Arthur Brauss Movies

In this comedy/drama, teen-aged Tony (Bentley C. Mitchum) has never known who is father is. Together with his best buddies Peter and Susan, he tracks down the clues he has as well as he can. Meanwhile, the twin brother of a Spanish priest has set out from where he lives in order to find his son, whom he has never met. (The priest and his twin are played by Christopher Mitchum.) The two search parties meet in the village where the priest lives, giving rise to all sorts of misunderstandings - for instance, that the priest was the father, and not his twin brother, whose existence no one else knows about. This leads to all sorts of trouble for the priest from his diocesesan bishop (Ernest Borgnine) and other priests. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

French director Claude Lelouch, of Man and a Woman fame, called the shots on Itineraire D'un Enfant Gate. Jean-Paul Belmondo (who co-produced the film) stars as a powerful international businessman who, in his youth, had been a carnival performer. Once more bitten by wanderlust, Sam Lion (Belmondo) tries to escape his responsibilities by staging his own death. Hiding out in Tanzania, Lion meets Abert Duvivier (Richard Anconina), one of his own employees. Duvivier, informing Lion that the business has gone to hell in a handbasket thanks to the mismanagement of Lion's daughter Victoria (Marie-Sophie Lelouch), begs the executive to return. The literal translation of the film's title is Itinerary of a Spoiled Child. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

On February 20th, 1810, French and Bavarian forces killed the Tyrolean rebel leader Andreas Hofer in Mantua, at that time a part of Austria. Hofer had led the Tyroleans in their fight for independence from Bavaria and was betrayed by an insignificant farmer (Lois Weinberger), the betrayal and its effect on the farmer is the subject of this historically-based drama. Director Christian Berger has shot the story emphasizing visual poetics (lines of soldiers moving in seeming slow-motion across the white snow of a mountainside), as well as close-ups to reveal the nuances of subtle emotions as they play across the human face. Whatever the farmer Raffl's motivation -- he is clearly an underdog, overworked, with his labor unrecognized -- he receives no expected reward for his betrayal of Hofer's hiding place, and he has to quickly leave for the city to escape his fellow villagers' wrath. Once in the city and working hard in a factory, Raffl must come to grips with the fact that his identity has changed, and he may have betrayed himself as well as Hofer. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

John Huston directed this exciting World War II action film, which culminates in a rousing soccer game. In a German prisoner of war camp, Major Karl von Steiner (Max Von Sydow), the camp commander, once a member of the German national soccer team, decides to put together a soccer match between a team of Allied prisoners, led by Captain John Colby (Michael Caine), a former English international soccer player. The game is to be played in Colombes Stadium in Paris and exploited for maximum propaganda effect by the Nazi publicity machine. Robert Hatch (Sylvester Stallone) is enlisted to assist the Allied prisoners to train for the event. But, in fact, the Allies are planning a risky escape during the soccer match. Famed Brazilian soccer great Pele makes an appearance in the film, along with Bobby Moore, the captain of Britain's 1966 World Cup champions, and Argentine soccer star Osvaldo Ardiles. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Filmed on location in Zurich, Switzerland, The Swiss Conspiracy is concerned with a Swiss bank that discovers some of its clients are becoming the victim of a brilliant blackmailer. The bank's president (Ray Milland) contacts David Christopher (played by David Janssen), a former agent with the U.S. Treasury, to help discover who the blackmailer is and to foil his plot. As Christopher delves into the mystery, he uncovers a complicated web of intrigue, car chases, and shoot-outs that takes all of his wits to unravel. Along the way, Christopher encounters the beautiful Denise Abbott (Senta Berger), with whom he develops a relationship, as well as Rita Jensen (Elke Sommer) and Robert Hayes (John Saxon), who know more than they are willing to tell. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide

A couple vacationing in the Alps with their daughter is inconvenienced when an avalanche blocks all routes from the town they are staying in. Because the town is overcrowded, they are forced to accommodate their daughter in their tiny room, and they have a quarrel. This sends the wife into the next room, occupied by a soldier. She is wary of him at first but begins to have an affair, which is hardly a secret to anyone. Slowly, the three people come to some kind of accommodation in this tricky situation. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A quote from Bertolt Brecht ends this bitter and angry war film by Sam Peckinpah: "Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again." Peckinpah's intense and belligerently non-commercial work, (based on the book by Willi Heinrich), is a World War II tale told from the German perspective, following a platoon of German soldiers in the Russia of 1943, when the German Wehrmacht forces had been decimated and the Germans were retreating along the Russian front. James Coburn is Steiner, a German corporal and recipient of the Iron Cross who feels that he owes his loyalty to his family and fellow soldiers and not to Hitler and the German war machine. But when a new commander, Captain Stransky (Maximillian Schell), takes over the platoon, Steiner and Stransky come into immediate conflict. Stransky is a career soldier, the complete opposite of Steiner, and a man who pledges himself heart and soul to Hitler and the war. But he envies Steiner for having been awarded an Iron Cross and deeply desires one himself. The problem is Stransky is a complete coward and recognizes that the only way he can be awarded an Iron Cross would be to get the bitter Steiner on his side. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Ron Ely, of Tarzan fame, stars in this German action adventure, adapted from Jack London's novel, The Son of the Wolf. This movie has lots of derring-do, fistfights and gunfights: all the traditional paraphernalia of a western. That is to be expected from the folks who brought many of the novels of Karl May to the screen. This film tells the story of Bill Robinson (Ely), who saves Jack Harper from certain death under an avalanche. Ironically, Harper is a bounty hunter, and Robinson is the man he was hunting. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Originally billed as merely $, Dollars stars top box office draws Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn. Beatty plays a security whiz, employed in Hamburg, Germany. He devises a clever method of robbing the secret bank vaults of notorious criminals, reasoning that the crooks will never turn to the cops. The notion that the crooks may have a few words to say to him does not dissuade Beatty as he and gold-hearted hooker Hawn work out their carefully calculated, meticulously timed robbery. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

David McCallum stars in Hauser's Memory as scientist Hillel Mondoro. At the behest of the CIA, Mondoro willingly has himself injected with the brain fluid from a dying fellow scientist named Hauser. The purpose of this experiment is to preserve the missile secrets lodged in Hauser's memory banks. The result is a deadly liason between Mondoro and Hauser's pro-Nazi wife Anna (Lilli Palmer). Susan Strasberg costars as Mondoro's nonplussed wife Karen, while German film director Helmut Kautner alsos plays an important featured role. Made for television, Hauser's Memory premiered November 24, 1970. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Frankenheimer directs Burt Lancaster in the tense spy thriller The Train. Lancaster plays Labiche, a French railway inspector. Allied forces are threatening to liberate Paris, so Col. Franz von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) is ordered to move the priceless works of art from the Jeu de Paume Museum to the fatherland. The head of the museum (Suzanne Flon) attempts to convince Labiche that he should sabotage the train on which they are transporting the art. Labiche is more focused on destroying a trainload of German weapons. After his friend is killed trying to stop the train with the art, and after a consciousness-raising conversation with a hotel owner (Jeanne Moreau), Labiche resolves to save the antiquities. Lancaster and Frankenheimer had worked together previously on both Birdman of Alcatraz and Seven Days in May. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide