Tina Engel Movies

Clemens Klopfenstein directs this oblique, strikingly-shot film about actors in groups of two and three on their way to the Goethe Institute in Rome. Throughout the film, actors recite lines from Chekov, Gorky, Shaw, and Shakespeare against scenes of stunning natural beauty. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

In this resonant drama, decades after the fact, Paul fondly recalls his grandfather's monomaniacal obsession with his craft of "telling" the stories of silent movies with his violin, occasionally supplementing the violin with his storytelling voice. When talkies newly appear on the scene, his grandfather (Armin Mueller-Stahl) heatedly disdains their evident lack of moviemaking craft, discussing these matters with the proprietor of the little Apollo theater, who is nervous about costs and the possibility of going out of business altogether. Meanwhile, social storms of all sorts rage in Germany around them, from hyperinflation to the political ferment which first saw Hitler appointed to government office. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Rudi (Levin Kress) is a 17-year-old lost in the fantasy world of Vienna. Every woman looks like Brigitte Bardot to him, and he and his pal Manfred (Fritz Karl) decide to travel to St. Tropez to offer protection for the sex goddess. He is pressed by the local Young Socialists to make a propaganda film, but Rudi and Manfred are easily sidetracked by their amorous adventures. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

The norms of hospital practices are turned upside-down in this complex drama about how many rights are denied patients who do not conform. At the beginning of the story, a man is found lying on the side of the road and is brought in to the police station as a probable vagrant, but he has no memory and seems to have lost his powers of speech. Perplexed and defeated by their unsuccessful attempts to make him talk, the police send the man over to the hospital for examination by psychiatrists. After some time, it becomes apparent that he understands everything going on around him and is simply refusing to talk. This sets off a series of antagonistic actions on the part of the hospital staff, suspicious about his "purpose" in remaining silent. Although some explanation is discovered as to why he is this way, the supposedly sane doctors and staff come off looking like they may need treatment themselves. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Gross und Klein is a respectable four-hour drama based on a play by Botho Strauss about a woman, Lotte (Edith Clever), and her relationships with a wide range of characters in Saarbruecken. Lotte interacts with liberal artists and a conservative elite, and along the way, the sorrows and joys of life are brought forward. With excellent acting to complement a good script, the four hours go by quickly, though the film is more like a stageplay since the camera is stationary and the actors perform in the manner of theater thespians. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In Volker Schlöndorff's award-winning adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass' allegorical novel, David Bennent plays Oskar, the young son of a German rural family, circa 1925. On his third birthday, Oskar receives a shiny new tin drum. At this point, rather than mature into one of the miserable specimens of grown-up humanity that he sees around him, he vows never to get any older or any bigger. Whenever the world around him becomes too much to bear, the boy begins to hammer on his drum; should anyone try to take the toy away from him, he emits an ear-piercing scream that literally shatters glass. As Germany goes to hell during the 1930s and '40s, the never-aging Oskar continues savagely beating his drum, serving as the angry conscience of a world gone mad. The intense and visceral Tin Drum was one of the most financially successful German films of the 1970s and won the 1979 Oscar for Best Foreign Film and the 1979 Golden Palm (which it shared with Apocalypse Now). In the late '90s, the film became the center of a censorship controversy when some U.S. videotapes were confiscated because of the film's supposed violation of a child pornography statute. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The West German The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (Das Zweite Erwachen der Christa Klages) stars Tina Engel in the title role. Unable to pay the rent on the day care center that she operates, Christa steals the money from a bank, then tries to cover up her crime by passing the money off as a church donation. When the priest will have none of this, Christa and her accomplice, Werner (Marius Muller-Westerhagen), go into hiding. Werner is killed in a police ambush, whereupon Christa moves to Lisbon in a vain effort to start her life anew. Broke and dispirited, Christa returns to Germany, where she is promptly arrested, but that is far from the end of her story. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi