Marie Colbin Movies

This is a compelling drama about a young woman caught between two cultures. Olga (Marie Colbin) was born and raised in a German-speaking village in the north of Italy. Braving the censure of her somewhat backward and conservative relatives and friends, she marries an Italian from the south and moves out of the village. Though she has taken a big a step away from home, she refuses to speak Italian to her husband or anyone else, sticking with her native German. But on returning home for the funeral of her father she is treated with disdain by her former friends. She cannot adapt completely to her new life, but is now a stranger to her old life as well. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This docudrama by director Hark Bohm is about a famous murder case in West Germany during the early 1980s (the Marie Bachmeier case). Marie Sellbach (the fictional Bachmeier played by Marie Colbin) is a mother struggling to raise her seven-year-old daughter while working at a bar in Hamburg and carrying on two relationships -- one with the father of her daughter, and one with another worker at the bar. When Marie's daughter disappears, the mother fears the worst and her fears are well-founded -- her daughter was sexually attacked and murdered. The murderer was caught and brought to trial, and in broad daylight, in the middle of the courtroom, Marie raises a handgun and kills him. Her action was immediately picked up by all the papers and set off a storm of response throughout the country. For viewers who would like more information on the case, this film leans toward the sensational rather than the factual. At the same time, director Bohm was racing against the clock to get this film completed while the Bachmeier case was still in the news and before Burkhard Dreist could come out with his version of the story, Anna's Mutter. Both films on the Bachmeier case were released within a few days of each other. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Whatever it is about 19th century composer Robert Schumann and his pianist wife Clara Wieck that fascinates filmmakers, it is a strong enough fascination to prompt a retelling of the Schumanns' lives every few years. First, there was the 1947 Katharine Hepburn/Paul Henreid film vehicle Song of Love. Then there was a well-received 1950s episode of The Loretta Young Show. And in 1983, we were treated to the German-made Spring Symphony (originally Fruehlingssinfonie). This time around, Nastassja Kinski is Clara and Herbert Gronemeyer is Robert; the story of how fame can destroy the relationship between a sensitive woman and a workaholic man remains the mixture as before. Oddly, given the usual "warts and all" movie mentality of the 1980s, Spring Symphony is even more fanciful and romanticized than earlier versions of the Schumann saga. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This run-of-the-mill sex comedy is about a gym instructor whose prowess in the gym is better than in the bedroom. His maladroit efforts to please the woman he loves provide the comic fodder that propels this first-time feature-length effort by director Peter Hajek. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A strange and some might say warped, erotic drama from director Robert Van Ackeren, Die Reinheit des Herzens is a nearly abstract look at the changes in one woman's inner self. Lisa (Elisabeth Trissenaar) is married to a down-and-out writer who one day forces her into a liaison with a book thief. Lisa works in a bookstore and caught the thief stealing. The result was the unwanted erotic relationship that eventually changes the way Lisa looks at herself and her family. As her husband goes from bad to worse, she starts to reconsider her affair, yet in the end, her husband's alienation and her own responses to her life are nothing the normal family would want to emulate. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide