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Joachim Lang’s bleak film shows a preening Goebbels and a careworn Hitler as they battle to convince the German public, and themselves, they will win the war

In an appropriate spirit of cynicism and bleakness, German director Joachim Lang has made a film about the private life of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, the Hexenmeister or chief sorcerer of lies, and his always strained relationship with Hitler. Robert Stadlober plays the preening and self-pitying Goebbels and Fritz Karl is a careworn Hitler. Franziska Weisz plays Goebbels’s wife Magda, who at first resented his infidelities with showbusiness starlets but for the sake of the Fatherland submitted to the public image of a good Nazi wife and mother of six adorable children – whom Joseph and Magda finally murdered in the bunker before killing themselves.

In its subversive, austerely satirical way, the film feels almost like a B-side to Oliver Hirschbiegel’s...

Our culture has long been vulnerable to celebrities and influencers who popularize hate. From Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s to Mel Gibson in the 2000s, each has taken advantage of their platform to spread conspiracy theories or antisemitic tropes to the masses.

But the rapper and internet celebrity Kanye West, or “Ye,” remains in a category all his own. Unlike others before him, Ye has never tried to mask his hatred of Jews or couch his beliefs in timeworn antisemitic conspiracy theories. While he once seemingly attempted an apology to the Jewish community, Ye has doubled and tripled down on his antisemitic rants – again and again and again. Ye, who makes no secret of his hatred for the Jewish people, infamously threatened to go “death con 3 on Jewish People.” His latest apology, issued last week, came as a short burst of tweets less than 9 hours after an antisemitic extremist...

It’s not uncommon for Oscar hosts to pay homage to the Academy’s long history, but some of that history is actually pretty unpleasant.

During this year’s never-ending ceremony, host Conan O’Brien happened to mention the first ever Best Actor Oscar winner, Emil Jannings, who took home the award for his work in The Way of All Flesh. This was way back in 1929, when the ceremony mercifully lasted for just 15 minutes.

While Conan only brought Jennings up in order to tee-up a joke about an Electric Boogaloo-esque Way of All Flesh sequel (we’ll let you fill in the pun yourselves), he neglected to mention that this particular Oscar win had a pretty unfortunate epilogue. Like really unfortunate.

Jannings didn’t actually get the most votes for the award, Rin Tin Tin did, but the Academy refused to give the award to a dog, lest it impugn the...

The history of any important film festival is the history of the films and filmmakers they’ve showcased and championed: what’s their tally of breakthrough filmmakers and esteemed auteurs who have defined the past century of cinema?

This is why Berlin, Cannes and Venice, after nearly a century of annual unspoolings (as Variety likes to call them) retain their reputations and the vitality of their programming and festival operations.

There is a parallel history as well, one that charts the important fests’ cultural and economic impacts upon the communities and countries where they’re held.

The French film industry is a primary European powerhouse of collaborative private and public financing and film promotion, and it has coordinated beautifully for decades with the Cannes Film Festival. To the good fortunes of both.

Itay’s official cinematic and cultural organizations and departments have partnered effectively with the Venice Festival, even if...

Donald Trump has banned actress Julianne Moore's book for children, Freckleface Strawberry, from the libraries of any school run by the Department of Defense. The Oscar winner was made aware of the news by the nonprofit group Pen America, which pointed out that hers is one of several books being outright removed or put under review for inclusion by the new administration in a post on social media.

Moore shared the news on her own social media on Sunday (though we first heard about it via Variety). "It is a great shock for me to learn that my first book, Freckleface Strawberry, has been banned by the Trump Administration from schools run by the Department of Defense," Moore wrote on her Instagram. "Freckleface Strawberry is a semi-autobiographical story about a seven-year-old girl who dislikes her freckles but eventually learns to live with them when she realizes that she is different 'just like everybody else.

At this point, it’s impossible to say World War II films are rare. The world’s most recent global conflict was a dire warning against wanton violence, and its inherent lessons to humanity are (unfortunately) more prescient than ever. Many of these films focus on the mortality of common soldiers, while others highlight the brutality of mechanized warfare and uplift the heroic soldiers who fought and died to give humanity a brief reprieve from the clutches of fascism. However, as with any war, there are also plenty of political thrillers.

One such film, Downfall, was released in 2004 to an abundance of praise, and over 20 years later, it still enjoys a 90% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. However, it’s also one of the most controversial World War II films ever made. By some assessments, its problematic elements are only outpaced by literal wartime propaganda. Others, like historian and professor Hermann Graml,...

Everything is an allusion, a pose, in the films of Quentin Tarantino, right down to the font and colors that he uses for his title sequences—even the name of his production company, A Band Apart, which arrogantly asks us to think of him as our generation’s Godard. And how willingly we indulge him says plenty. Tarantino is as much creator as curator, and his overbearing cinephilia appeals to audiences who not only lost it at the movies but can’t seem to live without them: From Reservoir Dogs to his Kill Bill diptych, his films are solipsistic totems to his favorite things, and their effect is often suffocating.

Inglourious Basterds, a WWII-set revenge fantasy about the secret and sometimes not-so-secret maneuverings of a group of gung-ho Jewish-American Nazi hunters known as the Basterds, is no less meticulously engineered than Tarantino’s other pulp fictions. Except this one is...

No matter how passionately I feel about Star Wars (and I think my work here reflects that obsession), I try to respect other people's theories about what we already know and what is still to be released.

One notable exception was in 2019 when I attended a panel at Salt Lake City's FanX convention. During a panel on what we could expect from The Rise of Skywalker, they speculated on whether Ben Solo would ever stop listening to Darth Vader and break free of the Dark Side. It was at that point that I went to the audience microphone and said, "Anakin Skywalker died in the light. Whoever has been telling Ben Solo to turn, it is not his grandfather." As we now know, I was right about that.

Now years later with some retrospective, let's take a look back at the heir to Vader's darkness for now.

"I will finish what you started.

Joseph Goebbels was a master of propaganda who knew how to sway public opinion like few others. As Hitler’s Reich Minister of Propaganda, he had unprecedented control over Germany’s media and used this power to spread the Nazi message. The new film Führer und Verführer directed by Joachim A. Lang reveals how Goebbels orchestrated displays of support for Hitler with meticulous precision.

We see him ensuring Hitler’s welcome to Berlin after annexing Austria in 1938 goes exactly to plan. A prearranged girl presents the Führer with flowers at the optimal moment for the cameras. Goebbels wants footage that will solidify Hitler’s image for generations. Every shot must project strength and popularity.

Though focused on Goebbels, the movie also shines light on his complex relationship with Hitler. At first the two seem inseparable, but Hitler’s unbending nationalism emerges while Goebbels still enjoys the glories of peacetime. When war comes,...

Maggie Smith was a constant in the life of producer Robert Fox for half a century. She could “make grown men cry,” says Fox, because “if you weren’t 100 percent on top of your game, you were dead in the water, and she was right.”

Fox produced Dame Maggie in some of her greatest stage hits from Peter Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage to David Hare’s The Breath of Life, in which she and her best friend, Judi Dench, shared top billing at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Dame Judi got the No. 1 dressing room. “But Maggie wasn’t fussed because she joked that Judi, she’d say, “had all those people in from Surrey to see her, so she needs the space.’ She wasn’t at all unhappy about it. She’d watch all of Judi’s guests troop in to see her. She’d say: ‘Look, there they go.

Dame Maggie Smith, the British actress who starred in Harry Potter films, the wildly popular Downton Abbey series and scores of other movies, TV shows, West End and Broadway productions in a career that brought two Oscars, five BAFTAs, four Emmys and a Tony Award, died today. She was 89.

Smith’s death was confirmed by her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin. In a statement shared with UK media, they said: “She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September. An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”

Smith was one of the finest British screen and stage stars of her generation and will be remembered for her performances in iconic films and TV shows, including Harry Potter and Downton Abbey. Her...

The infamous and virtuosic Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl made the two documentaries she became legendary for, “Triumph of the Will” (1935) and “Olympiad” (1938), nearly 90 years ago. She herself lived to 101 (she died in 2003). The controversy that has surrounded her first reared its head more than six decades ago, catching fire in the mid-1970s, when Susan Sontag published her influential and accusatory essay about Riefenstahl entitled “Fascinating Fascism.”

Ever since then, there has been a hot-button ferocity to what we might call The Riefenstahl Question. That heightened quality — like the question itself — refuses to die. The question is: Is it fair to brand this Nazi filmmaker a Nazi collaborator? She made her films for Hitler, who she was personally chummy with, so there’s no doubt that on some level she made a deal with the devil. But what was the deal? What, exactly, did she know?

The debate about Leni...

Your browser does not support the video tag. Screen Rant presents the U.S. trailer for the new historical drama Goebbels and the Fhrer. Goebbels and the Fhrer offers a unique look into the private lives of Hitler and his master propagandist. The film's controversial storytelling challenges audiences to see history's biggest monsters as human.

Goebbels and the Fhrer is a historical drama detailing one of the most consequential relationships in human history, and Screen Rant has a first look at the United States trailer. The movie was written and directed by Joachim A. Lang, and stars Robert Stadlober as Joseph Goebbels, Franziska Weisz as Magda Goebbels, and Fritz Karl as Adolf Hitler. Goebbels and the Fhrer explores the rise and fall of Hitlers master propagandist and aims to give audiences a look at the private lives of its titular subjects.

Related 10 Best World War 2 Movies, Ranked According To IMDb...

Early in Pictures of Ghosts, writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho cuts to a television interview with his late mother, Joselice Jucá, a historian and a key figure in the film. The interviewer asks why she’s chosen an oral history as the medium for a project on Brazilian abolitionist leader Joaquim Nabuco. As she explains her process, Mendonça Filho’s voice enters to note that “it may seem like I’m discussing methodology, but I’m talking about love.” The filmmaker seems to have taken his mother’s emotional investment in her subject matter to heart, as the methodology in Pictures of Ghosts—a historical document of his hometown of Recife, with a particular focus on its movie theaters—is ultimately in service of the filmmaker’s own personal relationship to the people, places, and images that he captures.

It’s hardly the first time that Mendonça Filho’s relationship with...

In case you weren’t aware of the evils of social media, or if you otherwise needed another reason to despise Elon Musk, it’s worth taking a look at Hacking Hate, an eye-opening study of the power that far-right influencers wield both online and in the real world.

Directed by Simon Klose (Tpb Afk: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard) and featuring Swedish investigative reporter My Vingren, the film ushers the viewer down a rabbit hole where muscle-bound YouTubers, racist zealots and DJs-turned-Russian agitators pollute the internet in pursuit of personal and political plunder. It’s an ugly world to enter, and one that the brave Vingren never shies away from, putting herself at risk as she tries to get to the bottom of a long and elusive digital trail.

It all begins when Vingren, whose journalistic exploits and hacking capabilities have earned her the nickname “the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” in Sweden,...

Exclusive: Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired Northern American rights for Joachim A. Lang’s historical drama Goebbels and The Führer (aka Führer and Seducer) for a fall 2024 theatrical and digital release.

Beta Cinema, which launched sales on the feature at the EFM and brokered the North America deal, has also posted new deals for France (Condor Entertainment), Hungary (Ads), Bulgaria (Beta Film) and Greece (Tfg).

As previously announced, the film has also sold to Spain (A Contracorriente), Scandinavia (Mis Label), Japan (At Entertainment) and Australia & New Zealand (Moving Story Entertainment). Wild Bunch will release the film in German-speaking territories on July 11.

The drama follows the rise and fall of Joseph Goebbels in the final seven years as Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda.

While Hitler is at the height of his power, Goebbels is the creator of the pictures of the flag-waving crowds and antisemitic films “Jud Süß” and “Der ewige Jude...

The most notorious unmade Stanley Kubrick project is probably his "Napoleon," a massive biopic that the director infamously researched for years. In 2012, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted a Kubrick exhibit, and guests were permitted to see Kubrick's filing cabinet where he stored thousands of hand-written notecards, each one detailing a single day in Napoleon Bonaparte's life. Kubrick worked on "Napoleon" in the 1970s, and claimed he wanted Jack Nicholson to play the part. Kubrick wrote a screenplay, secured filming locations in Romania, and was all ready to go. The 1970 film "Waterloo" bombed, however, and the then-recent film version of "War and Peace" threatened to flood the market with too much Napoleon. A lot of Kubrick's "Napoleon" research went into the production of 1975's "Barry Lyndon." 

Kubrick's unrealized projects are plentiful. Audiences may also know all about Kubrick's plans to make "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" near the end of his life,...

Beta Cinema has revealed further sales on its Berlinale and Europe Film Market lineup, including “500 Miles,” “Führer and Seducer,” “Hammarskjöld,” “The Light” and “From Hilde, With Love.”

After a first deal on the upcoming Bill Nighy-roadmovie “500 Miles” with True Brit Ent. for U.K. was announced during the market, Beta Cinema has confirmed further territories have picked up the dramedy: Australia and New Zealand (Kismet), Middle East (Front Row), Italy (Maestro Distribution), Benelux (September Film), Greece (Feelgood) and former Yugoslavia (Discovery). Aardwolf Films picked up worldwide airline rights. BAFTA-winner Morgan Matthews will direct from a script by Malcolm Campbell, based on the novel “Charlie and Me” by Mark Lowery later in 2024. Roman Griffin Davis will star next to Nighy.

The market premiere for “Führer and Seducer” led to new deals with Condor Entertainment for France, Beta Film for Bulgaria and Tfg for Greece. Deals with Spain (A...

Picturehouse Entertiainment has picked up From Hilde, With Love, the new drama from German director Andreas Dresen (Stopped on Track) for the U.K. and Ireland, adding to a swath of European deals for the title, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival last month.

Liv Lisa Fries (Babylon Berlin) stars in the 1940s-set drama as Hilde Coppi, a member of a left-wing anti-Nazi resistance cell. Beta, which is handling international sales for the movie, previously announced deals for From Hilde, With Love with Haut et Court in France, Teodora in Italy, Angel Film across Scandinavia, September Film for Benelux and Outsider for Portugal, among other deals. Palace Film will release From Hilde, With Love in Australia and New Zealand. Pandora Film Verleih is handling the German release and will bow the movie in German-speaking territories this October.

Beta also announced a series of deals for its upcoming Bill Nighy road movie 500 Miles,...

Morgan Matthews‘ upcoming road movie 500 Miles, starring Academy Award nominee Bill Nighy and buzzy teen actor Roman Griffin Davis, has sold to multiple territories for Beta Cinema, following its launch at the Berlinale’s European Film Market (EFM) last month.

The film has been acquired for Australia & New Zealand (Kismet), Middle East (Front Row), Italy (Maestro Distribution), Benelux (September Film), Greece (Feelgood), former Yugoslavia (Discovery) and Airlines (Aardwolf Films). As previously announced it was acquired by True Brit Entertainment for the U.K.

Beta Cinema has also achieved a handful of pre-sales for Tom Tykwer’s return to cinema The Light, which also debuted at the market, to Benelux (September Film), Greece (Tfg) and former Yugoslavia (Discovery).

As previously announced, the drama about a contemporary family put to an unexpectedly wild emotional test by their Syrian housekeeper, will be released by X Verleih in Germany and Arp Sélection in France.

“You get me?” barks Career Drill Sergeant Zim (Clancy Brown). The young, beautiful, and vapid recruits giving him their full attention answer in kind: “Sir yes sir!” Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) and his fellow roughnecks might get Zim, but most people do not. Since its first theatrical run through today, viewers misread, misunderstand, and, frankly, misattribute Starship Troopers time and again, failing to see the cutting satire at work.

The most recent example comes from author Isaac Young, who took to Twitter to critique the film’s approach to satire. Young argued that director Paul Verhoeven failed to make fun of the Terran Federation because the attractive heroes, clean cities, and technologically advanced schools look nicer than the ugly bugs they fight.

Why the first Starship Troopers movie failed as a parody, a thread:

Watching the movie, it was clear the director was aiming for a campy, over-the-top depiction of the Terran Federation.

Germany’s Beta Cinema has racked up multiple territory deals for its Joseph Goebbels biopic Führer and Seducer ahead of the film’s premiere at the European Film Market in Berlin later this week. Beta signed all-rights territorial deals with Spain (A Contracorriente), Portugal (Films4You), Scandinavia (Mis Label), Benelux (Dutch Film Works), Czech Republic (Donart Film), former Yugoslavia (Discovery) Japan (At Entertainment) and Australia & New Zealand (Moving Story Entertainment) for the feature. Wild Bunch will release the film in the German-speaking territories.

Directed by filmmaker/writer/historian Joachim A. Lang, who helmed 2018’s Mack The Knife — Brecht’s Threepenny Film with Lars Eidinger, Führer and Seducer stars Robert Stadlober as Goebbels, Austrian actor Fritz Karl (Sisi) as Adolf Hitler and Franziska Weisz (The Swarm) as Goebbels’ wife Magda. Stadlober also stars in Josef Hader’s Panorama title Andrea Gets A Divorce, which will have its world premiere at the Berlinale this year.

Exclusive: Beta Cinema has unveiled a raft of key territory pre-sales for Joachim A. Lang’s Joseph Goebbels biopic Führer and Seducer ahead of its market premiere at the EFM this week.

The company has sealed deals to Spain (A Contracorriente), Portugal (Films4You), Scandinavia (Mis Label), Benelux (Dutch Film Works), Czech Republic (Donart Film), former Yugoslavia (Discovery) Japan (At Entertainment) and Australia & New Zealand (Moving Story Entertainment).

Wild Bunch will release the film in German-speaking territories.

Führer and Seducer follows Goebbels in his last seven years at Adolf Hitler’s side, as his Minister of Propaganda.

While Hitler is at the height of his power, Goebbels is the creator of the pictures of the flag-waving crowds and anti-Semitic films “Jud Süß” and “Der ewige Jude”, priming the German people for the mass murder of the Jews.

The drama follows Goebbels as he then attempts to whip up continued support for...

Early in the documentary Pictures of Ghosts, writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho cuts to a television interview with his late mother, Joselice Jucá, a historian and a key figure in the film. The interviewer asks why she’s chosen an oral history as the medium for a project on Brazilian abolitionist leader Joaquim Nabuco. As she explains her process, Mendonça Filho’s voice enters to note that “it may seem like I’m discussing methodology, but I’m talking about love.” The filmmaker seems to have taken his mother’s emotional investment in her subject matter to heart, as the methodology in Pictures of Ghosts—a historical document of his hometown of Recife, with a particular focus on its movie theaters—is ultimately in service of the filmmaker’s own personal relationship to the people, places, and images that he captures.

It’s hardly the first time that Mendonça Filho’s...

Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is an alternate version of World War II, with fictional characters based on real people, like Frederick Zoller. Matthäus Hetzenauer and Audie Murphy, real-life soldiers, served as the inspiration for Zoller's remarkable military achievements in the movie. While the film is mostly fictional, Inglourious Basterds includes real-life figures such as Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill, adding to the heightened reality and changing the course of history.

Though Quentin Tarantino plays very loose with history in his World War II epic, there are Inglourious Basterds true story inspirations. Inglourious Basterds explores an alternate version of WWII, and while its main characters are fictional, many of them are based on real-life people, among those Daniel Brühl’s Fredrick Zoller. Throughout his career as a filmmaker, Tarantino has explored a variety of genres, all of them with his signature narrative style and generous doses of violence and blood,...

A federal judge dismissed Donald Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, litigation centered on references made by on-air figures to “the Big Lie,” or the former president’s unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

Trump had argued in his lawsuit, filed in federal court in Florida, that the references to the phrase were defamatory as they created a “false and incendiary association” between him and Adolf Hitler.

U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal wrote that CNN’s references to the term “the Big Lie” were matters of opinion, not fact.

The judge wrote, “Trump complains that CNN described his election challenges as ‘the Big Lie.’ Trump argues that ‘the Big Lie’ is a phrase attributed to Joseph Goebbels and that CNN’s use of the phrase wrongly links Trump with the Hitler regime in the public eye. This is a stacking of inferences that cannot support a finding of falsehood.

Ach der lieber! German Expressionism fans everywhere are in sorrow as Sam Esmail’s seven-years-in-the-making passion project, a series adaptation of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” has been shelved, Deadline confirms.

The series, from Universal Cable Productions (UCP), had been prepping for production in Australia and was expected to be the biggest TV series ever shot there. It was going to stream on Apple TV+, which had given it a full series order last year. “Push costs and uncertainty related to the ongoing strike led to this difficult decision,” a UCP told Deadline.

“Metropolis” is just the latest casualty of the ongoing WGA strike: the third seasons of “P-Valley” and “Yellowjackets” have been indefinitely delayed, as has the Disney+ show “Daredevil: Born Again” and Season 2 of “Severance.”

Esmail has had a flurry of new shows in recent years: Just since 2020 there’s been USA’s “Briarpatch,” Starz’s “Gaslit,” and Peacock’s “Angelyne” and “The Resort.

German cinema is in Cannes with new works by Wim Wenders and films that explore Nazi propaganda, gender identity, economic crisis, romance, betrayal and fast cars.

In addition to domestic films, a dozen German co-productions are screening in this year’s Cannes Film Festival lineup, including major works from the likes of Wes Anderson, Aki Kaurismäki and Jessica Hausner.

Wenders is in Cannes with “Perfect Days,” which is vying for the Palme d’Or, and the documentary “Anselm” in Special Screenings.

“Perfect Days” tells the story of a Tokyo janitor (Kôji Yakusho) who seems very content with his simple life, structured routines and passion for music, books and photography. A series of unexpected encounters gradually reveal more of his past. The Japanese-German co-production is sold by the Match Factory.

“Anselm” explores the work of artist Anselm Kiefer, shedding light on his life, inspirations and creative process. Shot in 3D,...

Though this blog platform is usually reserved for writing about movies, Howard Rodman’s novel is totally filmic and he himself has served as President of the Writers Guild of American, so that is close enough. Moreover after spending a total of two years in Berlin in the past three years and going into my next six months here, this ode to Berlin is particularly pleasing to me. This novel is a fictional account of Fritz Lang’s last year in Berlin, in 1933. Not a very good year. He is estranged from his wife — long time collaborator on his best films, M, Metropolis, Doctor Mabuse… Though they still share living quarters, she is having an affair with an American. He is hurt within and is also suffering from a toothache adding to the interior pain in the life of this great German director, son of a Jewish mother who converted the Catholicism and raised him strictly as a Catholic. Taking place in Weimar Berlin, we see the fashion, the glitz, the clubs, the cars, the interior decoration, and as alluded to before, the interior life of Fritz as he watches his friends and colleagues leaving Germany for U.S. and France, and in the case of Bertolt Brecht, his wife Helen Weigel and their son, for Hungary. The kicker is midway in when Fritz Lcang invites his wife Thea to the UFA screening room where Harold Nebenthal and Edward Ulmer, just back from, and about to return to Hollywood, are together and discover that, because of new Jewish laws, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse’s theatrical release at the UFA Palast has been replaced by Wounded Germany This blog is quite expressionistic, beginning with my quoting off the flyleaf of the book cover here as Howard speaks best for himself. Berlin, the last day of February, 1933. The Reichstag lies in smoldering ruins. A new world is about to spring from its ashes. For German filmmakers, there is a choice. To stay, work with the new order, a government which truly believes in the power of film; or to leave, without looking back. Destiny Express is the story of Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou. Together, they made some of the greatest films of all time. M, Metropolis, Doctor Mabuse. Married more than a decade, Lang and von Harbou are the most intimate of friends, the closest of enemies. Now, as day after day is torn from the calendar, they watch, as if paralyzed, as one by one. Bert Brecht, Max Ophuls, Billy Wilder take the next train out. Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou in their Berlin apartment, in 1923 or 1924 (which is, when the script for Metropolis was prepared). The photograph is from a series about this famous couple. Public Domain. At once exhaustively researched and wildly imagined, Destiny Express follows Lang, von Harbou, a host of real and fictional others — American cafe Surrealist Sam Harrison, novelist-turned-minister-of-culture Joseph Goebbels, Mercedes-racing champ Otto Merz, film star Rudolf Klein-Rogge, a pair of not-so-secret police — as their paths converge, intertwine, separate across the grid of Berlin, from the artificial daylight of the UFA soundstage to the artificial night of Berlin’s most exclusive clubs. Both protagonists have separate personal agendas they are following and they try not to get into each other’s way. As we watch the action, the inner life we witness of Fritz Lang as he weighs his options, thinks about his wife — his love and yet his nemesis — thinks about leaving, wishes they could be together, plays the tough guy; and in the end goes his way as she goes hers; these are the keynotes of the novel. Howard Rodman writes with a flair for visuals and for being able to show us the interior of the minds of creatives as if they were the outward reality. He is also able to reveal inward thoughts which run on separate tracks at the same time. This talent is what gives the novel a special edge. Add the expressionistic elongation of shadows, the sounds of heels clicking on the pavements, as in: On Konigstrasse her heels struck the cobbles with a high, flinty click which came back to her in syncopation from the building frontage. the silent river running through Berlin, cars, clubs, cafes, UFA Studios, Prussian apartments, paintings by Otto Dix…a dynamic Berlin, known in a nostalgic way, comes to life Cars: At once the blacktop rejoined Konigstrasse, and Lang slid the Lancea adeptly into the stream of traffic… Howard reminded me he had not been in Berlin when he wrote this making it all the more extraordinary… Shadows: Midway between two lamps Thea cast shadows of equal length before and behind. The shadow in front of her elongated, became more vague, as she approached the next lamp. The echo seemed to come back fractionally later than she’d been anticipating, and she stopped, to see if there were another set of footsteps dogging her own, but there were not. Thoughts running parallel to each other: And finally, as Lang leaves Berlin on the train, “There were fewer tracks. The lines were branching out, each with its specific destination…Then there was just one set of tracks, the one the train was reeling out behnd it. The glow of the train’s rear lights, a dense crimson, did not penetrate to where the rails converged. by raising his eyes a bit, Lang could feel them coming together, as he left all behind. Howard A. Rodman Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, novelist, and educator. He was President of Writers Guild of America West 2015–2017; is professor and former chair of the writing division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts; an artistic director of the Sundance Institute Screenwriting Labs; a member of the executive committee of the Writers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; and a fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. His films include Savage Grace, starring Julianne Moore, — official selection Cannes Film Festival in 2007 — and August with Josh Hartnett, Rip Torn, and David Bowie. Son of Howard Rodman and Dorothy Rodman. Stepson of Norma Connolly. Brother of Adam Rodman. Howard A. Rodman has been married to Mary Beth Heffernan since June 25, 2017. He was previously married to Anne Friedberg (24 June 1990–9 October 2009) ( her death) with whom he had one child. · President, Writers Guild of America West, 2015–2017. · Named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by the Republic of France, 2013. · Inducted into FinalDraft’s Screenwriters Hall of Fame, 2018. Writer (6 credits) 2008 August (written by) 2007 Savage Grace (screenplay) 2000 Takedown (screenplay) 2000 Joe Gould’s Secret (screenplay) 1997 The Hunger (TV Series) (screenplay — 1 episode — which he also directed!), - The Swords (1997) … (screenplay) 1993–1995 Fallen Angels (TV Series) (teleplay — 3 episodes) - The Professional Man (1995) … (teleplay) - The Frightening Frammis (1993) … (teleplay) - The Quiet Room (1993) … (teleplay) As a writer, Howard has had plenty to live up to as his father’s bio, written by Howard himself attests: Howard Rodman, Sr. was an American writer and story editor of such critically acclaimed series such as Naked City (1958) and Route 66 (1960). A Brooklyn native, the son of immigrant parents, Rodman began his career in the 1950s writing for such noted anthology series as Studio One, Alcoa Theater, and Goodyear Theater. He contributed to Have Gun — Will Travel (1957) and was an associate producer on Peyton Place (1964). In the subsequent decades he won a trio of Writer’s Guild awards for his scripts for Naked City: Today the Man Who Kills Ants Is Coming (1962), Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre: The Game with Glass Pieces (1964), and for the NBC/Universal Television drama, The Neon Ceiling (1971). As a feature writer, he scripted the Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward racing film, Winning (1969), and co-wrote three iconic feature films for director Don Siegel: Madigan (1968), Coogan’s Bluff (1968), and Charley Varrick (1973). Rodman also wrote the teleplay adaptation of Martin Caidin’s novel, ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’, essentially creating the television version of the character as well as supplying the format for the subsequent series. Dissatisfied with the final product he removed his name and substituted his pseudonym Henri Simoun, a frequent practice. Rodman was once quoted as saying, “The script isn’t finished until the name comes off”. Rodman also created the David Janssen private eye series Harry O (1973). In 1976, he was presented with the Writers Guild’s Laurel Award for lifetime achievement in television. His final project was the made-for-tv movie Scandal Sheet (1985), starring Burt Lancaster. He died of complications following heart surgery in Los Angeles at age 65. He was survived by his second wife, actress Norma Connolly, and his children: Howard A. Rodman (a writer), Adam Rodman (a writer), Phillip Rodman, and Tiahna Skye. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Howard A. Rodman #Berlin #Movies #Book Review #Nazis #Cinema...

The power of an important story told with passion and unflinching clarity always transcends the bonds of time. This explains the durability of Shakespeare’s plays when they land in the right hands, and it explains Edward Berger’s adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s fierce anti-war novel, “All Quite on the Western Front,” which is nominated for the best picture Oscar.

Nearly a century ago, director Lewis Milestone triumphed in one of the first Oscar competitions with his Universal Pictures version of the 1928 tome, filmed, remarkably, completely in and around its Hollywood Studio home.

Today, “Front” is registering with voters who are seeing the horrors of war in Europe live and in color as it sadly unfolds again with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

When Milestone filmed his “Front,” WWI was a decade behind the voters, who had just roared through the 1920s and hadn’t yet confronted the...

A scene cut from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds would have solved a mystery about Shosanna’s (Mélanie Laurent) story. Tarantino has explored various genres in his movies, including alternate versions of historical events, as he did in Inglourious Basterds. Set during World War II, Inglourious Basterds tells two stories with a common goal: kill as many Nazis as possible, including Hitler, with one story led by Shosanna Dreyfus and the other by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), leader of the Basterds, a commando unit that targeted Nazi soldiers.

Shoshanna’s story is at the core of Inglourious Basterds, as her mission was a personal one. Shosanna witnessed the murder of her family by SS officer Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), and she was the only one who could escape. Some time later, Shosanna was living in Paris under the name Emmanuelle Mimieux and was the owner of a cinema, but unfortunately,...

Enrich Maria Remarque's anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front, as well as its original 1930 film adaptation, was banned following its publication in late 1928. Remarque, a veteran of World War I, based All Quiet on the Western Front upon his own experiences as a soldier in the German Infantry. All Quiet on the Western Front emphasized the horrors that soldiers witnessed during World War I, as well as their struggles to return to regular civilian life. The novel sold over 2.5 million copies during its first year and a half of release.

A film adaptation followed a couple of years later, directed by Lewis Milestone, and went on to win the Best Picture Oscar at the 3rd Academy Awards in 1930. The All Quiet on the Western Front movie won much acclaim, similar to the novel it was based on. Sadly, this praise was not universal, as both the film and...

On November 20, 1945, in Nuremberg, Germany, once prime real estate for torchlit Nazi pageantry, currently reduced to ruins by Allied bombing, the International Military Tribunal, an unprecedented experiment in transnational jurisprudence, convened in the city’s Palace of Justice, one of the few buildings left standing. The four victorious powers — the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union — had hauled the loser, Nazi Germany, before four judges and a global jury to be held accountable for violating a series of recently devised additions to the criminal code — crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, criminal conspiracy, and war crimes.

Twenty-one Nazi leaders were in the dock, defendants whose names most Americans had become familiar with in the years since 1933. The accused included Reich Marshall Herman Göring, Hitler’s brutal second in command; Joachim von Ribbentrop, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who in August 1939 negotiated the pact with the Soviet Union that ignited the conflagration; Rudolf Hess,...

Brazil’s newly elected President, Inácio Lula da Silva, has said his government will re-establish the country’s Ministry of Culture after it was disbanded by his right-wing predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, in 2019.

In a series of widescale pledges published on his first day in office, Lula said his government will reopen the ministry “with the ambition to resume more intensely the policies of incentive and access to cultural goods” that he said was “interrupted by obscurantism in recent years.”

“A democratic cultural policy cannot fear criticism or elect favorites,” he said.

Lula, who is serving his third term in office, added: “May all the flowers sprout and all the fruits of our creativity be harvested, may everyone enjoy it without censorship or discrimination.”

Estamos refundando o Ministério da Cultura, com a ambição de retomar mais intensamente as políticas de incentivo e de acesso aos bens culturais, interrompidas pelo obscurantismo nos últimos anos.

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The new All Quiet on the Western Front, Germany’s Oscar submission for best international feature film, is an adaptation of the 1929 World War I novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque. That best-seller, based on Remarque’s experiences in the German Army, moved 3 million copies in 22 languages in its first two years in print and remains one of the great works about the trauma of war.

It and its 1930 sequel, The Road Back, were banned and burned in Nazi Germany. In the U.S., All Quiet on the Western Front was adapted for the screen in 1930, produced by Carl Laemmle Jr. — son of Universal Studios founder Carl Laemmle — and directed by Lewis Milestone, who the following year would helm the landmark media satire The Front Page. Made in the days of pre-Code Hollywood, before censorship guidelines were enforced, All Quiet...

Inglorious Basterds followed Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) as she planned to avenge her family and kill a bunch of Nazis attending her movie theater, among them Adolf Hitler himself. Even though she didn’t speak English, she did at the end of Inglourious Basterds as her revenge took place, and a theory gives a great in-universe explanation for this. Back in 2009, Quentin Tarantino decided to explore an alternate version of the events of World War II in his movie Inglourious Basterds, which tells two stories with a common goal: killing as many Nazis as possible, including Hitler.

One story follows a group of soldiers known as the “Basterds”, led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), and the other is the story of Shosanna Dreyfus/Emmanuelle Mimieux, a Jewish cinema owner whose family was killed by SS officer Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Shosanna escaped from Landa and relocated to Paris, where she...

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Two years after shocking revelations about the secret Nazi past of Berlin International Film Festival founder Alfred Bauer, the Berlinale will publish the findings of an independent study on Bauer the festival commissioned with the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ).

The Berlinale will also hold a public panel discussion on the study and its revelations Nov. 2 in Berlin.

Bauer helped found the Berlin festival, one of the world’s top-tier film events, and was director of the Berlinale from 1951 to 1976. But in 2020, just ahead of the Berlinale’s 70th anniversary, German newspaper Die Zeit published revelations about Bauer that indicated he had lied about his deep involvement in Nazi film propaganda.

As part of the Reichsfilmintendanz, the division set up by Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to promote the Nazis’ racist and anti-Semitic agenda, Bauer approved such films as Veit Harlan...

While Kanye West has long had a tempestuous relationship with social media, recent days have seen him unleash a barrage of misleading and particularly offensive statements, some of them deleted by Twitter and Instagram. His most disturbing ideas, however, are finding an eager audience on TikTok.

At the root at the rapper’s latest controversy is his decision to ally with right-wing influencer Candace Owens in calling the Black Lives Matter movement a scam. The pair wore “White Lives Matter” shirts at Ye’s latest fashion show in Paris, provoking criticism from music mogul Diddy,...

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Armageddon Time is James Gray’s eighth feature and by far his most personal — right down to the sets, built to exacting specifications based on family photos he provided to the production design team. Born and raised in Queens to a family of Holocaust survivors (his grandfather changed the family surname from Greiszerstein when he arrived in the U.S.), Gray attended USC, where he channeled an early passion for painting into making films — five of which have been up for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. The writer-director, 53, recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss the bittersweet memories unlocked in Armageddon Time.

Your last film, Ad Astra, was an austere, meditative film. This one is quite different.

Ad Astra was a difficult movie on a logistical level and for other reasons and seemed to go on forever. I wanted to...

This article contains major spoilers for "Don't Worry Darling."

The release of Olivia Wilde's "Don't Worry Darling" has been overshadowed by rumors of on-set affairs and rivalries, like something out of the gossip rags during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Florence Pugh carries the film as Alice, a 1950s housewife living with her husband played by a dead-eyed Harry Styles in the utopian desert community Victory. After the death and disappearance of her friend Margaret, she begins to worry that there is something sinister beneath her perfect and glamorous life.

The script unfolds in a puzzling twist that dulls the impact of its critique on gender roles. Wilde has a greater command over her mesmerizing visuals. Working with cinematographer Matthew Libatique (who photographed the visually similar "Black Swan"), "Don't Worry Darling" juxtaposes a slick suburban landscape with Alice's psychedelic hallucinations in images that seem inspired by many classic films.

Schindler's Ark, the factory where German Nazi Party member, industrialist, and profiteer Oskar Schindler sheltered 1,200 Jews from extermination, is quietly falling into ruin. Situated around 30 miles north of Brno in the Czech Republic, the historic buildings nestle beside a bend in the Svitava river, arranged around a small square less than 50 meters across. Schindler's office, where he spent most nights so he could keep an eye on the guards, sits next to the SS barracks, which, in turn, neighbors the Jewish quarters.

I spent a day there helping a filmmaker friend capture some footage of an event celebrating the tentative return of textile production to the site, for the first time since it was seized by the Nazis at the beginning of World War II. The owners, the Jewish Loew-Beer family, fled to England for safety. Now over 80 years later, one of their descendants, Daniel Loew-Beer, plans to restore the...

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“Out Jews!” howled Josef Goebbels. “A dirty film made in America!” The Nazi propagandist was on his feet in the front row of the balcony at Berlin’s ornate Mozartsaal, frothing at the motion picture screen. Behind Goebbels, dozens of brown shirted thugs joined in the jeering — and released white mice and set off stink bombs. Women screamed and stood on their seats. Moviegoers bolted for the exits; several patrons, taken for Jews, were beaten up. The house lights went up, the theater was cleared, and the show was shut down. [*]

The date was December 5, 1930, and the American-made film was All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Universal Pictures’ epic version of German novelist Erich Maria Remarque’s antiwar best seller. Eight years shy of a century later, the Germans have gotten around to making their own version — a Netflix production, directed by Edward Berger,...

Bertram “Bert” Fields, the larger-than-life entertainment lawyer whose roster of star clients and studios spoke to a penchant for doling out legal threats with a rhetorical flourish, along with a capacity for winning lucrative settlements, has died at his Malibu home, his rep confirmed to Variety. He was 93.

Fields thrived on the notion that he never lost a trial, and even if the Perry Mason-like reputation wasn’t exactly true, he was a relentless litigator who defined some of the industry’s most heralded cases of the 1980s and ’90s, with clients that included Warren Beatty, Tom Cruise, the Beatles, Edward G. Robinson, Michael Jackson, Rupert Murdoch and, at one time or another, just about all of the major studios.

Cruise said in a statement, “Bert Fields was a gentleman; an extraordinary human being. He had a powerful intellect, a keen wit, and charm that made one enjoy every minute of his company.

This meticulous docu-drama is still the best show about the Titanic, the awesome disaster that has never lost its grip on the imagination. Roy Ward Baker leads an enormous cast of Brit character actors through 2.5 hours of true-life terror in the icy Atlantic — Kenneth More, Honor Blackman, David McCallum, Laurence Naismith, Anthony Bushell. No stupid subplots and no insulting anachronisms, just an awful sinking death trap and 1600 passengers facing the freezing water. [Imprint] brings some new extras to the mix, too.

A Night to Remember

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] #135

1958 / B&w / 1:66 enhanced widescreen / 123 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from / 39.95

Starring: Kenneth More, Honor Blackman, David McCallum, Laurence Naismith, Anthony Bushell, Alec McCowen, John Cairney, Michael Goodliffe, Ronald Allen, John Merivale, Jill Dixon, Kenneth Griffith, Frank Lawton, Tucker McGuire, Ralph Michael, George Rose, Joseph Tomelty, Jack Watling, Michael Bryant, Bee Duffel, Thomas Heathcote, Andrew Keir, Jeremy Bulloch, Desmond Llewelyn, Derren Nesbitt, Beth Rogan,...

Jeremy Strong talks parallels with ‘Succession’.

Artists must “pose questions, illustrate and shine a light” instead of providing answers, according to Armageddon Time director James Gray today in Cannes.

Speaking at the press conference for his Competition title, Gray said: “I actually have no idea how to solve issues of inequality, of class. You have to just put it out in front of the audience and hope that they can make connections for themselves. Joseph Goebbels thought he had an answer; I don’t feel that’s what our job is as creative people.”

Armageddon Time is a personal film...

Warning: contains spoilers for Peaky Blinders season 6 episode 2 ‘Black Shirt’

At the end of every Peaky Blinders episode comes the expected fiction disclaimer declaring that its names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. The usual next line about “any resemblance to persons living or dead” being purely coincidental isn’t included, for the obvious reason that several of the show’s characters don’t just bear a resemblance to persons living or dead, they’re unequivocally them. Charlie Chaplin, Oswald Mosley, Winston Churchill… The latest is Lady Diana Mitford, played by Amber Anderson.

Peaky Blinders season six is currently taking place in early 1934, when the real Diana was 24 years old. She was one of seven Mitford siblings including six sisters whose lives were endlessly reported by the contemporary press due to romantic scandals, a range of...

Watching Written on the Wind was my first introduction to the famous auteur of the melodramatic, Douglas Sirk. The 2K Blu-ray restoration is out now via the Criterion Collection. Sirk was a German filmmaker who fled the country when he was approached by the notorious Joseph Goebbels (Nazi war criminal and the German Minister of Propaganda) to make the films that Leni Riefenstahl ended up working on. There’s more to that story that’s both sad and tawdry; check it out if you have interest in this strange intersection with world history and cinema. Sirk became known for exploring the kind of daily ugly realities that bubbled beneath a bright, polished veneer, a gauntlet later picked up by fellow...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Patriot Purge, Tucker Carlson’s new three-part series, is propaganda built around Donald Trump’s Big Lie of a stolen 2020 election and buttressed by a bizarro world, alt-right and alt-reality retelling of the January 6th insurrection. But Carlson’s message being profoundly dishonest doesn’t stop it from being profoundly dangerous: both because it contains kernels of tough truths the country has been scared to face, and because it follows a classic template of propaganda that has brought down democracies before.

The conceit of Patriot Purge is that the real...

Two friends try to prevent a war in Munich: The Edge Of War, a thought-provoking Netflix period drama premiering at the BFI London Film Festival.

We first meet Hugh Legat (George MacKay) and Paul Hartman (Jannis Niewöhner) in 1932 when they are carefree students at Oxford University, swilling champagne and rolling around in the grass at a drunken party. Cut to London, six years later, and the mood is grim: Adolf Hitler is preparing to invade Czechoslovakia and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (Jeremy Irons) is trying to find a peaceful solution. Hugh is now a civil servant, and has the ear of the Pm.

Meanwhile, Paul is a diplomat in his home of Germany, and comes into possession of important documents that could help the British government. As the two prepare for a clandestine meeting in Munich during the emergency conference, flashbacks fill us in on more of their past, and the tension mounts.

American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally tells the true story of Nazi propagandist Mildred Gillars. Born in Maine, Gillars moved to Germany in the mid-1930s to pursue her dreams as a singer and theater performer. She became the American voice of the Third Reich's Rrg (German State Radio). She expounded Nazi superiority and anti-semitic doctrine to millions of listeners in Europe and the United States. Much like her infamous 20th century cohorts Tokyo Rose and Hanoi Hannah, Axis Sally's dulcet tones were quite effective and viewed as high treason.

Director Michael Polish adapts the novel "Axis Sally Confidential" by William E. Owen, who started his legal career as an assistant defense counsel at her trial. The film opens with stark archival footage of World War II. The aspect ratio transitions to letterbox with Mildred Gillars (Meadow Williams) being arrested by American soldiers for treason shortly after the fall of Germany.