FREE ON DAILYMOTION Ernst Lubitsch - Trouble In Paradise

FREE ON DAILYMOTION (DU FINDEST DEN GANZEN FILM FREI AUF DAILYMOTION) When I look at adult people in a modern cinema film, it usually fails because there are simply none. Grey youths probably fit better. In Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble In Paradise it's different: Here, unbelievably grown-up people appear who can only be found in the cinema. They are cosmopolitan, cynical, cultured - almost that they leave a trace of slime. Herbert Marshall plays a jewel thief, Miriam Hopkins a thieving woman who admires him and Kay Francis a rich widow who thinks she can buy him. They live in a pure cinema world full of exquisite costumes, butlers, Venetian hotels, lofts in Paris, cocktails and lots of jewels. Impressive how they move in all the adornment! The Love Triangle was Lubitsch's favourite plot, especially when there is a sexual rivalry. Here we realize from the beginning that the thief Gaston Monescu (Marshall) and the pickpocket Lily Vautier (Hopkins) are meant for each other. Not only because they like each other, but also because their profession basically excludes civilians. When Gaston meets Mariette Colet (Francis), both know that it can't last long. The sexual undertones are played out surprisingly openly, at least Lubitsch's film was made in 1932, before the censorship of American movies took over. So we can be sure that none of the three characters runs the risk of thinking sex is love. Lily and Mariette know what they want and Gaston knows that he has! He masterfully hides his true feelings behind the mask of cultivated jokes. Herbert Marshall fills every scene with suspense, simply because he eludes the emotional script through his play. His whole appearance is so elegant that he seems to float through the room! He knows exactly the requirements of a social comedy and finds the right tone to talk to a lady. The dialogues of Lubitsch's favourite author Samson Raphaelson sound like foreplay from Marshall's mouth... Take another look at the scene where he dines with Lilly. He pretends to be a baron, she a countess: "You know," says Lily, "when I first saw you, I thought you were an American." - "Thank you," he replies seriously. (...) "Then I heard your name and found out you were just one of us," she enthuses. - "Disappointed?" - "No, proud. Very proud". Then they kiss and steal from each other. Something feverish resonates in the dialogues and that's what makes Lubitsch's Screwball Comedy so special. Lubitsch had his very own way of transforming the given material through his style: The famous "Lubitsch Touch", which allowed him to express certain things unsaid anyway. The most amazing thing about this style exercise, however, is the fact that his characters still seem to be alive. There is a lot of irony in this director's game, but we are allowed to let ourselves fall into his movies. Ernst Lubitsch is our greatest director in Berlin. Born in 1892, he began to direct himself in 1915. In 1923 he moved to Hollywood to make a lot of successful silent movies. During the 20's and 30's you can call him the regent of the Paramount Studios. Best were his musicals and comedies, where Trouble In Paradise is his masterpiece! Finally, one publicist pointed out the "Lubitsch Touch", which the director himself didn't want to accept. In Trouble In Paradise it's a small wonder how the actors lend dignity to their comic-like characters! In fact, each of the characters here seems full of life experience and with a certain heaviness. Lubitsch's comedy is full of melancholy, even in the funniest moments! Just the scene in which Gaston and Mariette say goodbye to each other. It's clear, both love each other and yet they stole from each other. They try to defuse this situation with a gallant joke - and so does Lubitsch's whole comedy.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

FREE ON YOUTUBE William Friedkin - Killer Joe

This isn't a movie! It must be hell! Did I like Killer Joe? Or did I hate the movie? Anyway, Killer Joe left me speechless. Killer Joe is flawlessly staged and shows raven-black humor. The focus is on the Smiths, the stupidest family ever shown in a film that is NOT a comedy. They live in a trailer somewhere in Texas. Killer Joe himself uses a police car from Dallas, so it has to play somewhere nearby. Killer Joe himself is not stupid. But he makes the mistake of never realizing how stupid the Smiths are! Matthew McConaughey plays killer Joe during the phase of his career, because he was a character actor before he mutated into a Hollywood lover, only to switch back to the character business afterwards. His killer Joe is a cop who also works as a contract killer. He is hired by Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch), who owes money to drug dealers. So that they don't kill him, he suggests his father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) to hire killer Joe to kill his mother. Little sister Dottie (Juno Temple) overhears the plan and thinks it's a good idea. Who would miss her? Who needs her? Note: It's Chris' mother, the first woman Smith. Besides there is another woman Smith: Sharla (Gina Gershon), the stepmother, made up in such a way that we finally understand what a slut is! The Smiths live in a world of chained pitbulls, burning barrels and monster truck videos. A world where the TV is on all the time (at least until killer Joe hits it on the floor). Anyway, almost everyone in this movie gets beaten to the ground once. There are broken noses, bruises and so on. Of course, there is also a lot of naked skin and sex, like when Dottie gets deflowered. Director William Friedkin, New Hollywood legend and promising queerhead of our time, has earned himself the NC-17 rating! Already before he had attracted attention with the claustrophobic masterpiece "Bugs" and had easily gained a new following. Not only in our small video store! Killer Joe ran first in small program cinemas, in order to change then into the large cinemas. At that time we also tried Killer Joe in our open air season: The audience laughed in the right places, even applauded, went out and talked about how disgusting it all was.

FREE ON YOUTUBE Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense

Stop Making Sense hinterlässt einen überwältigenden Eindruck! Gar nicht die hektische Energie einer Rockband auf der Bühne, sondern reine Lebensfreude! Weshalb sollte man sich einen Konzertfilm ansehen? Normalerweise werden als Gründe angegeben: 1) Die Musik 2) Die Kinematographie. Stop Making Sense ist anders. Hier ist es die physische Wirkung, die wir meinen zu spüren! Die Talking Heads im Konzert, das muss man sich wie ein sportliches Workout vorstellen. Vielleicht wie Aerobic. Mitgeschnitten wurden zwei Konzerte der Band in New York, wobei sich der Film ganz auf das ungeheure Talent von David Byrne konzentriert. Seine Bühnenpräsenz hat etwas von Pantomime - und die besten Effekte auf der Bühne werden durch Kostüme und Handleuchten erzielt. Fast wirkt es wie Schattentheater. Am Beginn aber erleben wir Byrne ganz leise und konzentriert. Auf einer nackten Bühne allein mit Ghettoblaster. Er schaltet ihn ein und singt Psycho Killer. Dann setzt der Bass ein und nach und nach die ganze Band. Das Tempo nimmt zu. Die Musik der Talking Heads darf von Musik Nerds auf viele Einflüsse untersucht werden. Für mich hört man am stärksten den Rock'n Roll der 50er durch, aber auch Country Sänger wie Hank-Williams. Wahrscheinlich erreichten sie dadurch, dass man auch Reggae oder Gospel durchhört auch Menschen, die Rock nur noch als Lärm empfanden. Die Talking Heads dagegen klangen wie Musik!(...)

Film List: Magic Realism Comedies

comedies, in which we feel like in a fairy tale...

FREE ON YOUTUBE Into The Wild

Who read Jon Krakauer's novel of the same name? Did you then imagine - if only for a moment after reading it - living in a lonely hut, somewhere out by a lake? I mean DRAUSSEN, not somewhere in Brandenburg near Berlin! Does it seem tempting to you to plant beans there and go hunting? A pure life. The fulfillment. The search for meaning. In the past this would have been interesting for me, too, and that's why I read Krakauer's novel with fascinated fear. In the centre, a twenty-year-old university graduate who dissolves his lawyer's fund in order to enter the "territory" (in the language of Mark Twain). He drives west until he can't go any further, then north into the wilderness of Alaska. In his luggage, a handful of books and edible wild plants. His role model seems to be Jack-London and yet I'm not sure if he really read it. This is followed by Sean Penn's fascinating film adaptation. Appearance Christopher (Emile Hirsch), an idealistic dreamer. He is the pride of his parents with good grades in law school. Why did he disappear from their lives? Why didn't he explain himself? In his diaries he describes himself in the third person as a heroic adventurer. A loner who renounces civilization and returns to the womb of nature(...)

FREE ON YOUTUBE Hannah Takes The Stairs

Isn't Greta Gerwig great? She looks so open-minded and reasonable. We almost think we know her. Gerwig could sit in a hip cafe in Neukölln on Monday morning. With a well-dressed Penguin book in his hand.  Type: Pleasant, smart university graduate who has no benefit for the job market. Gerwig looks real. Not like the typical Hollywood actress, who is polished on all corners and edges. In some pictures Gerwig looks like a student, then again as beautiful as a real movie star! Aaaach, isn't she great? And her film direction? Mumblecore? What was it like with "Mumblecore"? Films produced on an incredibly low budget. It plays non-actors or semi-professionals or something like that. Everything (or almost everything) is improvised. The semi-professional actors appear as students, unemployed artists or young employees in low-paid jobs. Mostly they sit around somewhere (for example in a cafe) and talk about their relationship problems. Hannah Takes The Stairs is set in Chicago. It's summer. Greta Gerwig works for a media company and suffers from her narcissistic boyfriend and his affairs with neurotic students. A perfect example for the "genre" of Mumblecore! Hannahs (Gerwig) biggest wish is: "I wanted to be the funny one". Isn't she? I mean: Yes, she is neurotic, sarcastic and quite cute. Her odyssey through modern relationship life was conceived as a non-film by director/screenwriter/editor Joe Swanberg. A collaboration of all greats of Mumblecore like Gerwig or Bujalski(...)

FREE ON YOUTUBE Breaking Glass

This is a film that makes you melt away! A film after a true event. It all starts with the phone ringing in a London indie studio. The receptionist who picks up the phone does it for the first time, because it's her first day at work. On the phone, a casting agency. They demand Hazel O'Connor. The receptionist is visibly surprised! She IS Hazel O'Connor! That's exactly what she tells the callers, but they say: "Oh no, this one's a singer." At the same time O'Connor was reading a book called "Bring Out the Magic in Your Mind". It's about thinking positively. To live one's dreams simply by focusing very strongly on them. O'Connor wanted to make it as a singer and songwriter, but she had only composed four songs. It was her brother who showed her how to write songs and with him she hung around in London most of the time. It was the late 70s and O'Connor's brother played as a pre-program for the Buzzcocks. London had so much to offer; The Specials, The Clash and the Rich Kids with singer Midge Ure! O'Connor wanted to be part of it and wrote more songs. Albion Records believed in her, but offered her only a pound as a reward. A pound! To pay the rent, she worked as a receptionist. Albion Records were new to the business and had produced a single artist until then: Ian Gomm, who in turn had a recording studio where the Stranglers were also customers. Do you realize how much fun Breaking Glass is?(...)

FREE ON YOUTUBE Kriegerin - Combat Girls (engl. subt.)

Films with Neo Nazis are always creepy, not only when they play in the new German states. Kriegerin leads us into an undefined small town in East Germany. There live Marisa (the great Alina Levshin) and her gang of racists, skinheads and Neo Nazis. A little bit of everything somehow... Anyway, it seems to be one, threatening and harassing everyone who doesn't share her ideology. Muslims, East Asians, long-haired people - all enemies. Only a matter of time until Marisa's boyfriend and finally herself cross a red line... But is it enough to self-knowledge to regret one's own deed in order to free oneself from the disgusting world view of National Socialism? Is he not regarded as a natural attitude where Marisa lives? Marisa suddenly learns about feelings such as decency and compassion. Yes, she can even imagine what it is like to raise a child. Much of what is going on inside her can only be guessed in her sad eyes. Is Marisa a tormented soul? Kriegerin is a German film with a relentless pace and some drastic scenes of violence. A film that heads for a tragic climax, from which there seems to be no escape. The city in which Marisa lives is grey. An eerie, grim city. Warriors were accused of presenting the neo-Nazi scene as "cool" and "rebellious"(...)

FREE ON YOUTUBE B.R. Rent-A-Cop

The death of B.R. Burt Reynolds was the epitome of a sonny boy. He captivated his audience effortlessly, seemed happy and a little conceited. But anyone who reads interviews with Reynolds experiences a serious, analytical man. Perhaps the turning point in Reynolds career was his collaboration with Peter-Bogdanovich? During the 70's Reynolds shot in series. Bad films were hardly noticed. I imagine it that way: At the moment when he was unhappy with one of his films, the next one already started. B.R. - a trademark. But Reynolds also filmed with stars like Catherine-Deneuve and she knew nothing about B.R. It must have been like a liberation for the star! Reynolds even went on tour with Deneuve and then said: " I'm not sure my heart could stand a tour with Catherine Deneuve. I'd take along a physician - except he couldn't stand it, either..." So he was! Charming and quite naïve! He was sexy in a clear and funny way. An original, a modern Cary-Grant! I never expected B.R. to play big dramatic roles. Others should do that! All the worse I found it when during the 80s his performances were ripped off. For example, does anyone remember Rent-A-Cop, his second collaboration with Liza Minnelli (after all, an Oscar winner alongside B.R.!)? Rent-A-Cop works somewhere between Hollywood formula and a relationship story. Of course, the Hollywood clichés take over at some point, but not until the relationship story has given us some nice moments. It's the unlikely friendship between an outcast cop from Chicago (who knows) and a prostitute (Minnelli). She hires the outcast cop because someone wants to kill her. What's the next step? The policeman snaps at the prostitute and tells her to get the hell out of here. Then he gives in. She gets into danger, he saves her and in the end they fall in love. Beautiful, isn't it? Of course there are still some subplots, because the outcast cop has to be rehabilitated in the end. The director obviously switched to autopilot. But if you take a closer look, you'll find something. Reynolds and Minnelli build up a charming relationship, both are witty and quick-witted. Sometimes this relationship even has something touching (and sometimes I just enjoyed Minnelli's cynicism). Rent-A-Cop is not an ambitious movie. Nothing should stand in the way of the plot. Even details remain within Hollywood formulas. And Reynolds? Does he even seem a bit tired? Does the script prevent us from experiencing a better Reynolds? Just imagine what B.R. and Liza Minnelli would have achieved together in a quality film!

Film List: All The President's Men

Bob Woodward's new work "Fear", which deals with time in the White House under Donald Trump, is currently being published. What interests us all: Are there any new insights that are sufficient for an impeachment? A second Watergate?(...)

Film List: Chemnitz 2018

"There was no mob ... and there was no Progrome in Chemnitz" (Michael Kretschmer, CDU, Saxon Prime Minister, 9/18). Who remembers? After Daniel H. was killed by two men presumably from Syria and Iraq, the police searches for a third man, while the AFD and Pergida call "concerned" rabid citizens on the street, who walk through Chemnitz with the Hitler salute. Of course, this must not be called a "chase". The spit stays away and therefore I collected in our video cellar after films with Neo Nazis. That's what they call the rabid citizens who pull up their right arm.

FREE ON YOUTUBE Jean Eustache - La Maman Et La Putain

(YOU FIND THE WHOLE FILM WITH ENGLISH subtitles FREE ON YOUTUBE) If you want to rent the DVD of La Maman Et La Putain from us, you will be disappointed. It only runs with the original French sound. There were geeks like Sulgi who simply set out with the dictionary to understand Eustache's classic. What a job! An epic dialogue film! The problem: There is still no adequate DVD version. Worse still, you don't get the masterpiece as a silver disc at all. Today (2.9.18) but during my daily YouTube check I noticed that we can enjoy La Maman Et La Putain in good picture quality with English subtitles! Let's get going! Here comes THE unknown classic of the Nouvelle Vague!  Eustache's most famous film came to the cinemas in 1973 and an entire generation embraced this permanently lamenting slacker, who prefers to conduct endless conversations in Parisian cafes. Jean-Pierre Leaud plays Eustaches idol Alexandre. He lives with one woman and tells another that he loves her. Then there's the one who rejected him and various other women. Marie, played by Bernadette Lafont, lives with Alexandre and also supports him, since he usually stands "between two jobs". Veronika (Francoise Lebrun) is Alexandre's blind date in a cafe to which he presents his not really soaring thoughts (while his eyes follow other women in the immediate vicinity). Alexandre is not stupid, but neither is he intellectual. He does not make any significant progress in his self-discovery. He likes to babble about movies and about life (which often confuses him). He wears a dark coat and a scarf that reaches down to his knees. His friend wears the same. Alexandre spends the days holding Proust in front of him in Cafes, but not reading in it. I think, although Alexandre seems to be the center of La Maman Et La Putain, Eustaches film is more interested in his women characters. Couldn't it be that the women are just circling around him because they are curious about what strange things he will tell next? What idiocy is he about to expose? Leauds best role was that of the young Antoine Doinels, since then he has varied this as a childlike side in what is actually already an adult man. While Alexandre struts through the Paris cafes like a puppet, the real drama takes place in the character of Veronika. Veronica must know that Alexandre only talks to her about love while Marie is absent. When Veronika talks about herself, we experience deep and unadulterated knowledge of herself. The portrait of a childish man exerted enormous influence from his time - but it is time to see Eustaches film in a different way.....

FREE ON YOUTUBE Dr. Ketel

There are two things I like to see in the cinema. 1st science fiction films based on an IDEE (no action in space). Second films from the neighborhood. And here comes a science fiction film from Neukölln, set in the near future. Dr Ketel is a gigantic man who travels at night to treat patients for free. A strange saint. Ketel must be told by clinic doctor Dr. Wissmann, who disapproves of his work, that he is not a real doctor at all. Dr. Ketel is deliberately photographed flat (the camera moves very close to the protagonists) and mounted in leaps and bounds. That's exactly how Dr. Ketel is told: His relationship with the pharmacist (Franziska Rummel) is introduced and then simply disappears from the film. Dr Ketel is a driven man and that's why such a romance can't last. Finally he loses his Tarnjob as a janitor and his basement flat. Dr. Ketel has to live on the streets and gets sick himself(...)