Wolfgang Petersen is a German film director known for films such as Das Boot (1981) and Troy (2004).
I want to remember him for The NeverEnding Story (1984), a fantasy film based on the German novel of the same name by Michael Ende.
The book describes the fantasy world of Fantasia slowly being devoured by a malevolent force called “The Nothing“.
Jutta Lampe was a German actress best-known for her film Marianne and Juliane (1981).
In that film she plays the ‘good’ sister, the regular journalist. The ‘bad’ sister has joined the RAF.
Many people forget, but Europe during the 1970s and 1980s, witnessed a series of bloody terrorist attacks rivalling the islamist terrorism of today.
Irm Hermann was a German actress best known for her films with Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
In Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), she is the girlfriend of racist Eugen (Fassbinder).
Things come to a crisis when her mother (Brigitte Mira) falls in love with a Moroccan Gastarbeiter (migrant worker).
Researching this death, I came across an interview with a very lovable Brigitte Mira and her relationship to director Fassbinder.
Bruno Ganz was was an internationally renowned Swiss actor.
He collaborated with filmmakers Werner Herzog (Nosferatu the Vampyre, 1979), Éric Rohmer (The Marquise of O, 1976), Francis Ford Coppola (Youth Without Youth, 2007), Wim Wenders (The American Friend, 1977 and Wings of Desire, 1987) and Jonathan Demme (The Manchurian Candidate, 2004).
Ganz was internationally lauded for portraying Adolf Hitler in the film Downfall (2004).
For the occasion, I watched Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)of which the German version is online. Ganz plays Jonathan Harker, Count Dracula is played by a heavily breathing, almost panting Klaus Kinski.
Pay special attention to the beauty of Isabelle Adjani; the opening sequence of the Mummies of Guanajuato; the film score by Krautrock outfit Popol Vuh and Richard Wagner’s prelude to Das Rheingold, Charles Gounod’s “Sanctus” from Messe solennelle à Sainte Cécile and traditional Georgian folk song Tsintskaro; and the frantic mad scenes by Roland Topor.
The film is wonderful. It’s an hommage to the 1922 version by F. W. Murnau.
Here is the original film.