Franz Baumgartner Movies

Director Peter Sehr offers here another version of the origins of Kaspar Hauser, one of the most enigmatic characters in German history. According to this film, the title character is the real son of Duke Karl of Baden. Karl's brother Ludwig wants the throne for himself so he secretly orders a dying baby to be exchanged for the newborn heir. The real baby heir is promptly sent with a nurse to the countryside, but then is kidnapped by the Bavarians who are antagonistic to Baden. After Ludwig becomes a ruler of Baden, the young boy is kept in a cellar by the Bavarians, and then in 1828, after 12 years of confinement, he is brought to a square in Nuremberg in the early morning and left there alone. Unable to talk or walk, the young man is given the name Kaspar Hauser and is brought to the home of the kind professor Daumer, who teaches him to talk and introduces him to a civilized life. However, while the tension between the two rival countries increases, Ludwig of Baden sends his spies to seek out and eliminate the missing heir. Unlike Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, which treated the leading character as a mysterious man of the universe, this is a rather straightforward tale of political intrigue, where Kaspar is merely a pawn in someone else's wicked game, and the film barely rises above the level of a beautifully crafted costume drama. ~ Yuri German, Rovi

With his usual cast of oddball characters and over two hours of polemics and shenanigans, director Herbert Achternbusch is at it again in Heilt Hitler!. The main thrust of this 1986 opus is focused on some questionable cultural traits of Bavaria, and, as might be expected in an Achternbusch work, a large dose of sexual situations, parodies, and innuendo. Certainly a bit long even for his admirers, this journey into a strange world is best taken by the already converted. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This is the tenth film in eight years from writer and director Herbert Achternbusch and is radically out on its own limb. The premise is that Jesus Christ has returned as a fairly palpable ghost behaving in a slightly less than saintly manner, and no one knows how to react to him. He lives on bread and wine, teases the Mother Superior, and has a crown of thorns that nettles him at times. Achternbusch aficionados will readily enthuse about this latest creation though other reactions may vary from amusement to objection. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Director and writer Herbert Achternbusch talks his way through a series of monologues as he plays a private investigator out to discover the truth about the extermination of the Jews in World War II, but the people he interviews seem unwilling or unable to remember back that far. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This is another unclassifiable movie by Herbert Achternbusch, whose other odd movies give solid evidence of his gnomic abilities. These include The Atlantic Swimmers and Bye Bye Bavaria. The story of Der Comanche is a mix of satire and high philosophical comedy. Herbert (played by Achternbusch) is a patient in a hospital whose dreams are of such salable quality that his wife sells them, without editing, directly to television. This is an era, apparently, where the man's imaginings can be made visible through electronic magic of some kind. In one scene, he is in Ceylon, asking the two elephants if they are his wife and children. Generally, though, since he believes he is an actual Native American Comanche tribesman, his dream adventures unfold accordingly. Herbert speaks in a thick Bavarian dialect, so his extremely witty lines may be difficult for some German speakers to understand. Once he is released from the hospital, he goes to a restaurant in the Vienna Woods to conduct a Comanche raid on the palefaces drinking beer there. Once there, a highly abstruse discussion about life, etc., takes place. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi