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Paul Falkenberg Movies

Paul Falkenberg has been a film editor, a sound editor and later a noted producer of documentaries. He began his long career in the 1920s as a film editor in Germany. Between then and the '30s he worked with such major directors as Fritz Lang. In 1938, he emigrated to the U.S. and worked for different companies until founding his own production company. There he spent 35 years making art documentaries. Later, he became a film professor working at such places as Columbia University. Falkenberg also published many articles about cinema. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
1982  
 
Writer, director, and interviewer Bernhard Frankfurter also takes up a lot of camera time as he introduces and questions a series of professionals -- writers, directors, actors, and composers -- on how they survived the Hitler years (some went to Hollywood, others escaped elsewhere). Among those interviewed are actress Lotte Stein, composer Fred Spielman, and director Walter Henreid. Interviewee Paul Reisch may have survived Hitler, but then he ran into five years of blacklisting during the McCarthy era -- in spite of being an entrenched monarchist. A few stories like his make for an interesting commentary on this period and its aftermath. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

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Starring:
Rudolph CartierPaul Falkenberg, (more)
 
1954  
 
A nudist camp provides the primary setting for this exploitation film that chronicles the camps attempts to gain respectability in a community. The story centers around the daughter-in- law of a prissy magnate. After her husband dies, the woman decides that she needs a major change in her life. When she accidently finds a nudist colony, she decides that this is the change she has been looking for. Of course her late husband's father is morally outraged by her actions until he visits the camp himself to bring her back. Soon he finds he likes the lifestyle and becomes a convert. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

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Starring:
Mickey Knox
 
1951  
 
It took nerve for director Joseph Losey to attempt a remake of Fritz Lang's classic chiller M, but by and large Losey was up to the challenge. David Wayne steps into the old Peter Lorre role as the compulsive child-murderer who is tracked down and then placed on trial by the criminal underworld. Whereas the original was set in Berlin, the remake takes place in Los Angeles. Syndicate chieftain Marshall (Martin Gabel) organizes his fellow crooks in order to bring "M" to justice, thereby keeping the police off their own backs. Found guilty by his "peers" and sentenced to death, "M" makes an impassioned plea for his life, explaining that he is unable to stop himself from committing his unspeakable crimes. Filmed just before Joseph Losey was banned from Hollywood in the wake of the communist witch-hunt, M features such fellow blacklist victims as Howard da Silva, Luther Adler and Karen Morley. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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Starring:
David WayneLuther Adler, (more)
 
1932  
 
A sedentary little German town is thrown into a tizzy when several trunks show up from Cairo, Egypt, all marked "O.F." This is followed by a telegram announcing that "O.F." is arriving soon and will expect accommodations. A newspaper reporter tells everyone that the mystery man is a millionaire. In preparation for his arrival, the town goes into a frenzy of construction, building a cinema, an opera house, a casino and several other moneymaking enterprises. It turns out that the reporter has no more idea of who "O.F." is than anyone else; he was simply tired of the village's backward attitude and wanted to improve its economy. Coda: An actress named Ola Fallon vents her anger upon discovering that her staff has inadvertently sent her luggage to the wrong town. A warmhearted German satire, Trunks of Mr. O.F. was fortunately completed just before the burgeoning Nazi movement declared such films as "inessential." The film served to introduce a young ingenue by the name of Hedi Keisler, who went on to Hollywood fame and fortune as Hedy Lamarr, and was also the third film of a wide-eyed stage comedian who was born Laszlo Lowenstein, but who billed himself as Peter Lorre. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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1931  
 
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Fritz Lang's classic early talkie crime melodrama is set in 1931 Berlin. The police are anxious to capture an elusive child murderer (Peter Lorre), and they begin rounding up every criminal in town. The underworld leaders decide to take the heat off their activities by catching the child killer themselves. Once the killer is fingered, he is marked with the letter "M" chalked on his back. He is tracked down and captured by the combined forces of the Berlin criminal community, who put him on trial for his life in a kangaroo court. The killer pleads for mercy, whining that he can't control his homicidal instincts. The police close in and rescue the killer from the underworld so that he can stand trial again in "respectable" circumstances. Some prints of the film end with a caution to the audience to watch after their children more carefully. Filmed in Germany, M was the film that solidified Fritz Lang's reputation with American audiences, and it also made a star out of Peter Lorre (previously a specialist in comedy roles!). M was remade by Hollywood in 1951, with David Wayne giving a serviceable performance as the killer. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

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Starring:
Peter LorreEllen Widmann, (more)
 
1929  
 
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German filmmaker G.W. Pabst and Hollywood expatriate Louise Brooks re-team after the success of Pandora's Box for the silent film Diary of a Lost Girl. On the day of her confirmation, innocent young Thymiane Henning (Brooks) is given a lockable diary as a present. She's distraught because the housekeeper Elisabeth (Sibylle Schmitz) is leaving under curious circumstances and turns up presumably dead. Her duties are taken over by the conniving Meta (Franziska Kinz), who accepts the advances of Thymiane's pharmacist father (Josef Ravensky). Trying to understand Elisabeth's fate, Thymiane agrees to meet her father's assistant, Meinert (Fritz Rasp). She passes out, he carries her up to her room, and by the next scene she has borne a child by him. Meta snoops in Thymiane's diary and finds out it was Meinert's baby, so she suggests they get married. Thymiane refuses, so they throw her in a creepy reformatory for fallen women and leave her baby with a midwife. While in the reformatory, she meets Erika (Edith Meinhard), with whom she eventually escapes. To escape from poverty and homelessness, the girls then become nominal prostitutes in a brothel and are "sexually liberated." ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

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Starring:
Louise BrooksFritz Rasp, (more)