Franz Seitz Movies

In an amusing spoof on the world of film aficionados and scholars, novice director Heiner Stadler has come up with a clever story of film intrigue and deception, all in the name of saving face. The chain of events begins with an ambitious film critic sitting in on a screening of a 1920s movie during the 1984 Berlin Film Festival. This sparks his interest, so when a film projectionist tells him about the long-lost director Bobo Wawerka who actually made the 1920s film but mysteriously disappeared from view after leaving for Hollywood -- the budding film critic decides he has to investigate the fate of the unrecognized Bobo. Armed with the knowledge given him by the projectionist that Bobo's last-known work was making the fist of King Kong in that famous movie, the aspiring researcher takes off on funding cajoled from the editor of a film journal. The credibility of this story is enforced by some chicanery on the part of the projectionist, and the young reporter next wings his way to Hollywood -- where he finds out the truth: there never was any Bobo Wawerka, period. But now what can he do to save his reputation? Interspersed with cameos by film professionals such as Wim Wenders, a well-known Hamburg film exhibitor, and producer Bernd Eichinger, this parody has a little added punch.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Doktor Faustus was adapted from Thomas Mann's epic novel of the same name about a composer, Adrian Leverkuehn (Jon Finch), who sells his soul to the devil for the acquisition of genius in his lifetime. Leverkuehn intentionally contracts syphilis from an infected prostitute because he believes that a side-effect of the disease is intense, sustained creativity; no matter that death from syphilis as it enters the brain is extremely unpleasant -- the composer wants his moment of greatness. That is where Satan comes into the picture, and Leverkuehn agrees to Satan's terms in exchange for creative genius: he is not to have any close human contacts. Being only too human, the composer violates the terms only to see his two closest friends, a cellist and his little nephew, die as a consequence. At this point, after extensive philosophizing and rumination, the Satanic deal just does not have the same allure, and Leverkuehn's own life is quickly deteriorating, much faster than he can handle. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In Volker Schlöndorff's award-winning adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass' allegorical novel, David Bennent plays Oskar, the young son of a German rural family, circa 1925. On his third birthday, Oskar receives a shiny new tin drum. At this point, rather than mature into one of the miserable specimens of grown-up humanity that he sees around him, he vows never to get any older or any bigger. Whenever the world around him becomes too much to bear, the boy begins to hammer on his drum; should anyone try to take the toy away from him, he emits an ear-piercing scream that literally shatters glass. As Germany goes to hell during the 1930s and '40s, the never-aging Oskar continues savagely beating his drum, serving as the angry conscience of a world gone mad. The intense and visceral Tin Drum was one of the most financially successful German films of the 1970s and won the 1979 Oscar for Best Foreign Film and the 1979 Golden Palm (which it shared with Apocalypse Now). In the late '90s, the film became the center of a censorship controversy when some U.S. videotapes were confiscated because of the film's supposed violation of a child pornography statute. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

Lording (Haggis Kraals) is the high school student who is distracted from his final exams when he falls in love for the first time. Flashbacks are employed to recall his past experiences in this romantic comedy. He delights in telling his new love of the childhood pranks he will soon leave behind for the more serious affairs of the heart. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Robert Musil's novel Die Verwirrungen des Zoglings Torless was the source for this allegorical German film. Mathieu Carriere plays Torless, a student in a costly boarding school during the glory days of the Hapsburg empire. While at school, Carriere is a bystander to the sadistic behavior of fellow students Alfred Dietz and Bernd Tischer. Carriere watches with fascination, but does nothing to intervene or to help his classmates' hapless victims. When Carriere finally does blow the whistle on his friends, it is he who is "invited" to leave the school. If you miss the parallels in Young Torless to the Nazi years, then you aren't watching very carefully...or perhaps you're not watching at all. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ludwig (Hansi Kraus) is a mischievous moppet who causes plenty of good-natured fun in this uneven children's comedy taken from the popular book by Ludwig Thoma. He lets loose white mice in the sleeping room of an elderly couple, blows up toys, and replaces his aging Aunt Frieda's (Elisabeth Flickenschildt) beloved parrot with a black cat. Ludwig's mother (Kaethe Braun) and sister (Renate Kasche) must also contend with his hilarious hijinx. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

There was nothing sly or subtle about the German S.A.-Mann Brand: The film set out to "glorify" the Third Reich, and succeeded spectacularly so far as pro-Hitlerites were concerned. S. A. stands for "Sturm-Abeling," or "Storm Troopers," the Nazi elite who are depicted as gods on earth in this 85-minute political tract. Opposing the heroic, clean-limned storm troopers are a band of scurrilous communists, every one of them a rat or a louse or both. The film's climax finds a 14-year-old Hitler Jugend nobly taking a bullet to save a comrade, thereby providing the story with a "Horst Wessel"-style martyr. For American consumption, the more virulent anti-Semitic sequences in S.A.-Mann Brand were removed, but the bitter taste still remained. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide