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When they dig it up, what will they find? Fans will want to see this forgotten Deutsch-noir masterpiece. Helmut Käutner’s tale of trouble on an American air base in West Germany is a swirl of romantic, political and criminal complications — all down & dirty. A tiny burg that serves as a brothel for U.S. airmen attracts displaced women and dispirited men willing to do what’s necessary to survive. We’ve seem nothing quite like this riveting drama — its sixty-year absence carries a taint of political ‘inconvenience.’ If you like challenging fare like Ace in the Hole and Try and Get Me! you’re going to love it. Both censored and uncensored versions have been restored in excellent quality.

Black Gravel

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1961 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 114, 113 min. / Street Date September 1, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Helmut Wildt, Ingmar Zeisberg, Hans Cossy, Wolfgang Büttner, Anita Höfer, Heinrich Trimbur,...

László Nemes‬ (looking at Martin Scorsese) on the stiff collar worn by Írisz in Sunset, costumes by Györgyi Szakács: "And it goes down with the film." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Sunset (Napszállta) is cinema at its astute and enchanting finest. Max Ophüls and Jean Renoir may come to mind and the scene in the shoe department of Romanze in Moll, Helmut Käutner's take on Guy De Maupassant. In a similar mode to the way László Nemes chained us to the back of the neck of Géza Röhrig's Saul Ausländer in his groundbreaking, Oscar-winning Son Of Saul (also shot by Mátyás Erdély), he attaches us firmly to his Sunset heroine Írisz Leiter (Juli Jakab), a young woman who returns, after years of apprenticeship in Trieste, to her native Budapest in hopes of working as a milliner at the famous Leiter department store her deceased parents used to own.

László...

The Captain (Der Hauptmann) director Robert Schwentke: "There's certain conventions in German cinema." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

In the first instalment of my conversation with Robert Schwentke at the Quad Cinema, the director of Red, R.I.P.D., and Flightplan talks about his latest film The Captain (Der Hauptmann), shot by Florian Ballhaus and starring Max Hubacher with Alexander Fehling, Milan Peschel, Frederick Lau, Bernd Hölscher, Waldemar Kobus, Samuel Finzi, and Wolfram Koch.

Max Hubacher stars as Willi Herold in The Captain

Robert Schwentke also discusses with me the significance of the uniform for Emil Jannings in Fw Murnau's Der Letzte Mann; Heinz Rühmann in Helmut Käutner's Der Hauptmann Von Köpenick, based on Carl Zuckmayer's play; being a "big fan" of Bierkampf director and star Herbert Achternbusch; Heinz Schirk's Die Wannseekonferenz and Theodor Kotulla's Aus einem Deutschen Leben; certain conventions of German cinema, and...

Olaf Möller on Black Gravel (Schwarzer Kies) starring Ingmar Zeisberg, Helmut Wildt and Hans Cossy: "This is really Käutner on his realism track."

At the Film Society of Lincoln Center inside the Furman Gallery of the Walter Reade Theater, Olaf Möller, the curator of The Lost Years of German Cinema: 1949–1963, discussed with me the films of Helmut Käutner, including his Hamlet adaptation, Der Rest Ist Schweigen (The Rest Is Silence), starring Hardy Krüger, Der Traum Von Lieschen Müller (The Dream Of Lieschen Mueller) and Bildnis Einer Unbekannten (Portrait Of An Unknown Woman).

Oe Hasse, Lilli Palmer and Peter van Eyck in Harald Braun's The Glass Tower (Der Gläserne Turm)

Wolfgang Staudte's The Fair (Kirmes) starring Juliette Mayniel, and Harald Braun's The Glass Tower (Der Gläserne Turm) with Lilli Palmer, Oe Hasse and Peter van Eyck, along with Käutner's Redhead (Die Rote) with Gert Fröbe and Ruth Leuwerik,...

Olaf Möller in front of Katharine Hepburn posters for Christopher Strong and Spitfire: "Das Spukschloss im Spessart [The Haunted Castle]! Which is fantastic. Great musical! It's a horror musical." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

On the opening night of The Lost Years of German Cinema: 1949–1963 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, film historian Olaf Möller, following his introduction of Gottfried Kolditz's White Blood (Weißes Blut), joined me for a conversation on the program he curated that includes sensational work of filmmakers Helmut Käutner, Hans Heinz König, Fritz Lang, Peter Lorre, Kurt Hoffmann, Harald Braun, Wolfgang Staudte, Aleksander Ford, Konrad Petzold, and Robert Siodmak.

Earlier in the day at the Walter Reade Theater I watched Robert Siodmak's The Devil Strikes At Night (Nachts, Wenn Der Teufel Kam) and Hans Heinz König's Roses Bloom In The Moorland (Rosen Blühen Auf Dem Heidegrab). I started out with a couple of childhood television memories.

Fritz Lang's The Tiger Of Eschnapur...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Film Forum

A Michael Haneke retrospective begins as does a restoration of The Crime of Monsieur Lange.

The Film Society Lincoln Center

“The Lost Years of German Cinema” features rare cinematic gems from Fritz Lang, Helmut Käutner, Robert Siodmak, and more.

Anthology Film Archives

“Generation Wealth” kicks off with The Bling Ring, Spring Breakers, L’Argent,...

One of the many treats at this year's Il Cinema Ritrovato festival of restored or rediscovered films was a retrospective of the works of Helmut Käutner, who has been known and admired for a few select works but whose larger oeuvre is rarely screened. Curators Olaf Möller and Christoph Huber explained that this was partly because the German director's comedies often deal with German current affairs of the day in a way which makes them seem obscure even to modern German audiences. But one humorous movie proved timeless.Käutner began his career during WWII, but never seems to have been seriously tainted by associations with the Nazi regime. Indeed his great successes shot during wartime, Grosse Freiheit No. 7 (1944) and Under the Bridges (1946) apparently made the authorities uncomfortable: framed in a setting that's not-quite period and not-quite alternate reality, where the war simply does not exist, they seemed...a touch defeatist.

The Berlin Film Festival on Monday announced the first three features that will screen in its 2017 Berlinale Classics lineup, a sidebar dedicated to classics and newly discovered films.

A digitally restored version of Mexican director Felipe Cazals' Canoa, which won a Silver Bear at the 1976 Berlin festival, will get a special screening at the Berlinale Classics, alongside the drama Avanti Popolo (1986), the debut feature from Israeli director Rafi Bukai, and Black Gravel (1961), a German B-movie from helmer Helmut Kautner.

The Criterion Collection, with the participation of the Mexican Film Institute, restored Canoa in honor of its...

The Notebook is the North American home for Locarno Film Festival Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian's blog. Chatrian has been writing thoughtful blog entries in Italian on Locarno's website since he took over as Director in late 2012, and now you can find the English translations here on the Notebook as they're published. The Locarno Film Festival will be taking place August 3 - 13. In line with a long established dramaturgical mechanism, film criticism has shaped a history of cinema conceived in terms of discontinuity, one of dark ages followed or preceded by golden eras. Yet the habitual emphasis on the winds of change blowing in with the“nouvelles vagues,” although correct, has often ended up obscuring the cinema that came directly before it, charged with provincialism, not being very creative, and dominated by the requirements of the market. The “independent cinema = auteur cinema” equation may seem as natural as it is obvious but,...

Günter Grass with David Bennent and Volker Schlöndorff on the set of The Tin Drum

Günter Grass, honored in 1999 with the Nobel Prize for Literature, died at the age of 87 today, April 13. Volker Schlöndorff directed The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel), based on Grass’s first novel and worked on the screenplay with Jean-Claude Carrière and Franz Seitz. Grass contributed additional dialogue. The film premiered at Cannes in 1979, winning the Palme d'Or in a tie with Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980. Last year in New York at Lincoln Center, Volker and I discussed his adaptations, from The Tin Drum to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Cyril Gély's play Diplomatie (Diplomacy).

Peeling the onion signed by Günter Grass - June 2007 Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

When Günter Grass came to New York in June 2007, I had the chance to discuss...

Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...

Teresa Wright and Matt Damon in 'The Rainmaker' Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright vs. Samuel Goldwyn: Nasty Falling Out.") "I'd rather have luck than brains!" Teresa Wright was quoted as saying in the early 1950s. That's understandable, considering her post-Samuel Goldwyn choice of movie roles, some of which may have seemed promising on paper.[1] Wright was Marlon Brando's first Hollywood leading lady, but that didn't help her to bounce back following the very public spat with her former boss. After all, The Men was released before Elia Kazan's film version of A Streetcar Named Desire turned Brando into a major international star. Chances are that good film offers were scarce. After Wright's brief 1950 comeback, for the third time in less than a decade she would be gone from the big screen for more than a year.

Above: 1978 re-release poster for Tabu (F.W. Murnau, USA, 1931)

I only recently came across the posters of German artist Boris Streimann (1908-1984)—who was known to also sign his work as B. Namir—and was immediately struck by both the dynamism and the color of his work. The author of hundreds, if not thousands, of posters from the late 20s through the late 60s, Streimann loved diagonals. All of the posters I have selected— the best of his work that I could find—work off a strong diagonal line, with even his varied and very inventive title treatments (which could have been the work of another designer) often placed on an angle. On top of the sheer energy and movement of his posters, his use of color is extraordinary: brash and expressionistic like his brushwork. I especially love the multi-colored accordion in Port of Freedom, the loin cloth in Tabu, and...

Actor and director who brought dark good looks and a commanding presence to his roles

Austrian by birth, Swiss by circumstance and international by reputation, Maximilian Schell, who has died aged 83, was a distinguished actor, director, writer and producer. However, he will be best remembered as an actor, especially for his Oscar-winning performance in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) – an early highlight among scores of television and movie appearances. He also directed opera, worked tirelessly in the theatre and made six feature films, including Marlene (1984) - a tantalising portrait of Dietrich, his co-star in Judgment, who is heard being interviewed but not seen, except in movie extracts.

Schell courted controversy and much of his work, including The Pedestrian (1973), dealt with the second world war, its attendant crimes and the notion of collective guilt. In 1990, when he was offered a special award for his contributions to German film, he refused to accept it.

Maximilian Schell dead at 83: Best Actor Oscar winner for ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ (photo: Maximilian Schell ca. 1960) Actor and filmmaker Maximilian Schell, best known for his Oscar-winning performance as the defense attorney in Stanley Kramer’s 1961 political drama Judgment at Nuremberg died at a hospital in Innsbruck, Austria, on February 1, 2014. According to his agent, Patricia Baumbauer, Schell died overnight following a "sudden and serious illness." Maximilian Schell was 83. Born on December 8, 1930, in Vienna, Maximilian Schell was the younger brother of future actor Carl Schell and Maria Schell, who would become an international film star in the 1950s (The Last Bridge, Gervaise, The Hanging Tree). Immy Schell, who would be featured in several television and film productions from the mid-’50s to the early ’90s, was born in 1935. Following Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, Schell’s parents, Swiss playwright Hermann Ferdinand Schell and Austrian stage actress Margarete Schell Noé,...

One of the world's great film culture apostates, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg is mostly notorious for the seven-hour-plus 1977 film "Our Hitler," and for Susan Sontag's rocket-to-Mars essay, ambitiously praising it to the heavens, and for being the most recalcitrant of the New German Cinema's unholy four (with Wenders, Fassbinder and Herzog).

Finally, two of his famous earlier films have been released on video to contextualize that later behemoth, "Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King" (1972) and "Karl May" (1974), the three of which supposedly comprise a "German trilogy." Syberberg hardly seems disposed to ever make films about anything else, and it's an unassailable career project, especially in light of the last decade or so of Holocaust movies produced in Germany and elsewhere, which have tried to straitjacket and even romanticize the horrifying mystery of German culture's evolution.

Syberberg has always regarded it as a monstrous enigma, and his movies reflect his position in every frame.