Eva-Maria Meineke

Ludwig (Helmut Griem) loves his wife Martha (Maja Komorowska) very much, something that is first apparent when they leave their home in Poland to venture into the unknown, capitalist "West." Maria has her own inner worries and fantasies that always lead to her taking most unusual action: dancing around a room while guests fidget uncomfortably, playing cowboys and Indians with the neighbor kids, turning the lawn into a series of potholes, or any number of other antics, including running off to become a nun. The long-suffering Ludwig does not falter in his devotion, though the reasons for Maria's unothodox behavior patterns are never quite clear. Perhaps Ludwig's sister Johanna (Eva Maria Meineke) is somehow involved, but even she does not survive to tell the tale. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Director Bertrand Tavernier provides an unexpected feminist slant to the otherwise standard sci-fi trappings of Death Watch. Harvey Keitel plays a man of the future who has had a camera implanted in his brain. The mechanism, which is endowed with special X-ray properties, is activated by the user's eyes. Keitel is assigned by ruthless TV producer Harry Dean Stanton to secretly probe the subconscious of a dying woman, played by Romy Schneider. Stanton is only interested in the grim spectacle of what goes on inside the brain of someone who knows she's doomed. Keitel, on the other hand, becomes increasingly compassionate--and disgusted by the tawdriness of his assignment--as he stares into Schneider's tortured psyche. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In mid-1978, the cult fantasy guru and comic book illustrator Bill Richert -- after months directing Jeff Bridges and Belinda Bauer in the scattergun carnival of a political satire, Winter Kills -- faced a real head-scratcher. With Winter yet to be completed, Richert's backer, Avco-Embassy, lopped off all funding and suspended production indefinitely. Projectless, Richert spun around, picked up an unproduced feature script by drive-in director Larry Cohen (Q, It's Alive!), and somehow found the cash to churn out a second piece of eccentricity with Bridges and Bauer in the leads, this one for Columbia Pictures -- hoping he could use the latter's earnings to polish off Winter. Thus began a very shaky history over the next 30 years for a little film originally called The American Success Company. This ghost of a picture bombed at the box office in 1979, was later reedited twice by Richert under distinct titles (first as American Success in 1981 and then as Success in 1983), and received limited theatrical distribution. It has since fallen through the cracks of movie history, never receiving official distribution on home video but popping up in bootleg versions under the titles Good as Gold and The Ringer. The movie tells the story of Harry Flowers (Bridges), a Milquetoast employee of a Munich-based credit card company, AmSucCo (did AmEx raise any eyebrows at that?), married to the daughter (Bauer) of his slightly tyrannical boss (Ned Beatty). Flowers allows himself to be shoved around and coddled by everyone, until he suddenly decides to slip into an assumed identity -- that of a gruff, bull-by-the-horns modern-day prince, determined to "rescue himself" from wimpdom by learning sexual aggression from a prostitute (Bianca Jagger) and ultimately wresting millions from the hand that feeds him. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

This movie, based on a novel by Manfred Bieler, chronicles the complex romantic and daily lives of three daughters of a German merchant living in Prague in 1936. The oldest daughter is Christine, who falls in love with and marries a porcelain dealer. The next younger daughter Sophie has an affair with a composer but falls for the porcelain dealer. The youngest daughter Katherina falls for a Czech communist member of the anti-Nazi underground. When the war comes, Christine becomes the lover of a Gestapo officer, Sophie goes to a convent as a nurse, and Katherina joins the partisans. After the war, the composer who had wood her originally kills Sophie's boyfriend, the porcelain dealer husband of Christine. The communist abandons Katherina for his career, and all three girls are returned to Germany as unwanted aliens. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Based on the best-selling novel by Nobel-laureate Heinrich Böll, this drama is a passionate indictment of Catholicism. Hans Schnier (Helmut Griem) has earned his living as a clown, though he is in fact a very covert sort of social critic. After enduring a difficult childhood in Bonn during the Second World War, including his mother's fanatic Nazism, he is appalled to discover many of the people he knows and loves swept deeply into involvement in the Catholic Church. His complete estrangement from his family and friends, who are now either bourgeois or passionately Catholic (or both), is demonstrated to him, after he makes a series of efforts to make contact. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Claude Sautet's romantic drama César et Rosalie (Cesar and Rosalie) stars Romy Schneider as Rosalie, a beautiful young woman happily married to successful businessman Cesar (Yves Montand). One day, Rosalie's former flame David (Sami Frey) appears and attempts to win her back. Cesar reacts with a jealous intensity never before seen by Rosalie, and because of that, she returns to David. She remains conflicted as to with whom she should be, but eventually, one of the men does something which resolves the situation. César et Rosalie contains one of the first screen appearances of French actress Isabelle Huppert. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by Harry Kressing, Something for Everyone must hold some sort of record for having the largest number of unsympathetic characters within a single film. Mercenary layabout Michael York talks himself into a footman's job at the estate of dissipated countess Angela Lansbury. In his efforts to advance himself socially and monetarily, York stops at nothing--including murder. He is eventually roasted on his own spit, courtesy of Lansbury's gross, ugly daughter Jane Carr. Guiding the debauched destinies of the characters is none other than Broadway luminary Harold Prince. The film has also been released as The Rook and Black Flowers for the Bride. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide