Gerhart Hauptmann

TV adaptation of Michael Thalheimer's production at the Deutsches Theater Berlin.

Dorothea Angermann the daughter of a clergyman is accused of the murder of her husband, a brutal man that she was obliged to marry because she was pregnant and he was the father of the baby.

West Germany's entry in the 1957 Cannes Film Festival was this cinemadaptation of the Gerhardt Hauptman play Rose Bernd. The title character, played by Maria Schell, is a servant girl on a remote farm. Sexually assaulted by both her employer and a coworker, Rose later bears a child, who die soon afterward. After nearly two hours of unrelieved misery, Rose finally finds happiness in the arms of a longtime admirer (where has he been for the past 12 reels?) Rose Bernd (aka The Sins of Rose Bernd) received a smattering of American showings thanks to the drawing power of star Maria Schell.

After the fall and before the wall.

Mother Wolffen, a washerwoman, is a woman of principle: A poor man must do what he must to get through life, only he mustn't get caught doing it. All sorts of crooked deals contribute to the improvement of the daily menu and the increase of household funds. When everyone is searching for pensioner Krueger's missing beaverskin coat, Mother Wolffen and her family are calmly enjoying fresh roast venison.

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).

Die Weber (1927), a rousing German tale of the 1844 weavers’ revolution.

The perfect body as an object of cult worship. Based on the mass sports and body worship movement of the 1920s, the film propagates physical training and shows in stylized documentary scenes aspects of physical hygiene, gymnastics, sports and dancing as well as scenes in which supposed sportsmen of antiquity pose naked.

Lorenz Lubota is a city clerk with no direction in life. One day on his way to work he is run over by a woman driving a chariot and he is immediately infatuated with her.

A young woman is abused or abandoned by the men in her life.

Die Ratten was produced by actress and singer Grete Ly. Her company, Grete Ly-Film, made five films between 1919 and 1921. Die Ratten, which is based on the play of the same name by Gerhart Hauptmann, was the last one. Hauptmann, one of the most important promoters of literary naturalism, had received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912. The screen adaptation of his play is beautifully photographed in a realistic style by Karl Freund, one of best German cameraman of that time who also worked with directors such as Lang, Murnau, Dreyer, Dupont and Ruttmann. Moreover, the cast of Die Ratten also acts in a very naturalistic way, far from the affected expressionistic style. Die Ratten was made on a modest budget, but the collaboration of an excellent team produced a film that was ahead of its time.

An adaptation of the Gerhart Hauptmann play of the same name. A young farmer's daughter is used and abused by the men in her life.

Overwhelmed by personal and professional problems, biologist Friedrich von Kammacher decides to travel abroad in order to regain the joy of living. During his adventurous journey he will meet two very different women, one of whom will be the key to his fate.