November DVD Spotlight: German Cinema

All through the month of November, we're spotlighting the work of German filmmakers from our DVD collection.  The expressionistic work of German directors like Fritz Lang and F. W. Murnau represented the artistic peak of the silent film era, and after decades of relative stagnancy brought on by the Third Reich and the aftermath of World War II, German filmmaking saw a major resurgence with the New German Cinema movement beginning in the late 1960s, when influential directors like Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder began to leave their mark on world cinema.  We've got numerous films from both eras of German filmmaking, as well as more contemporary films from the younger generation of German directors.

Featured titles include:

Das Boot (1981)

This tense, claustrophobic epic follows the crew of a German submarine during World War II.

Downfall (2004)

Bruno Ganz gives a magnetic performance as an increasingly unhinged Adolf Hitler in this chronicle of his last days in the bunker, told from the point of view of his secretary Gertraud Junge.  This film is the source of the clip used to make all those hilarious parody videos of Hitler ranting about everything from falling for an email scam to learning that President Obama has been re-elected.

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Werner Herzog's masterful portrait of obsession follows a wealthy European who will stop at nothing to build his own personal opera house in the remote Peruvian jungle.

The Lives of Others (2006)

An Oscar-winning historical thriller about an East German police surveillance expert who is tasked with spying on a playwright and his girlfriend, only to find himself drawn into their lives and sympathetic to their plight.

Metropolis (1927)

Fritz Lang's visionary dystopian masterpiece depicts a future in which the rich live a utopian life of luxury, while the poor working class toils underground to keep the city's machinery running.

Nosferatu (1922)

This silent, expressionistic adaptation of the Dracula story features some of the most haunting imagery in all of cinema.

Pandora's Box (1929)

Jazz Age icon Louise Brooks stars in this silent classic, about an amoral young woman who inspires lust and violence in those around her.

Phoenix (2014)

In this engrossing, noir-tinged drama, a disfigured Auschwitz survivor undergoes facial reconstruction surgery, then returns to Berlin to find her gentile husband, who may or may not have betrayed her to the Nazis.

Stop by the library and check one out today!