Michael Degen Movies
- 2003
On the eve of the Nazi invasion of Kiev in 1941, two families -- one Jewish and the other Ukrainian -- ponder what the future may hold for them in director Jeff Kanew's 2003 war drama Babij Jar. Genady Lerner (Michael Degen), a Jew and the patriarch of a relatively large extended family, watches with profoundly mixed emotions as the Russian army retreats from the Ukrainian city under intense bombardment from the advancing Nazi army. Skeptical of the rumors abounding regarding the Nazis' extermination of the Jewish race, Genady opts to remain at the family home. Meanwhile, Genady's longtime neighbor Lena Onofrienko (Katrin Sass) decides that assisting the invading army may be in her best interests, in spite of her friendship with the Lerners. Soon, both families are caught up in what became one of the largest Nazi atrocities of World War II, in which 35,000 Ukrainian Jews were slaughtered and incinerated over a period of two days in the nearby ravine called Babij Jar. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Degen, Barbara de Rossi, (more)
- 2000
After a rat is discovered on board their airplane, a group of travelers is stranded at the Manila airport. They include the mild-mannered Knut (Peter Ruehring) and his icy wife Regine (Margit Carstensen), who are both history teachers from eastern Germany. Knut befriends the jovial Walther (Michael Degen) and his Filipino wife Maribel (Chin-Chin Gutierrez), who are taking the body of Walther's dead son back to Germany. Also along for the wait is Cora (Ana Capri), a businesslike husband hunter; Rudi and Herbert, two skirt-chasing brothers who fall in with a poised American-German journalist (Elizabeth McGovern); and sex tourist Franz (Martin Semmelrogge), who forms an unlikely relationship with Mercy (Ces Quesada), a shy washroom attendant who can't understand a word Franz is saying. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jürgen Vogel, Michael Degen, (more)
- 1989
- R
Noted French director Claude Chabrol helmed this oddity, a remake of German director Fritz Lang's 1922 classic Dr. Mabuse. The film features an all-star international cast as it tells the futuristic horror story of a bizarre epidemic which has swept West Berlin leaving a grim trail of grisly suicides. Meanwhile, the media broadcasts weird, highly suggestive propaganda. The authorities are appalled by all the bloodshed, but only one lone cop suspects that the "suicides" are really the work of a demented criminal mastermind. The film is also known as Dr. M. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alan Bates, Jennifer Beals, (more)
- 1977
A misguided attempt to dramatize the psychological triad formed by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (Erland Josephson), his Jewish friend Paul Rees (Robert Powell), and a Russian girl named Lou Von Salome (Dominique Sanda), this overbearing drama fails mightily. Nietzsche is portrayed as a jealous sociopath who drives Rees to suicide, and director Liliana Cavani cannot resist including a drug-hallucination ballet about Good and Evil which approaches the excesses of her controversial Il Portiere di Notte in its melodramatic sexual hysteria. Cavani's film is feverish where it should have been calculating and lurid where it should have been provocative. The result may be the first exploitation film aimed at philosophy students, and even deft supporting turns by Virna Lisi and Philippe Leroy cannot make the dialogue -- drawn hamfistedly from Nietzsche's own writings -- any less ridiculous. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dominique Sanda, Erland Josephson, (more)
21 Hours at Munich is a grim reenactment of the darkest days of the 1972 Munich Olympics. A gang of eight Arab terrorists storm the Israeli dormitory, killing two and taking hostage nine athletes. The terrorist's demands include the release of 200 Arabs held in Israeli jails; Israel follows its standard policy in dealing with terrorism and refuses to capitulate. There can be only one way that this film will end, but the tragedy of the occasion is buoyed by isolated moments of inspirational heroism. William Holden and Franco Nero head the cast, while sportscaster Jim McKay, whose emotional coverage of the actual events has since become famous, narrates the film. 21 Hours at Munich first aired on November 7, 1976. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1973
The young delinquent in this bleak crime drama becomes more deeply involved in crime as the movie progresses. At first, he is picked by the police as one of a number of suspects in a supermarket heist. When he escapes from the police station, he looks up a journalist who is doing an article on criminal youths but tires of being exploited for story material. He then seeks shelter with a wealthy homosexual, but when the man threatens to turn him in, he kills him. Now seriously in trouble, nothing he can do helps his situation much. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
