Hannes Stelzer

A Hopeless Case

The Crew of the Dora

German film about Luftwaffe pilots. It depicts a love triangle involving two of them being overcome by their participation in battle together.

Traumulus

This film is a fascinating showcase for Emil Janning's theatrical play. He's a gentle school teacher who believes in his boys and is easily fooled about all things, while the other town officials want him dismissed. Curiously it's very hard to see what the film is exactly aiming for. Disaster strikes and the lax prof proves to be too far removed of the real problems of the world, on the other hand his enemies are shown in the most unsympathetic, satirical way denouncing the militaristic, bourgeois ideology of the Kaiserreich.

Operation Michael

During the Great War, German soldiers are persuaded to die heroically in order to take a French village held by the British.

Truxa

The famous tightrope artist Truxa is drinking at the Artisan bar in New York. He meets a young man, Husen, and gives him his stage name Truxa. He is to take the real Truxa's place at a circus show in Wintergarten, Berlin.

The Sovereign

Der Herrscher (The Sovereign) was based on Before Sunset, a play by Gerhart Hauptmann. The great Emil Jannings stars as Mathias Clausen, a self-made businessman who is forced to do a great deal of soul-searching when his wife unexpectedly dies. Determining to start life anew, he falls in love with his secretary Inken (Marianne Hoppe) and impulsively takes a vacation to Italy. Clausen's selfish grown children, not wishing to share their father's affections -- nor his money -- with his new wife-to-be, go to court demanding that Clausen be declared mentally incompetent. Upon finding this out, Clausen flies into a rage, leaving the audience to wonder whether or not he really as gone off his trolley. Der Herrscher was directed by Veit Harlan, more famous (or notorious) for his viciously anti-Semitic Jud Suess (1940).

Stukas

This Nazi propaganda film details the exploits of a group of German Luftwaffe pilots flying Stukas--fighter-bombers--in the Battle of France in the early days of World War II.

Bal paré

At the turn of the century in Munich, a ballerina accepts the sponsorship of an older industrialist but also spends time with his son.

Die Pfingstorgel

The residents of the villages Strasslach and Rott are anything but friends. The residents of the “enemy” town are ridiculed at every chance the residents of the other village can get to do so. And it’s no different, when Rott is getting ready to celebrate the 300th anniversary of its founding. The residents of Strasslach ridicule their neighbors, because the Rotters don’t want to celebrate the anniversary, because it’ll cost money. Even the church doesn’t have an organ, because that would cost money, too.

Fahrendes Volk

Fernand has escaped from prison and finds shelter in the traveling circus Barlay, where his former wife Flora works as a predator trainer. Their son, now grown up, Marcel is an art rider and does not know that Fernand is his father. Marcel loves Yvonne, the daughter of director Barlay. He is against the connection, sends his daughter to Italy and convinces Marcel that Yvonne does not return his feelings.