Walter Kohut Movies
- 1980
Several hilarious scenes are interspersed throughout this comedy featuring director and singer Udo Lindenberg as a pop singer who is kidnapped by a government agent. The agent hates his music -- he thinks it will lead the nation down the road to depravity. A detective (Lindenberg again) is soon on the case, and before all the low-end bars and clubs in Hamburg can be explored, the kidnapee escapes his captors while being transported over the North Sea in a plane. How this ends up as an accidental oratory to the nation at large is not another story at all -- just a continuation of the saga. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Udo Lindenberg, Leata Galloway, (more)
- 1979
The ever-present forces which originally gave rise to Nazism in Germany still have power in the postwar era, as this 1979 film shows. Kassbach is a grocery-store owner who has a belly full of grievances against minorities and feels privileged to take advantage of anyone who is weaker than himself. He cheats his customers, abuses his workers, and has joined a group of people who think the same way he does. They get together to knife a foreign guest-worker, and Kassbach himself shoots a man who could identify him during another "action." The final confrontation, though, comes when he must face down his son, who has espoused leftist causes. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Walter Kohut, Immy Schell, (more)
- 1978
When a school crashes down around the children inside for no apparent reason, architect Phillip Braun (Helmut Griem) is quickly apprehended and tried for having condoned inferior design and construction of the building. He is sentenced to prison. After he has already served his sentence, his lawyer (who in the meantime has become the lover of Phillip's wife) discovers that the real blame for the incident may lie elsewhere. However, overwhelmed by his passions, Phillip is easy prey for the villain. This psychological crime thriller was based on The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Helmut Griem, Brigitte Fossey, (more)
It's late 1944, and the Allied armies are confident they'll win the World War II and be home in time for Christmas. What's needed, says British general Bernard Law Montgomery, is a knockout punch, a bold strike through Holland, where German troops are spread thin, that will put the Allies into Germany. Paratroops led by British major general Robert Urquhart (Sean Connery) and American brigadier general James Gavin (Ryan O'Neal) will seize a thin road and five bridges through Holland into Germany, with paratroops led by Lieutenant Col. John Frost (Sir Anthony Hopkins) holding the most critical bridge at a small town called Arnhem. Over this road shall pass combined forces led by British Lieutenant Gen. Brian Horrocks (Edward Fox) and British Lieutenant Col. Joe Vandeleur (Michael Caine). The plan requires precise timing, so much so that one planner tells Lieutenant Gen. Frederick Browning (Dirk Bogarde), "Sir, I think we may be going a bridge too far." The plan also has one critical flaw: Instead of a smattering of German soldiers, the area around Arnhem is loaded with crack SS troops. Disaster ensues. Based on a book by historian Cornelius Ryan, A Bridge Too Far is reminiscent of another movie based on a Ryan book, The Longest Day. Like that movie, it is loaded with more than 15 international stars, including Sir Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, Hardy Krueger, Gene Hackman, Maximilian Schell, and Liv Ullman. ~ Nick Sambides, Jr., Rovi
- Starring:
- Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, (more)
- 1974
The Pedestrian (Der Fussganger) was the second filmed directorial effort of German actor Maximillian Schell. Billed third under Gustav Rudolf Sellner and Ruth Hausmeister, Schell plays Andreas Giese, a Krupp-like industrialist whose past suddenly returns to haunt him. A newspaper article reveals that Giese was responsible for the wartime destruction of a Greek village and the wholesale slaughter of the villagers. Whether or not Giese feels remorse for his actions is ultimately beside the point: his family is torn apart and his son kills himself as a result of the accusation. Here as in other films, Schell exhibits his fondness for female European film stars of days gone by: Elizabeth Bergner, Lil (Metropolis) Dagover, Francoise Rosay and Peggy Ashcroft appear in key minor roles. The winner of several international awards and a "best foreign picture" Oscar nominee, The Pedestrian was also produced and written by Schell. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1973
The young delinquent in this bleak crime drama becomes more deeply involved in crime as the movie progresses. At first, he is picked by the police as one of a number of suspects in a supermarket heist. When he escapes from the police station, he looks up a journalist who is doing an article on criminal youths but tires of being exploited for story material. He then seeks shelter with a wealthy homosexual, but when the man threatens to turn him in, he kills him. Now seriously in trouble, nothing he can do helps his situation much. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- 1965
A group of Austrian army officers at a mountain hospital are isolated by a severe snowstorm at the end of World War I. With the Austrian monarchy clearly on the way out, the men argue over to whom they will pledge their loyalty. The group is not only made up of Austrians and Hungarians, but Czechs, Serbs, Poles, Italians and others. The officers who are used to order and patriotism are thrown into the uncertainty of the political changes in the wake of the war. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- Starring:
- Eiik Frey, Erich Auer, (more)
