Marquard Bohm Movies

What would happen if you gathered all the lovers you have had in your life in a single room and let them interact for a week? For his 60th birthday, a self-absorbed composer, Adam (Hanns Zischler), does just that: he assembles seven of the most influential women from his life and invites them to his seduced lakeside cabin. The guest list includes Adam's current wife Eva (Cora Frost), along with their two children who live in Berlin; his gorgeous second wife Lulu (Adriana Altaras), who is an actress; and his down-to-earth first wife-turned-nun Berenice (Irm Hermann), with whom Adam has an embittered, estranged son Billy (Guntram Brattia), who shows up along with his wife. Also invited are a quartet of women with whom he had often overlapping trysts, including student Marion (Khyana El Bitar), sexy Jacqueline (Amelie zur Muhlen), opera singer Lucia (Isabel Hindersin), and of course, Lilith (Sabine Bach). As the week ensues, Adam gets entangled in a series of romantic misadventures, goes to a fortuneteller and gets whacked over the head with a tree branch. A Silver Bear award for Outstanding Achievement was presented to the entire cast at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

This arty drama is the fourth entry in Rudolf Thome's Forms of Love cycle and centers on two couples as they make spaghetti and attempt to start their car. Later Lydia, one of the women, meets a man who says that he is Jesus Christ and that he wants to share his love with her. They have sex and afterward he dies. He then simply disappears leaving her puzzled and pregnant. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Konig is a very minor cog in a huge piece of legal machinery, a low-level state prosecutor. He would like to be a bigger cog, but when he gets involved investigating a routine bankruptcy case which turns out to implicate governmental higher-ups, he opts for something resembling professional integrity over what he knows the government would prefer and effectively kisses his career goodbye. This film marks the directing debut of the well-known character actor Hark Bohm, who also stars. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In the first half of the 19th century there was a revolt in the central state of Hesse, led by Georg Büchner (Gregor Hansen), the well-known German writer, and a fellow rebel, Pastor Weidig (Franz Wittich). Büchner wrote a kind of declaration of peasant rights against the tyranny of the landholders of the time, and once that declaration ("Der Hessische Landbote") was made public, Büchner escaped to Strasbourg, and then to Zurich where he was killed in 1937, at the age of 23. Pastor Weidig was captured, sent to prison, tortured, and killed in prison. The revolution the two men had hoped for died on the vine due to an informer -- a planned uprising was brutally squelched -- and the peasants had to bide their time for another 12 years before the 1848 Revolution would bring them some of the rights demanded in Büchner's pamphlet. A few years before the release of this film, the Baader-Meinof leftist group (who had kidnaped and killed public-official Hanns Martin Schleyer) was caught and put in prison -- where they all died under unexplained circumstances in 1977. Director Helmut Herbst seems to have been making a parallel between the police hunt for Büchner and Weidig, and the search for the Baader-Meinof terrorists, and the manner in which these individuals were killed. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Essentially a wild, slapstick chase comedy, this offering by director Peter F. Bringmann stars Marius Mueller-Westerhagen as Theo, a jinxed con-artist. Theo and his partner Enno (Guido Gagliardi) just went together to buy a truck, and while Theo is answering the call of nature at a rest stop, a thief makes off with the prized truck (and its load of illegal goods). So Theo steals a car and takes off after the thief while Enno hooks up with the young owner of the car, a Swiss college student (Claudia Demarmels) and the two join Theo in his pursuit of the thief. That riotous pursuit bumps them all over Europe and back in a series of nonsensical mishaps. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A group of unsuspecting small-time crooks stumble on an apparently abandoned cache of heroin. This gives them big-time ideas, and, fueled by their renewed inspiration, they take their revenge on some old enemies. In the meantime, a big-time mob boss is keeping an eye on their activities. He has set them up for a really big fall and is only waiting to spring the trap. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Those even remotely familiar with the work of German director Wim Wenders should not be surprised that he has a title like Kings of the Road in his resumé. Rüdiger Vogler plays Bruno, an itinerant movie-projector repairman, who tools about the dusty roads along the East-West border of Germany in search of work. A traffic accident brings Bruno in contact with suicidal Robert (Hanns Zischler). Bruno gives Zischler a ride, and the two become friends. Eventually Zischler decides to give civilization another chance, while Bruno continues his freewheeling ways alone. Along the way, director Wenders makes several trenchant comments about the breakdown of society by showing the number of movie theaters that have either closed down or resorted to showing X-rated films. Prominent German film critic Hanns Zischler plays one of the protagonists. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rainer Werner Fassbinder not only directed Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf), but also scripted the film, designed the sets, and produced. Brigitte Mira heads the cast as a lonely German cleaning woman, who enters into an affair with equally lonely--and much, much younger--Moroccan mechanic El Hedi Ben Salem. They marry, despite the shocked, bigoted reactions of those around them. This thinly disguised remake of Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (cult favorite Sirk was one of Fassbinder's personal heroes) won the international critic's prize at the Cannes Film Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on Franz Xaver Kroetz's play, which is in turn based on a true story, this film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder tells the story of a very young girl who, after persuading a local boy to become her lover, induces the lad to kill her father, whose incestuous sexual attentions to her have grown unbearable. The site they choose for this deed, which gives its name to the film, is a wild-game crossing. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Entering the world of penniless young people who are at a loss about what to do with their lives, this experimental German film stays with them as they discuss their philosophies of life. One highlight of this film is the pleasant and highly melodic music in the soundtrack. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This routine western adventure finds two gunmen separating after a successful bank heist. The younger man takes off with the money and plans to meet his accomplice in a ghost town. The arrival is observed by a shadowy outcast, a nymphomaniac, and a beautiful girl who is unable to speak. The man meets his partner and a violent fight over the money ensues. Rocks, guns, and knives are employed as the money changes hands several times. The younger man emerges the survivor out of five who fought for the suitcase of loot, but the girl he became attached to has left with the money. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide