Foreign Cinema: Best German Movies

13 February 2009

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This week has seen German cinema hog the spotlight on the FemaleFirst pages and today we round it off by looking at some of the best German movies.

The last eighteen months or so have been a great success for the German film industry with the likes of The Baader Meinhof Complex, Downfall, The Wave and The Lives of Others all breaking out of Germany to find international success.

But our look at German movies starts back in 1927 and the science fiction classic Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang.

The silent movie was a visual spectacle that really put German filmmaking on the map as the film looked forward to the future as well as tackling issues of class division.

As the elite frolic above the clouds, thousands of miserable workers toil night and day inside the belly of the gigantic machine that runs the entire city. Metropolis is controlled by a sinister authoritarian whose son, Freder, rejects his father's callous philosophy and attitude towards labourers.

Meek though they are, the workers are encouraged by Maria, a wistful young woman who wills her comrades to embrace patience and silent strength.

Upon discovering her influence upon the workers, a mad scientist kidnaps Maria and creates a robot in her image that will incite the workers to revolt.

As Freder races against time to save Maria and curtail the damage done by her doppelganger robot, Metropolis is enveloped in chaos and the classes are brought together in a breathtaking and highly moralistic climax.

Despite it's age Metropolis still remains one of the classics of the science fiction genre as well as one of the early masterpieces of early post sound cinema.

Jump forward fifty four years and we have a second classic movie in the form of Das Boot by Wolfgang Petersen.

Set in the midst of World War II, as the tide turns against the Axis, a German U-boat crew is sent out to patrol the Atlantic and fire at Allied ships bringing supplies to England. The submarine also carries a press correspondent, there to report from the front lines of nautical warfare.

Meanwhile, the crew's captain (Jürgen Prochnow) is becoming disillusioned with the Nazi regime and with war in general.

What starts out as a routine mission is soon livened up beyond the crew's expectations when their boat's surprise attack on a convoy is thwarted by a fast-moving destroyer. Battered by depth charges, the crew must pull together to survive the attacks of their unseen enemy.

An adaptation of novel by Lothar-Günther Buchheim the director wanted to give the audience a real taste of war and rarely shot outside the submarine keeping viewers trapped in the claustrophobic environment.

Met with critical acclaim Das Boot is still regarded as one of the best anti war movies as well as Peterson's best picture.

It's an Oscar winner up next in the form of The Tin Drum, and adaptation of the novel by Gunter Grass.

The film follows a Oskar, a young boy who wants to remain a child forever after seeing the misery of the grown up world.

His primary efforts to communicate consist of glass-shattering screams and banging on his tin drum. But as this unusual lad matures, and the events leading up to the onslaught of Nazism come to a head, he proves to have a keener perception of life than those around him.

The movie was one of the most financially successful German movies of the seventies and went on to scoop the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and the Palme d'Or at Cannes, jointly with Apocalypse Now.

1999's Run Lola Run was something completely different for German film it was a gritty urban picture that was set to a techno soundtrack. It shot actress Franka Potente and filmmaker Tom Tykwer to fame.

Beautiful, hip, and young, poor Lola has but 20 minutes to locate a missing bag containing 100,000 Deutsche marks or come up with the money some other way--if she can't, gangsters are going to kill her boyfriend.

The film was dynamic and stylish and was one of the most successful movies to come out of Germany for some time. It was a critical hit and won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

Other top quality German movies that have made it to the big screen over the years include Rosa Luxemburg, Aquirre: The Wrath of God and Wing of Desire.

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw

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