Vera Gebuhr Movies

Europa (retitled Zentropa for the American release) is an hallucinatory Danish film set in postwar Germany. Jean-Marc Barr plays a young German who aspires for a job as a street conductor. But this is no mere "Joe Job;" Barr's adventures on the line are designed as a metaphor for the emergence of the "New Europe" following the war. Barbara Sukowa costars as the daughter of a railroad magnate--and possible Nazi sympathizer. Many of the special-effects sequences are computer enhanced, but even the "live" scenes have an unsettling, surreal quality to them (colors changing abruptly, backgrounds shifting without warning, etc.) This experimental film left some viewers confused, which may be why English-language prints of Zentropa are narrated by Max Von Sydow. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The aged actresses in this film have had their day in the sun, and now they have settled down to a life of genteel poverty at the Actors' Home, a retirement home for theatrical has-beens, funded by a stingy and very dictatorial charity organization. The grand old gals' in this film really want to get a glass veranda put on one side of their rest home and can't spring the money from the rest home's board of directors. Nothing daunted, they take advantage of the fact that they are still big names, and they sell the rights to tell the intimate story of their current lives to a weekly magazine. Each lady vies with the others to be seen as the most important actress of the lot, but despite a lot of posturing, what they are really doing is keeping themselves interested in life. They are assisted in their endeavors by a pack of aging beaus, who gallantly do what they must to help these fine women feel appreciated. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Nine years after the release of his acknowledged masterpiece, Ordet, Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer offered this a story of an individual in search of a measure of personal peace and serenity, which proved to be his last completed film. Gertrud Kanning, like the maid Joan in Dreyer's best-known film, La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, is a woman in isolation. On the eve of her husband's appointment to a cabinet minister post, she announces that she is leaving their loveless marriage. But her younger lover Erland Jansson, a concert pianist, is more interested in keeping their affair illicit than in continuing it in the open. Gertrud's old lover, the poet Gabriel Lidman, offers more than his friendship, but she holds back from turning to him, instead choosing to live out her life in solitude rather than compromise with love again. Adapted from a 1920s play by Hjalmar Soberberg, Gertrud plays out in long takes, with few close-ups and exterior scenes. Though initial critical reaction to the film was largely unfavorable, its reputation has steadily grown, especially considered in the context of Dreyer's long career. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi