach Vienna by bus. Along for the ride is one of the Hungarian dissenters hunted by the police, Paul (Jason Robards, Jr. in his screen debut). Diana and Paul are in love and she is determined to protect his secret. Major Surov suspects a rebel is hidden on the bus, but he does not know which passenger is the guilty one. As interaction continues at the border, Diana is attracted to the Major and his complex character, even against her will. Their developing relationship and strong personalities carry the story from start to finish. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

During the early days of East Indian independence in 1947, a native rebellion threatens a hotel full of Britishers, Europeans and Americans. Gunrunner Alan Ladd could care less about anything other than his own neck. Ladd runs up against the resistance of a pacifist Indian leader (Charles Boyer), who hopes to quell the factional disturbances. Falling in love with Deborah Kerr, blind daughter of missionary Cecil Kellaway, Ladd decides to forego mercenary involvement in India's internal affairs and to shepherd the stranded non-Indians to safety. Paramount was overproducing again in 1951, so Thunder in the East didn't go into release until 1953, at which time its story was outdated enough to result in utter indifference from the paying public. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Cary Grant's utter credibility in the role of a brilliant, world-famous brain surgeon Dr. Eugene Norland Ferguson is the single element that keeps Crisis afloat. While vacationing in a politically unstable Latin American country, Ferguson and his wife, Helen (Paula Raymond), find themselves the unwilling house guests of dictator Raoul Farrago (José Ferrer). Suffering from a brain tumor, Farrago insists that Ferguson operate at once. The "crisis" of the title arises when revolutionary leader Gonzales (Gilbert Roland) demands that Farrago be killed on the operating table -- and kidnaps Dr. Ferguson's wife to bind the bargain. Unaware of his wife's plight, Ferguson proceeds with the operation, setting into motion a series of events leading to a grimly ironic denouement. Director Richard Brooks adapted the screenplay of Crisis from a story by George Tabori. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi