Bruno Ganz Movies

This is not the only European drama to handle the universal topic of how to find affordable housing when you are dirt poor with several mouths to feed, but it is one of the more engaging of its type. Laced throughout with comic nuances, the story starts out with an impoverished couple and their brood of half a dozen children barely managing to survive in a small shanty. One day the wealthy owner of an apartment complex makes the family an offer they would never turn down -- a modern, capacious apartment at a fraction of its real value. The family jumps at the chance and they move in, not knowing that the landlord only plans to take advantage of their raucous children to drive out some unwanted tenants. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski directed Hands Up in 1967; he also wrote it, handled the art direction, and played a leading role. Skolimowski portrays Andrzej Leszcyzc, one of several doctors attending a medical school reunion in a sealed-up railway carriage. Between drinks, the disenchanted medicos ruminate over the effect that communism (particularly the Stalinist brand) has had on their profession. Never mind that Russia had just gone through an extensive de-Stalinization program; the Polish authorities found Skolimowski's message offensive, and banned Hands Up outright, compelling the director to seek out creative freedom in other countries. The film was not released until 1981-just in time for martial law to once more rear its ugly head in Poland. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The costume drama Die Marquise von O is French director Eric Rohmer's first feature-length theatrical release after a four-year break from filmmaking. Based on a short story by Henrich von Kleist, the dialogue is spoken in the original German language and the story is set in Italy during the Franco-Prussian War. Edith Clever plays the widowed Marquise, who is sexually assaulted by Russian soldiers and rescued by a Count (Bruno Ganz). Some time later, she has to explain to her parents (Peter Lühr and Edda Seippel) and brother (Otto Sander) why she's pregnant. Die Marquise von O won the Grand Jury Prize in the 1976 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Mourning for a lost relationship can be every bit as devastating as mourning for someone who has died. In this drama based on the director's own novel, a couple with an unhappy marriage agree to a trial separation. They try to patch things up, and at the same time other relationships begin to develop for them. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Originally made for German television, this film chronicles obsessions of a man who will do almost anything to avoid losing a chess game. Thomas Rosenmund (Bruno Ganz) learns how to play chess by watching his father in a friendly game with a neighbor. His competitiveness is keyed to such a high pitch that a series of close calls in matches precipitates a nervous breakdown and he swears off the game. Instead, he turns his skills to computers. When his company calls on him to be part of a team which is pitting a computer's chess skills against the world champion of chess, he takes it personally when the computer loses. Fired by "his" humiliation, he vows to earn the right to take on the champion himself -- and does. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This film of Ira Levin's novel The Boys from Brazil wastes no time in establishing the fact that several seemingly unrelated men have been mysteriously murdered. Elderly Jewish Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), brought into the case when the clues seem to point to a neo-fascist plot, traces the trail of evidence to Paraguay. Here he finds an unregenerate Auschwitz doctor, patterned on Joseph Mengele and played by -- of all people -- Gregory Peck. Lieberman discovers that the murdered men had all fathered sons who were identical -- the results of a cloning experiment, designed to create a race of incipient Hitlers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

For Werner Herzog's 1979 remake of F.W. Murnau's classic 1922 silent horror-fest Nosferatu, star Klaus Kinski adopts the same makeup style used by Murnau's leading man Max Schreck. Yet in the Herzog version, the crucial difference is that Nosferatu becomes more and more decayed and desiccated as the film progresses. Essentially a retelling of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Nosferatu the Vampyre traces the blood-sucking progress of the count as he takes over a small German village, then attempts to spread his influence and activities to the rest of the world. All that prevents Dracula from continuing his demonic practices is the self-sacrifice of Lucy Harker, played by Isabelle Adjani. Director Werner Herzog used the story to parallel the rise of Nazism. The film was lensed in the Dutch towns of Delft and Scheiberg. Nosferatu the Vampyre was filmed in both an English and a German-speaking version; the latter runs 11 minutes longer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A surreal and often abstruse tale about a woman and her innermost feelings, Oggetti Smarriti starts out with Marta (Mariangela Melato) and her husband taking a long train ride to go pick up their daughter from grandmother's house. Theory and practice are immediately at odds when the husband gets off the train to buy something to read and it starts chugging out of the station. Marta jumps off to go look for him, but he thinks the train has left with her on it, and he leaves the station. As Marta wanders around in search of her husband, she comes across a German (Bruno Ganz) whom she thinks she met while still a child. The two strike up a relationship, and Marta indulges in both alcohol and drugs on her way to falling in love with the mysterious "stranger." Stranger yet is the continuation of her saga as she may -- or may not -- find herself at last. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In the original story of Camille by Alexandre Dumas, Jr. La Dame aux Camelias, a beautiful Parisian courtesan, Marguerite Gautier, (called "Camille" because of her love for camelias) is supported by a series of aristocratic lovers, but does not fall in love until she meets Armand Duval. Armand's father lets it be known that Camille would ruin Armand because of her "low" past, and she leaves to save his reputation, saying she does not love him anymore. She soon contracts tuberculosis, and Armand hears that she is dying. He rushes to her side, finds out she has loved him all along, and she dies knowing he has always loved her. The True Story of Camille uses the ploy of Alexandre Dumas, Jr. doing his version of "Camille" at the turn of the 20th century, as a means of introducing a flashback to the "real" story behind the "real" Camille, Alphonsine Plessis. In the film, Alphonsine (Isabelle Huppert) - a country girl - was sold by her father to a wealthy neighbor, which starts her off on a round of living in expansive palaces and keeping company with wealthy aristocrats and eventually, Alexandre Dumas, Jr. himself. But that trajectory did not happen all at once. Alphonsine first survives, barely, as a seamstress in Paris. Then she becomes a prostitute, after which a Count Peregaunts (Bruno Ganz) marries her, then more or less disappears, leaving her to become a high-class courtesan. As she makes her way from one handsome, aristocratic client to the next, a noble protector, Count Stechelberg (Fernando Rey) keeps her out of harm's way. By the time she and Dumas meet, she has become infected with tuberculosis - and she has created the inspiration for Dumas' story of Camille. Her father comes along at this point, however, ready to trounce Dumas for romanticizing his daughter's wretched life - the same father that sold her off in the first place. If the viewer can remember that the characters of Marguerite Gautier (Carla Fracci) and Armand Duval from Dumas' story of Camille have been given their "real" personas as Alphonsine Plessis and Dumas in this film, then the story within a story make more sense. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Random encounters, random dialogue, and random thinking characterize one man's journey from the south end of Europe to his home, after his wife has left him shell-shocked by exiting from his life and getting on with hers. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide