Hanna Schygulla Movies
Born in German-occupied Poland, Hanna Schygulla was raised in Munich, studying languages and literature at that city's university. Turning to acting in her early 20s, Ms. Schygulla worked extensively at the experimental Munich Action Theater, where she met the prolific and highly volatile actor/director/writer Rainer Werner Fassbinder. From 1968, Hannah starred in 20 Fassbinder film productions, retaining her professional ties to the director despite frequent and increasingly violent personal and professional disagreements. The Berlin Film Fest honored Schygulla with their best actress prize for her stunning work in the title role of Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979). Hardly glamour-girl material, she can best be described as a character star, whose versatility transcends her peasant-stock appearance. During her years with Fassbinder, Schygulla was also well-served in films directed by Schlondorff, Godard, Wajda and Scola. Since Fassbinder's sudden death in 1982, Schygulla has more often than not settled for bread-and-butter roles in conformist projects. In the 1980s, she appeared with frequency on American television; she played Jennie Lynd in the TV biopic Barnum (1986), Catherine Skewonskaya in the multinational miniseries Peter the Great (1986), and the mother of the title character in the made-for-TV feature Casanova (1987) In recent films like Dead Again (1991) and 101 Nights (1995) Hanna Schygulla has chosen to hide her distinctive features in bizarre makeup and elaborate costumes, though her voice remains inimitably hers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1989
In this tragic melodrama, a man who has been hiding his Nazi past has it come back to haunt him when his hippie daughter, whom he disapproves of, comes back to bond with her daughter, whom he's been raising. Meanwhile, he and his drinking buddy, a beer-truck driver, go on a jaunt to Poland to recover some gold fillings he had hidden years ago during the time when he worked in a concentration camp. The truck driver inadvertently leaves a filling lying around at home, and his mother immediately recognizes it for what it is. When she confronts him, he claims that "Jews don't mean anything to me" and she must then reveal his Jewish heritage to him: she was a housekeeper in a Jewish household and he was a child there whom she adopted during the Holocaust in order to save his life. The driver then confronts the wily old Nazi, who conceives a brutal scheme which will save his cozy life at the expense of the reputations of the driver and his granddaughter. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hanna Schygulla, Günther Maria Halmer, (more)
- 1988
Mitzi (Hanna Schygulla) turns to Sandor (Marcello Mastroianni) for help when her husband is murdered by right-wing extremists looking for a cache of diamonds. She and her young son escape with Sandor to Italy. By the 1930s, they return to Budapest to run the successful Arizona Club, a posh watering hole for the social elite. Mitzi falls for an American journalist, her son falls for a woman with ties to high-ranking Nazis, and Sandor is questioned about his Jewish heritage. The son learns he is half Jewish as the Nazi round-up and deportation begin. Uneven editing in places suggests that a lot of film ended up on the cutting-room floor. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Hanna Schygulla, (more)
In this comedy, a young German woman named Elaine Hines (Hanna Schygulla) moves to New York City with dreams of becoming a writer. Elaine becomes entangled in a mystery and falls in with a group of gangsters who lead her through a series of crazy adventures. Released on video under the title Crazy Streets, this movie featured an appearance by Deborah Harry and was Alec Baldwin's first screen appearance. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hanna Schygulla, Deborah Harry, (more)
- 1987
The Mexican/Spanish El Verano de La Senora Forbes (Summer of Miss Forbes) features Hanna Schygulla in the leading role. Schygulla plays a German governess, in charge of two Mexican boys while their parents are absent. The kids despise the governess, who is rigid and tyrannical. They go so far as to plan her murder, but find they don't need to kill her: beset with dozens of personal demons, the woman has been spiritually dead for years. One of six late-1980s Spanish TV adaptations of the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, El Verano de la Senora Forbes was directed by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, of Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands fame. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hanna Schygulla, Francisco Gattorno, (more)
- 1987
Decked out in powdered wig and pasty "dandy" makeup, Richard Chamberlain stars as legendary Venetian lover Giovanni Casanova (1725-1798) in this made-for-television biopic. The teleplay by George Macdonald Fraser (of "Flashman" fame) follows Casanova as his reputation for being catnip to women builds throughout the 18th century. His sexual exploits cost him several important social and professional posts, and eventually land him in a Venice prison on a morals charge. Casanova's escape attempt provides a strong second act for this 3-hour effort, which also offers an amusing "con job" practiced by Casanova on a willing countess (Faye Dunaway). Frank Finlay co-stars as a nobleman who conducts a decades-long feud with our rakish hero. Filmed in Spain and Italy, Casanova debuted on March 1, 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Menahem Golan melds a Chuck Norris action spectacle with the disaster film genre in The Delta Force. The story is based upon the June, 1985 hijacking of a TWA jet, where passengers were held at gun-point by terrorists in Beirut, Lebanon. The film re-enacts various real life incidents from the crisis -- an American serviceman is beaten to death, a terrorist holds a gun to the pilot's head as the pilot is being questioned by reporters -- while depicting the tension aboard the plane and the agony of the passengers, held under the threat of death by the terrorists. The Delta Force, a crack anti-terrorist commando group, is preparing to rescue the passengers. Colonel Nick Alexander (Lee Marvin) is the grizzled commander of the task force; his best soldier is Major Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris), who was planning to retire but is called back into action for one last heroic stand against terrorism. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chuck Norris, Lee Marvin, (more)
- 1986
This made-for-television film chronicles the life of 19th-century American showman P. T. Barnum. Using flashbacks (and flash forwards) the earliest efforts of his career are shown, through the formation of the "Greatest Show on Earth" with his partner Bailey, with many interesting things in between. ~ Forest Ray, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Burt Lancaster, Hanna Schygulla, (more)
- 1984
In this improbable, ponderous story about a couple who do not want to have children of their own, and a pregnant, single woman who needs a home for awhile, the relationship between the three protagonists is strange, at the very least. After Anna (Hanna Schygulla) and Gordon (Niels Arestrup) invite the expecting Malvina (Ornella Muti) to live with them, Anna becomes neurotically jealous and attempts suicide but is thwarted and in the end decides she really wants to be there for the baby when he/she comes into the world. Rather than trying to get rid of Malvina and the baby, both Gordon and Anna are in agreement on keeping it. When Gordon is accidentally killed, Malvina and Anna are left to plan for the future (now the best of friends), though it turns out the baby is destined to have only one mother after all. The confusion in the relationships of the main characters in this film is at times buried by clichés on the joys of motherhood and metaphors that overtake and bury the story. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ornella Muti, Hanna Schygulla, (more)
Hanna Schygulla and Angela Winkler are the stars of the German psychological drama Friends and Husbands. Having both been burned by unhappy relationships with men, Schygulla and Winkler become more and more reliant upon each other. The men in their lives can't come to grips with their strong friendship, and begin writing off Schygulla and Winkler as "oddballs." As in most of her films, writer/director Margarethe von Trotta probes the unspoken human complexities that draw people together. Von Trotta also weaves a political subtext into the proceedings: it isn't immediately obvious, but it's there all the same. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hanna Schygulla, Angela Winkler, (more)
- 1983
This sometimes confusing erotic drama about the incestuous relationship of a mother and daughter is based on the autobiography of Italian theater actress Piera Degli Esposti though it focuses more on her mother Eugenia (Hanna Schygulla). The liberated Eugenia and her spaced-out, husband (Marcello Mastroianni) -- a professor -- live in a small provincial Italian town, where Eugenia is noticed as she zooms around on her bicycle and chats up strangers at the train station. While still no more than a grown child, Piera -- in tight dresses -- goes with her mother for a threesome when she engages in sexual relations with other men and subsequently suffers both from poor health and the lack of a normal home. The shadow of the future already clouds the household when Eugenia is committed again and again to the psychiatric clinic. By the time Piera has become an adult, both of her parents are in separate mental hospitals -- and both (even the father) are still sexually eccentric, to say the least. (Hanna Schygulla) won the "Best Actress" award at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival for her portrayal of Eugenia. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hanna Schygulla, Isabelle Huppert, (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)
- 1982
- R
This talky French costume drama chronicles the adventures of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as they attempt to flee Paris during the 1791 revolution. While en route to Varennes, the couple encounter and have philosophical debates with a number of fascinating historical figures including Thomas Paine and Restif de la Bretonne. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Louis Barrault, Marcello Mastroianni, (more)
- 1982
- R
Passion, a major film in Jean-Luc Godard's ongoing investigation of the relations between painting and cinema, uses innovative forms to explore political and economic questions. Jerzy Radziwilowicz plays a director shooting a film whose scenes are all reproductions of paintings by Goya, Valasquez, and other European masters. Production comes to a halt when his producers refuse to increase his budget until he explains the film's story to them. Meanwhile, the director is ending an affair with Hanna (Hanna Schygulla), the wife of Michel (Michel Piccoli), who is the manager of the hotel where the film's cast and crew are staying. In a sub-plot, Isabelle Huppert plays a factory worker who attempts to unionize her fellow employees. The story of Passion is elliptical and incomplete. It is a means of presenting a collection of scenes and images on related themes. This kind of story will become the hallmark of Godard's later career. The links among the episodes become even looser in such films as Germany: Year Nine Zero and For Ever Mozart. Passion marks the reunion of Godard with director of photography Raoul Coutard, who shot many of Godard's films of the 1960s. The cinematography is key to understanding this difficult film in which how an image is shot is as important as what it depicts. Godard and Coutard favor shots that begin as open, disorganized framings and become painterly compositions as the people and things in them move. ~ Louis Schwartz, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hanna Schygulla, Michel Piccoli, (more)
In this French-Mexican-Spanish film that hops back and forth between the narration's present and its past, viewers watch Antonieta (Isabelle Adjani) as she is involved in the turbulent Mexican political scene in the first decades of the 20th century -- as she goes to Paris and commits suicide in the Notre Dame cathedral of that city, and then, in a confusing segment of the film, as she is seen with the present-day Parisian author (Hanna Schygulla) who is researching the story of Antonieta's death and who is a witness to her suicide. The film does not follow that chronology exactly, rather introducing the Parisian author first, and taking the author to Mexico for her research where she sees film clips from the political turmoil of the 1910s-1920s and gradually gets to "know" Antonieta -- though in the end, it could be said that no one seems to know Antonieta really well, or why she would want to kill herself. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Isabelle Adjani, Hanna Schygulla, (more)
- 1981
- R
Bruno Ganz plays a West German journalist whose frequent assignments to war-torn nations have left him jaundiced. He is assigned to cover the civil war in Beirut. The combination of his harrowing experiences on the job and his after-hours relationship with widow Hannah Schygulla affects Ganz deeply, in spite of the wall he's built around himself. He suffers a crisis of conscience when he is forced to commit himself to someone--and something--for the first time in his life. The plot of Circle of Deceit was based on the reminiscences of novelist Nicolas Born; the picture's realism is grotesquely enhanced by the decision to film on location in Beirut, surrounding the actors with genuine wartime carnage--bodies and all. Originally titled Die Falschung, Circle of Deceit is not a comfortable experience, but few will stop watching once the film has started. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bruno Ganz, Hanna Schygulla, (more)
- 1981
- R
German cabaret star Lili Marleen inspired a song that was extremely popular with the German soldiers during WW II. This war drama offers a fictionalized account of her story that begins in 1938 while she performs in a Zurich cabaret. It is her boyfriend, a Swiss Jew who also turns out to be a resistance fighter who pens her famous song. She sings it in Germany and it becomes a hit with the German troops. As a result, Hitler himself invites her to perform for him. This does not set well with the songwriter's powerful who, upon learning that Marleen has become a famed singer in Germany, seek to have her barred from Switzerland. This does not stop the songwriter from loving her though and desperate to see her one last time, he sneaks into Berlin for a tryst. Unfortuantely he is arrested and she gets blacklisted. They do not see each other again until after the war. By this time, their lives have changed considerably. This is not considered among the best of Fassbinder's best films. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hanna Schygulla, Giancarlo Giannini, (more)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's sweeping 16-hour-long drama Berlin Alexanderplatz is an adaptation of the novel by Alfred Doblin. Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) is released from prison as the film opens; he had been jailed for four years after killing his girlfriend Ida. Franz becomes involved with Lina (Elisabeth Trissenaar) and promises to no longer break the law. The 1920s German economy is horrible, and Franz has difficulty providing for himself and his partner. He goes into business with Lina's uncle, who eventually betrays Franz, sending him into a serious downward spiral. Franz becomes involved with a criminal named Reinhold (Gottfried John), a womanizer who convinces Franz to get rid of the woman Reinhold himself has discarded. After a botched robbery, Franz loses his arm in a car accident. With assistance from his ex-girlfriend Eva (Fassbinder regular Hanna Schygulla) and her pimp, Franz recovers and returns to the city. He starts to make some money by acting as a pimp for a prostitute named Mieze (Barbara Sukowa), but Reinhold returns and kills her. The authorities arrest Franz for the murder. The film ends with Franz in a mental hospital, a prime candidate to join the ranks of the upstart National Socialist party. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Günter Lamprecht, Hanna Schygulla, (more)
German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder both directed and photographed The Third Generation (Die Dritte Generation). Displaying a sense of humor that can most kindly be described as perverse, Fassbinder follows the exploits of a group of well-heeled German terrorists. Without truly taking sides, the director demonstrates how the terrorists are essentially shooting themselves in the foot. The more havoc they spread, the tighter the government restrictions against other radicals. Eddie Constantine, the sang-froid leading man of many a Lemmy Caution espionage film, is ironically cast in The Third Generation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Margit Carstensen, Eddie Constantine, (more)
- 1979
- R
The film that elevated German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder from domestic approbation to international acclaim, The Marriage of Maria Braun stars the director's on-and-off favorite actress Hanna Schygulla in the title role. During the allied siege of Germany in the last year of the war, Maria's new husband (Klaus Löwitsch) is shipped off to the Russian front before the marriage is consummated. As she struggles to survive wartime deprivations, Maria haunts the local train station, seeking out information concerning her husband. When it appears that she's a widow, Maria takes a job as a barmaid and befriends a black soldier (George Byrd) from the occupying allied troops, who sees to it that Maria's family receives vital food and supplies. The opportunistic Maria eventually takes a job with a wealthy importer (Ivan Desny), building herself up to a position of power and indispensability. Though she sleeps with her employer, Maria still carries a torch for her husband. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hanna Schygulla, Klaus Löwitsch, (more)
- 1975
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
- Starring:
- Helmut Griem, Hanna Schygulla, (more)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's adaptation of a late 19th-century novel by Theodor Fontane is an austere period piece that may be the least characteristic of the German director's films. The titular heroine, played by Fassbinder regular Hanna Schygulla, is a 17-year-old girl forced into a loveless marriage with an old count. Living as the aristocrat's trophy wife, Effi endures her provincial existence unhappily. Her circumstances lead to a brief affair with a young lieutenant that attracts the attention of the townspeople, but not her unsuspecting husband's. Years later, however, the count discovers the love letters between his wife and her lover. As dictated by convention, he challenges the lieutenant to a duel and throws his wife out of their home. The shamed Effi is forced to live by herself, shunned by society and spurned by her family. Effi eventually returns to her unsympathetic parents, who reluctantly take in their disgraced daughter. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide
- 1974
The Wrong Move and The Wrong Movement were the English-language titles for German director Wim Wenders' Falsche Bewegung. Made for television, the film is an update of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Ruediger Vogeler plays aspiring writer Wilhelm Meister, who goes on a long odyssey in the woods in search of truth. His companions on this journey are pragmatic Therese (Hanna Schygulla), bisexual Mignon (Nastassja Kinski, billed under her real name, Nakszynski), Mignon's hippielike boyfriend Laertes (Hans-Christian Blech), and artistically bankrupt poet Landau (Peter Kean). The foursome accept the hospitality of an industrialist (Ivan Desny), who unbeknownst to all but himself is a deeply troubled ex-Nazi. Novelist Peter Handke wrote the screenplay for Wrong Move. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rüdiger Vogler, Hanna Schygulla, (more)
- 1972
Based on Franz Xaver Kroetz's play, which is in turn based on a true story, this film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder tells the story of a very young girl who, after persuading a local boy to become her lover, induces the lad to kill her father, whose incestuous sexual attentions to her have grown unbearable. The site they choose for this deed, which gives its name to the film, is a wild-game crossing. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
