Paul Burian Movies

Kissing seems to be a popular activity in this Swiss epic costume drama based on an 1880 novel. The story begins in Munich with lots of people vigorously kissing in the midst of a bacchanalia carnival. Two men, Lys and Henry are even going at it. Henry, a sensitive artist, is wearing a green suit which symbolizes his jealousy and immaturity. He, angry at Lys for cheating on his fiancee, challenges Lys to a duel upon the morrow. What Henry is really angry at is his own failure to marry his true love. The movie jumps back to Switzerland during Henry's childhood soon after he lost his father. He wants his mother's love, but she remains strict and aloof. At school Henry is picked on and it is only when he finds the theater that he meets the beautiful actress Judith. He becomes enamored and forgets all about his love affair with cousin Anna. Time passes quickly and an older Henry returns home to find dear Anna. His attentions are again diverted when the ageless Judith again appears. He does not realize that beloved but unappreciated Anna is soon to die of tuberculosis. Tragedy ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This film picks up the story of how Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) came to write The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), and then how the character Werther himself seemed to affect the life of his equally young, 25-year-old creator. After arriving in Frankfurt having just obtained his law degree, Goethe fell in love with Charlotte Buff, a 20-year-old woman who chose to marry a notary, Georg Christian Kestner. Goethe's suffering from his loss was channeled into the novel about young Werther, who like Goethe, not only loses his love but commits suicide in the bargain. That latter tragedy was inspired by the suicide of a friend of Goethe's, Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, despondent because the woman he loved was married to another and any relationship between them was impossible. Goethe's novel soon became one of the most popular books of its time and set a model for future writers to follow. And as the character of Werther exorcised Goethe's own miseries over his first tragic love affair, the playwright, scientist, lawyer, and poet was ready for his next move to Weimar -- though he did not write very much for the next ten years. The last part of the documentary is a scene between Napoleon Bonaparte and Goethe, when the great French military strategist took time away from his campaigns to converse with the aging Goethe about the character of young Werther. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In a provincial town in West Germany, the director of the local art society is preparing to put on an exhibit of paintings. The patrons of the society are all upstanding local businessmen and members of the middle class, of not very refined tastes, but they are all a-dither about the painting in the "Capitalist Realism" exhibit which is clearly insulting to a local banker. Nonetheless, in this comedy they all exert themselves to be polite to the painter and his boyfriend. The film is adapted from the play by Botho Strauss. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The Serpent's Egg, or Das Schlangenei is director Ingmar Bergman's second English language production (The Touch was his first). It is, however, his first completely non-Swedish production, made after his voluntary self-exile from Sweden over taxation issues. Set in Berlin in the early 1920s, it explores the fear and despair the city evokes in Manuela and Abel Rosenberg (Liv Ullmann and David Carradine), two Jewish trapeze artists. The suicide of Manuela's husband (Abel's brother), has stranded them in Berlin. Berlin is shown to already possess the sinister elements of cruelty and anti-Semitism which laid the groundwork for the later Nazi takeover. A series of misadventures gets them sent to a medical clinic for treatment. However, the clinic is actually a site for Nazi-type "racial" experiments on humans, which generally either madden or kill the subjects. Das Schlangenei was savaged by the critics for its improbable-seeming story and more particularly, for casting David Carradine (best known for his earlier appearances in the Kung Fu U.S. television series) in a crucial role. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Wilhelm Gustloff was a Nazi living in Switzerland in 1936 who actively recruited new members and supporters. Indeed, even with the hindsight of history, it looks as though he was preparing for a German takeover of Switzerland. His career was cut short when he was assassinated by David Frankfurter, a Yugoslavian Jew studying in Switzerland. It is entirely possible that the young student's act made it possible for Switzerland to survive the war as it did, virtually unscathed. Frankfurter, sentenced to a long prison term, was paroled immediately at the end of the war, and he moved to Israel. This movie not only re-creates the events surrounding the assassination and its aftermath, but also evokes the mood of uncertainty and fear which overshadowed that time. The end of the movie includes interviews with Frankfurter himself, taken in Israel. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide