Gila Von Weitershausen Movies
- 1988
The loves and lives of three sisters provides the basis of this melodrama. The eldest is intelligent and very aware of life's ticking clock. The middle sister lives on emotions, while the youngest is an idealistic, impassioned pre-med student. The story is loosely based on Chekhov's play Three Sisters. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fanny Ardant, Greta Scacchi, (more)
- 1988
French director Claude Lelouch, of Man and a Woman fame, called the shots on Itineraire D'un Enfant Gate. Jean-Paul Belmondo (who co-produced the film) stars as a powerful international businessman who, in his youth, had been a carnival performer. Once more bitten by wanderlust, Sam Lion (Belmondo) tries to escape his responsibilities by staging his own death. Hiding out in Tanzania, Lion meets Abert Duvivier (Richard Anconina), one of his own employees. Duvivier, informing Lion that the business has gone to hell in a handbasket thanks to the mismanagement of Lion's daughter Victoria (Marie-Sophie Lelouch), begs the executive to return. The literal translation of the film's title is Itinerary of a Spoiled Child. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Paul Belmondo, Richard Anconina, (more)
- 1985
Meant as a commentary on what can go wrong (and right) in filming documentaries in a foreign locale, director Peter Przygodda has almost demonstrated some of his criticisms in the configuration of his own film. When a female director -- a rare entity statistically speaking -- takes her crew to the town of Salvador in Brazil to do a documentary on the site, everything goes wrong. She is not well-armed with a script and does not have enough authority to keep things going smoothly -- though her crew is not the best either. As circumstances go from bad to worse, she visits a local clairvoyant who lets her in on a secret -- enabling some of the mess to start clearing up a bit.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gila Von Weitershausen
- 1984
In this German drama, a naive, amiable fellow inadvertently plunges into the dark world of crime and drugs when he gets involved with a hooker. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1983
- PG
In this pseudo-farce, the heroine Mickey (Margot Kidder) takes two weeks off work to go to Malta and write a mystery novel and finds herself caught up in a series of real-life murders that she weaves into her progressing story. Caught between a parody, a children's film, and a who-dunnit, the overplayed Disney charm of Trenchcoat wears thin very quickly. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Margot Kidder, Robert Hays, (more)
- 1982
- R
Angela (Anne Bennent) lives in a fantasy-world in which she feels like a kindred spirit of Joan of Arc, and at the same time, expects her lover Robert (Hub Martin) to be as totally devoted to her as she is to him, offering her own ideal love as an example. She also believes in the magic of herbal cures and is seeking for a meaning in all this that transcends ordinary perception. Robert does not share the same fanaticism, in fact, he is playing around with Bettina (Gila Von Weitershausen), a concert cellist who puts him in the position of having to decide between the two women in his life -- never an enviable task, but in this case, maybe not a hard decision. This film won the first Prix Mabuse award in Paris in 1981. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anne Bennent, Gila Von Weitershausen, (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)
- 1978
Originally made for German television, this film chronicles obsessions of a man who will do almost anything to avoid losing a chess game. Thomas Rosenmund (Bruno Ganz) learns how to play chess by watching his father in a friendly game with a neighbor. His competitiveness is keyed to such a high pitch that a series of close calls in matches precipitates a nervous breakdown and he swears off the game. Instead, he turns his skills to computers. When his company calls on him to be part of a team which is pitting a computer's chess skills against the world champion of chess, he takes it personally when the computer loses. Fired by "his" humiliation, he vows to earn the right to take on the champion himself -- and does. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bruno Ganz, Gila Von Weitershausen, (more)
- 1977
A couple vacationing in the Alps with their daughter is inconvenienced when an avalanche blocks all routes from the town they are staying in. Because the town is overcrowded, they are forced to accommodate their daughter in their tiny room, and they have a quarrel. This sends the wife into the next room, occupied by a soldier. She is wary of him at first but begins to have an affair, which is hardly a secret to anyone. Slowly, the three people come to some kind of accommodation in this tricky situation. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1975
- PG
The early years of the future King Arthur are recounted in this film from Sidney Hayers. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- 1975
This sex comedy concerns the efforts of Julien (Paul Meurisse) to get his timid, "backward" 20-year-old son to take an interest in sex and get married. After a series of adventures with women (arranged by papa), Valentin (Bernard Menez) finally gets married to a woman who appears to be as shy as he is. Things get complicated when his father begins an affair with her. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Meurisse, Bernard Menez, (more)
- 1974
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
Ron Ely, of Tarzan fame, stars in this German action adventure, adapted from Jack London's novel, The Son of the Wolf. This movie has lots of derring-do, fistfights and gunfights: all the traditional paraphernalia of a western. That is to be expected from the folks who brought many of the novels of Karl May to the screen. This film tells the story of Bill Robinson (Ely), who saves Jack Harper from certain death under an avalanche. Ironically, Harper is a bounty hunter, and Robinson is the man he was hunting. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1971
Told with fondness and precision, and set in France at the time of the IndoChina War (which later became an American problem known as the Vietnam War), this controversial feature handles teen coming-of-age, sexuality and even incest with a gentleness that disappointed the prurient and shocked the conservative. This is one of director Louis Malle's finest films: others include The Fire Within and Au Revoir Les Enfants. Laurent (Benoit Ferreux) is 14 years old and anxious to lose his virginity. However, he has a very close family circle, and, between the family and school, he is too closely watched to get anywhere. He makes the most of an opportunity to neck with the girls at his older brothers' party and later almost gets to lose his virginity in a bordello, but his boisterously drunken brothers interrupt him. His real opportunity arises while his mother takes him for a rest-cure for his heart murmur at a very conventional spa. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lea Massari, Daniel Gélin, (more)
- 1970
Charley (Werner Enke) is a shiftless man with a chip on his shoulder and a smoldering resentment of society in this offbeat comedy. He encounters a series of situations which seem to always land him in trouble, but he always seems to extricate himself from any real danger. Both the Establishment and the rebels who fight against it are lampooned in this gag filled film. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Werner Enke, Gila Von Weitershausen, (more)
- 1967
Anneliese (Lisolellte Pulver) is the German consulate's daughter who is scheduled to marry rocket scientist Frank Green (Harald Leipnitz). Their ceremony is interrupted when Frank is called away to partake in a top secret mission at the request of NATO. Some humor is thrown in to lighten things up in this routine feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liselotte Pulver, Harald Leipnitz, (more)
- 1967
Katja is a 19-year-old girl slated to marry a boy her own age. She is unhappy over her virgin status, which is undisclosed to her betrothed, and sets out to seek medical treatment. Katja falls for her physician who is prepared to undertake a surgical procedure that will render her to appear less virginal. She is torn between the operation and the natural way of losing her virginity in this unusual comedy. She returns to her fiancé once she has made her decision, hopefully to live happily ever after. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gila Von Weitershausen, Hans Clarin, (more)
