Helmut Qualtinger Movies
Adapted from Umberto Eco's best-selling novel, director Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose is a 14th century murder-mystery thriller starring Sean Connery as a Sherlock Holmes-esque Franciscan monk called William of Baskerville. When a murder occurs at a secluded Benedictine Abbey, William is called in to investigate. As he and his apprentice, Adson von Melk (Christian Slater), delve deeper and deeper into the case, more dead bodies begin to turn up. Eventually, Bernardo Gui, an inquisitor played by F. Murray Abraham gets involved, but he may not have the best intentions. Sean Connery's performance earned him the award for Best Actor at the 1988 British Academy Awards. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sean Connery, F. Murray Abraham, (more)
- 1979
Marianne (Birgit Doll) is driven from her father's home when she is impregnated by Alfred (Hanno Poeschi), a vagabond loafer who abandons her after he has his fun. She goes to Vienna and takes a job in a strip club to provide for herself and her baby. Her father discovers his daughter's tawdry vocation when he and his buddies go to the club for a night of leering and drinking. Marianne later has no choice but to go back to the butcher to whom her father promised her in marriage before she fell for Alfred. The story is taken from a play by Oedoen Von Horath and is directed with flair by Maximilian Schell. Watch for silent movie star Lil Dagover playing the role of Helene. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- Starring:
- Birgit Doll, Helmut Qualtinger, (more)
- 1976
In Mitgift Senta Berger plays a woman who marries handsome or rich men and murders them when she grows weary of them. She poisons her current husband with the help of her lover, Edgar (Mario Adorf). Now married to her, Edgar understands what his fate is to be, and, seeing that she is already bored with him, he attempts to beat her to the punch. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- 1975
Based on a very successful play of the same name by Tankred Dorst, this film tells a story about Norwegian author Knut Hamsun (here played by O.E. Hasse), a Nobel prizewinner for literature who was notorious for having collaborated with the Nazi regime. After the war, rather than hand him over for prosecution, he was sent to a retirement home. A young man, bitter about the war, tracks him down and begins to harass him in various ways. The author handles everything that comes to him with remarkable dignity, which eventually removes some of the taint from his actions. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- O.E. Hasse, Hannelore Hoger, (more)
- 1975
Actor Maximillian Schell functioned as coproducer and director of End of the Game. Conversely, director Martin Ritt is the leading actor in this existentialist crime story. Ritt plays Hans Barlach, a Swiss police inspector who has spent 30 years trying to pin the murder of the woman he loved on Richard Gastmann, an "untouchable" industrialist (Robert Shaw). When Barlach's assistant Donald Sutherland is killed while trying to get the goods on Gastmann, the inspector puts idealistic detective Walter Tschantz (Jon Voight) on the case. Jacqueline Bisset costars as Anna Crawley Sutherland's girl friend, who attempts to solve the case on her own. Author Friedrich Durrenmatt, long fascinated with the intangible aspects of Guilt and Innocence, wrote the novel (The Judge and His Hangman) upon which End of the Game is based. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jon Voight, Jacqueline Bisset, (more)
- 1971
In this German tragedy, a generally humane bureaucrat ruins his life by too rigorously enforcing the rules concerning honest weight. Taking place in the years just prior to World War I, the film is set in a colorful village in Galicia, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Because of his efforts to enforce strict weights and measures, our bureaucrat has become the most-hated man in his region. His wife cuckolds him and has a child by another man, his gypsy girlfriend abuses him mercilessly and he is hunted down by those he has mortally offended. He slowly comes to realize that almost everything people do is short-weighted in some way. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- 1968
The Castle (Das Schloss) is as good an adaptation of the inscrutable Franz Kafka as any. Maximillian Schell plays Kafka's ubiquitous protagonist "K", a surveyor who is hired by the residents of a remote castle. Once he arrives within the domain of the castle's owners, K finds there is no work for him. His efforts to contact those inside the castle are thwarted by the mysteriously obstructive villagers. In keeping with the fact that the novel was unfinished, the film has been released with two different endings: non-adherents of Kafka might argue that it could use two different beginnings and middles as well. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Maximilian Schell, Cordula Trantow, (more)
