Thomas Mauch Movies

The most famed and well-regarded collaboration between New German Cinema director Werner Herzog and his frequent leading man, Klaus Kinski, this epic historical drama was legendary for the arduousness of its on-location filming and the convincing zealous obsession employed by Kinski in playing the title role. Exhausted and near to admitting failure in its quest for riches, the 1650-51 expedition of Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro (Alejandro Repulles) bogs down in the impenetrable jungles of Peru. As a last-ditch effort to locate treasure, Pizarro orders a party to scout ahead for signs of El Dorado, the fabled seven cities of gold. In command are a trio of nobles, Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra), Fernando de Guzman (Peter Berling), and Lope de Aguirre (Kinski). Traveling by river raft, the explorers are besieged by hostile natives, disease, starvation and treacherous waters. Crazed with greed and mad with power, Aguirre takes over the enterprise, slaughtering any that oppose him. Nature and Aguirre's own unquenchable thirst for glory ultimately render him insane, in charge of nothing but a raft of corpses and chattering monkeys. Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1973) was based on the real-life journals of a priest, Brother Gaspar de Carvajal (played in the film by Del Negro), who accompanied Pizarro on his ill-fated mission. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Documentarian Les Blank, who filmed Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, trained his cameras on Herzog again, as the eccentric German filmmaker made his epic, Fitzcarraldo, in the Amazon rainforest of Peru. Herzog's production is in trouble right from the start. He begins filming with Jason Robards playing the title role, and Mick Jagger playing Fitzcarraldo's sidekick, Wilbur. With 40 percent of the film shot, Robards becomes ill and goes back to the states, where his doctor will not let him return. Because of the delay, Jagger, with album and tour commitments, is forced to quit the production. Thinking no one can fill the rock star's shoes, Herzog jettisons Jagger's role. He eventually casts his frequent collaborator Klaus Kinski as Fitzcarraldo and begins shooting again. Violent tribal disputes and unpredictable weather hinder the shoot, but the biggest obstacle is Herzog's own quixotic and dangerous determination to film one antique boat smashing down the Amazonian rapids, and the dragging of an identical boat over a mountain from one river to another. Blank interviews members of the cast and crew, including the impoverished Indian extras, and captures the troubles of the seemingly cursed production, but his interviews with Herzog are the focal point of the film. "If I abandon this project," Herzog explains at one point, "I would be a man without dreams, and I never want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project." Herzog later made his own documentary about Kinski, My Best Fiend, which adds to the lore of this infamously difficult shoot. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

Set in Vienna, Austria before World War I, an industrialist grows weary of his cold-hearted wife. He seeks vengeance in a dual with the young officer who desires her affections. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Just as rapacious seacoast villagers with no other source of income used to lure ships onto the rocks in order to salvage them or steal their cargo, so do the two spacemen in this film seek to wreck spaceships in Earth's orbit to benefit from an elaborate insurance scam. Meanwhile, back on the planet, the rich and poor nations are locked in battle. This German political comedy with science fiction overtones is based on The Monopole Capitalism, by Baran and Sweezy. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Ferdinand Rieche (Heinz Schubert) was a policeman, but found the legal constraints of that profession too stifling. He gets into the business of protecting manufacturing plants and outfits and trains his men like a private army expecting an invasion. After his excesses prove too much for his bosses, he is fired, and Ferdinand takes his strong opinions back into public life. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This film combines both black-and-white and color photography to tell the story of a circus beset with financial woes. Leni (Hannelore Hoger), the director of a circus, has just lost her father in a trapeze accident. She tries to keep the circus out of debt and vows to continue the performances under the big top. Helped by a small and unexpected inheritance, Leni has high hopes of keeping the circus operating. She must decide if her dedication to the show is realistic or merely wishful thinking. Curt Jurgens appears as the animal trainer Mackensen in this symbolic but slow-moving feature. The film took the Gold Lion award at the 1968 Venice Film Festival. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

By 1941, Adolf Hitler had taken personal command of the German military apparatus. His initial successes made this seem like a good idea at the time, but by 1944, after an unparalleled series of military defeats which Hitler refused even to acknowledge, a group of high-ranking military and political figures in Germany decided to assassinate him and take over the government. Unfortunately for them, their assassination attempt failed, and the knives were out to find all the people involved in the attempt. The most wanted person in the coup was Carl Goerdeler (Dieter Schaad), a respected figure in German public life for many decades. Twenty years earlier, a girl by the name of Helene Schwärzel (Katherina Thalbach") met Goerdeler. After the coup attempt, during the nationwide manhunt, Helene recognized him and notified the authorities. In addition to receiving a huge reward, she became the focus of a nationwide propaganda campaign, and was widely resented for her "success." When the Allies won the war, they prosecuted her under a "crimes against humanity" statute, and she spent six years in prison. A basically clueless, apolitical person, she seems to have been puzzled by the whole affair, and she never spent her reward money. This historical drama tells the about her involvement in this significant story. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The Patriot is the kind of symbolic, avant-garde, historical and cultural drama that lends itself to several viewings in order to get at the basis of what, in this case, director Alexander Kluge had in mind. Various aspects of German history are explored from several angles in a series of odd sequences. Gabi Teichert (Hannelore Hogar) is both a history teacher and a patriot. One day she goes out into the winter landscape carrying a shovel (digging for the truth?). She comes across is a dead soldier killed at the battle of Leningrad, whose symbolically disembodied knee speaks to her. Next, Gabi scans the landscape with a telescope, looking for evidence. Later, she is at a convention of the Social Democrat Party and tries to find information there. The scenes continue at different venues and with different people as this history teacher tries to piece together history. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Even viewers who've seen Freaks won't be completely prepared for Werner Herzog's bizarre Even Dwarfs Started Small. The film is set in a dismal mental institution, wherein dwell several midgets, dwarfs and other "oddities." Sick of being tormented and exploited by the so-called normal people of the world, the inmates stage a coup, taking over the asylum and utterly reversing the status quo (Herzog's apparent attempt to draw parallels between the events on screen and such real-life upheavals as Vietnam). As in his other films, the director imbues his misshapen characters with a sort of regal grandeur, as if to purge the German wartime atrocities against "underdesirables." Herzog also produced, wrote and provided the musical arrangements for Even Dwarfs Started Small, which was initially released in Germany in 1970 (two years after its completion) as Auch Zwerge haben klein angefagen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Acclaimed German New Wave director Alexander Kluge helmed this groundbreaking feminist drama starring his sister Alexandra, which later became the filmmaker's best-known work. She plays Rosewitha Bronski, a mother and housewife-cum-factory worker, who moonlights as an abortionist. Her world is a veritable maelstrom of chaos, marked by screaming children; an obnoxious, demanding, ne'er-do-well husband; and tumult at a factory caught up in the throes of corporate relocation. Meanwhile, at the abortion clinic, doctors have begun refusing to pay referral fees, which puts Rosewitha in an extraordinarily challenging position. Kluge's innovation relies in handling this emotionally-charged material in a cool, detached and matter-of-fact style that interpolates extensive voiceover to critique and reflect on the central character's life-choices and attitudes. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

After Goethe, Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) is the playwright and writer who did the most to fuel the Romantic movement in German literature. A troubled and brilliant man, he committed suicide at age 34, and his life was the paradigm for that of a tragic romantic artist. Penthesilea was among his better known works. This biographical film explores the circumstances leading up to and immediately following his suicide. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide