Albrecht Schoenhals Movies

In 1969, The Damned (La caduta degli dei) was director Luchino Visconti's most controversial film to date. Set in the 1930s, the film zeroes in on a Krupp-like family of German munition manufacturers. The Essenbeck clan is headed by the Baron (Rene Kolldehoff), but daughter Sophie (Ingrid Thulin) wants her Nazi boyfriend to take over the business. Soon the Baron is dead and Bruckman (Dirk Bogarde) becomes company president. Son Martin (Helmut Berger) is the dope-addicted teenager who sleeps with his mother and drags her into her own dependence on drugs. Ever in pursuit of more millions to add to their already bulging coffers, the family plays along with the Nazis, descending into corruption, betrayal and murder all along the way. The film was originally released in the U.S. with an X rating. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This minor 1952 drama resurfaced during the 1989 Berlin Film Festival, and was found to have previously unsuspected historical and artistic merit. At the time it was made, Sybille Schmitz, one of the great movie stars and beauties of the Nazi era, was fading into her final dissipation and scandal-ridden suicide in 1955 (the subject of a later film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Veronika Voss). At the same time, two of her costars in this film, Hardy Kruger and Hildegard Knef, were just beginning to make their presence known. The story in this black and white film in some ways parallels the actor's actual circumstances at the time, and gains resonance from that fact. In the film, Schmitz is a wealthy widow who has grown romantically attached to a band leader who is at least as well known for his seductions as for his music. When her son, Kruger, becomes aware of her impending marriage to this cad, he enlists the help of his tragically ill fiancee (Knef) to unmask this man for the villain he really is. Alas, when the widow's illusions are shattered, her dreams are also, and by the end of the film she is alone and miserable, watching the two young lovers head off "into the sunset." ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by Katrin Holland, Man Spricht Uber Jacqueline (Talking About Jacqueline) features Wera Engels in the title role. Falling in love with cynical misogynistic foreign diplomat Michael Thomas (Albrecht Schoenhals), Jacqueline is finally able to win him over. Once they're married, however, Jacqueline's past romantic indiscretions resurface to seriously damage Michael's career. Confronted by her husband, Jacqueline insists that all the sexual innuendoes floating about are actually inspired by the peccadilloes of her younger sister (Sabine Peters). When this ploy fails, Jacqueline decides to end it all, but at the very last minute Michael relents and forgives her all her transgressions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This operetta provides a vision of how the Nazis of Germany envisioned the Italian Renaissance. The residents of the town of Ferrara are swept up in a tide of emotion and physical passion by the writings of a Renaissance author. Before long, the town is in chaos and it becomes difficult to keep track of which characters have been involved with one another. In German with English subtitles. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide