Militiaman Bruggler (German: Standschütze Bruggler) is a 1936 German war film directed by Werner Klingler and starring Ludwig Kerscher, Franziska Kinz and Rolf Pinegger. It was based on a novel by Anton Graf Bossi-Fedrigotti, itself based on the diary of the titular Anton Bruggler.
This Ufa production was filmed on location in the Italian Dolomites and the Austrian Tyrol. It is set during the First World War and chronicles the Alpine war experiences of young Toni Bruggler (Ludwig Kerscher), a Tyrolean-German member of the Standschützen (militiamen), comprised of those who are too young or old to fight in the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg army. When Italy declares war on the Austrians, the Tyrol becomes a war zone. The Italians launch a surprise attack against the Austrians in an explosive, snowswept storm scene reinforced by Herbert Windt's rousing musical score and Sepp Allgeier's breathtaking Alpine cinematography and combat footage, (he also photographed "Berge in Flammen" and "Der Rebell"). As most of the picture unfolds in the Tyrolean Alps, it is both a Bergfilm (mountain film), a genre unique to German cinema, and a suspenseful war film that delivers visually stunning battles in the snow.
Waltz War (German: Walzerkrieg) is a 1933 German musical comedy film directed by Ludwig Berger and starring Renate Müller, Willy Fritsch and Paul Hörbiger. It is loosely based on the rivalry between waltz composers Joseph Lanner and Johann Strauss I, as well as the life of the Austrian ballet dancer Katti Lanner (Joseph's daughter) who eventually settled in Victorian Britain. It is also known by the alternative title of The Battle of the Walzes.
The film was made by the largest German studio UFA and shot at the company's Babelsberg Studios in Berlin with sets designed by Robert Herlth and Walter Röhrig. A separate French-language version, Court Waltzes, was also directed by Berger.
Released 4 October 1933
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Amphitryon is a 1935 German musical film written and directed by Reinhold Schünzel. It is based on plays by Molière, Plautus, and Heinrich von Kleist, which in turn are based on Greek mythology.
The film centers upon the tale of Alcmene who yearns for her husband Amphitryon, a Theban general away at war. The trouble begins when the god Jupiter is smitten by her mortal beauty and comes down to Earth in human form to seduce her.
Amphitryon was filmed in Ufa-Atelier, Neubabelsberg, from 2 February 1935 – May 1935. It was one of UFA's many multiple-language version films.
Released 18 July 1935
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Sidenotes on the UFA production company:
The original UFA was established as Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft on December 18, 1917, as a direct response to foreign competition in film and propaganda. UFA was founded by a consortium headed by Emil Georg von Stauß, a former Deutsche Bank board member.
In March 1927, Alfred Hugenberg, an influential German media entrepreneur and later Minister of the Economy, Agriculture and Nutrition in Hitler's cabinet, purchased UFA and transferred ownership of it to the NSDAP in 1933.
In 1942, as a result of the NSDAP policy of Gleichschaltung, or "enforced conformity", UFA and all of its competitors, including Tobis, Terra, Bavaria Film and Wien-Film, were bundled together with NSDAP-controlled foreign film production companies to form the super-corporation UFA-Film GmbH (Ufi), with headquarters in Berlin.
After the Red Army occupied the UFA complex in 1945 in Babelsberg, and after the privatization of Bavaria and UFA in 1956 in West Germany, the company was restructured to form Universum Film AG and taken over by a consortium of banks. In film production and distribution, it failed to revive and went into receivership.
The Red Terror (German: GPU) is a 1942 German film directed by Karl Ritter and starring Laura Solari.
Olga Feodorovna, a Russian refuge from the Bolshevik terror, has joined the Soviet secret police, the G.P.U. to find the man who killed her parents. Meanwhile a young Baltic couple are caught up in the schemes of the evil communists.
G.P.U. was the short, better known acronym of the Obedinennoye Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie (Joint State Political Directorate) of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic), since February 6, 1922, to 1934. Legally a police force, it became known by its brutal methods of investigation and interrogation outside law boundaries.
The film was released after the breakdown of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact which had been signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939. The Soviet invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the Pact, since it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence that had been agreed with the Axis. The German High Command began planning the invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940 and on 22 June 1941 Germany launched Operation Barbarossa. On 12 July 1941 the Anglo-Soviet Agreement was signed.
Released 14 August 1942
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https://archive.org/details/cttrh
S.O.S. Eisberg (aka S.O.S. Iceberg and Iceland) is a 1933 German-US pre-Code drama film directed by Arnold Fanck and starring Gustav Diessl, Leni Riefenstahl, Sepp Rist, Gibson Gowland, Rod La Rocque, and Ernst Udet. The film was written by Tom Reed based on a story by Arnold Fanck and Friedrich Wolf. S.O.S. Eisberg follows the account of the real-life Alfred Lothar Wegener polar expedition of 1929-30. Two members of the ill-fated Wegener expedition served as technical consultants to Universal.
Among the stars in S.O.S. Eisberg were Leni Riefenstahl, who had just made her directorial debut in The Blue Light (1932). Riefenstahl, in her last film as an actress, co-starred with Gustav Diessl and Ernst Udet in the German version S.O.S. Eisberg, and with Gibson Gowland and Rod La Rocque in the English version, S.O.S. Iceberg. Ernst Udet, a former German ace in the First World War, in a cameo performance, flew in both versions.
Released 30 August 1933
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Women Are No Angels (German: Frauen sind keine Engel) is a 1943 German comedy film directed by Willi Forst and starring Marte Harell, Axel von Ambesser and Margot Hielscher. The film was made by Wien-Film in German-occupied Austria.
Director Richard Anden and his screenwriter take a cruise on a luxury liner, avoiding all feminine attempts to get a movie contract, including the ship singer. When he unexpectedly discovers that a beautiful passenger is involved in a murder mystery and chased by the police, he'll try to save her from jail. Yet everyone has a secret in this Austrian musical comedy
Released 23 March 1943
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https://archive.org/details/cttrh
Frisians in Peril (German: Friesennot) is a 1935 German drama film directed by Peter Hagen and starring Friedrich Kayßler, Jessie Vihrog and Valéry Inkijinoff. It concerns a village of ethnic Frisians in Russia.
The film's sets were designed by the art directors Robert A. Dietrich and Bernhard Schwidewski. Location shooting took place around Bispingen. It premiered at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo.
The film has also been known as Dorf im roten Sturm (Germany; reissue title) and Frisions in Distress (USA).
Released 19 November 1935
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https://archive.org/details/cttrh
Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces (German: Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht) is the third documentary directed by Leni Riefenstahl, following Victory of Faith and Triumph of the Will. Her third film recounts the Seventh Party Rally of the NSDAP, which occurred in Nuremberg in 1935, and focuses on the German army.
The film depicts a mock battle staged by German troops during the ceremonies at Nuremberg on German Armed Forces Day 1935. The camera follows the soldiers from their early-morning preparations in their tent city as they march singing to the vast parade grounds where a miniature war involving infantry, cavalry, aircraft, flak guns and the first public appearance of Germany's new forbidden tank is presented before Hitler and thousands of spectators.
The film ends with a montage of NSDAP flags to the tune of the "Deutschlandlied" and a shot of German fighter biplanes flying overhead in a swastika formation.
When several generals in the Wehrmacht protested over the minimal army presence in Triumph of the Will, Hitler proposed his own "artistic" compromise where Triumph would open with a camera slowly tracking down a row of all the "overlooked" generals (and placate each general's ego). According to her own testimony, Riefenstahl boldly refused his suggestion and insisted on keeping artistic control over Triumph of the Will. She did agree to return to the 1935 rally and make a film exclusively about the Wehrmacht, which became Tag der Freiheit.
Tag der Freiheit was considered lost at the end of World War II, but an incomplete print of the film was discovered in the 1970s—the extant footage reveals Riefenstahl mainly reprising the approach she used in Triumph of the Will (1934), though certain more expressionistic sequences clearly presage the more audacious style she would adopt for Olympia (1938).
Released 30 December 1935
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https://archive.org/details/cttrh