Friedrich Georg Beckhaus Movies
- 1989
Popular Swiss comedian Walter Roderer reprises his stage role for this situation comedy. Josef Notzli is a timid bookkeeper who has worked for 26 years in a West Berlin chemical plant. By mistake, he receives a letter intended for the relative of the big boss and is quickly given the position of executive director. Josef's ideas that were once laughed at are implemented and proven to be immensely successful for the company. For once, the little guy wins out over the callous corporate executives that have ignored him for years. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Walter Roderer, Ursula Monn, (more)
- 1984
When Nazi "exterminator" Adolph Eichmann was tried for war crimes in 1961, more than one observer, taking into consideration Eichmann's "normal" veneer, commented upon "the banality of evil." Much the same can be said of the quietly chilling docudrama The Wannsee Conference. This re-creation of a January, 1942 meeting of several Nazi officials is based on the actual minutes of the conference. In calm, measured tones, the various Nazi higher-ups discuss the extermination of Europe's Jewish population. The film is shot in "real time": it runs 87 minutes, precisely the same amount of time consumed by the actual event. Don't let anyone ever tell you that a film consisting of an hour and a half of conversation is dull: The Wannsee Conference is one of the most disturbing pictures ever committed to celluloid. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Artzorn, Friedrich Georg Beckhaus, (more)
- 1983
Based on a non-fiction bestseller of the same name by Rolf Hochhuth, Eine Liebe In Deutschland is about a tragic and forbidden love affair between Stanislaw, a Polish POW (Piotr Lysak) and Paulina (Hanna Schygulla) a fruit-and-vegetable vendor in a small town in Germany along the border with Switzerland. Their affair would have gone undetected except for the busybody women of the village, and when Stanislaw is picked up by a German stormtrooper (Armin Müller-Stahl) and brought in for a mock trial, he is given a chance to prove his racial purity and so perhaps escape execution. As for Paulina, she is ostracized by the villagers and imprisoned for consorting with someone who was not of the same high Aryan caste as herself. Depressing, yet politically relevant to Poland of the early 1980s, this film by acclaimed director Andrzej Wajda) is an effective and emotional statement on the nature of oppression. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hanna Schygulla, Marie-Christine Barrault, (more)
