Spring Awakening

Spring Awakening 1929

1

Moritz Stiefel faces expulsion due to poor marks. When he is caught with an essay titled “Shame and Lust”, he is indeed kicked out – instead of classmate Melchior Gabor, who actually penned it. Gabor was drawing on his experiences with neighbourhood girl Wendla. Then Wendla turns up pregnant. Stiefel descends into despair ... Exploitation between Eros and Thanatos in this “sexual tragedy of youth” based on Frank Wedekind’s play. Setting the film in the 1920s provided a chance to explore “modern” youth culture, complete with cigarettes, jazz music, the gramophone, and a goodly bit of alcohol. Richard Oswald, a master of films of manners and young sex beginning in the 1910s, fully explores the temptations of the youthful body, even early childhood flirtatiousness. At the same time, with his target audience in mind, the film laments the bigotry and double standards of the adult world.

1929

Liebelei

Liebelei 1927

3.50

Film by Jacob and Luise Fleck.

1927

Once I Loved a Girl in Vienna

Once I Loved a Girl in Vienna 1931

1

A musical about love that spans the period before and after the Great War in the Austro-Hungarian empire.

1931

Schoeller's Boarding House

Schoeller's Boarding House 1930

6.00

Adaptation of a popular comedy: When the country uncle he has been bilking comes to town to visit, a young student takes him to a boarding house full of exaggerated eccentric characters.

1930

Crucified Girl

Crucified Girl 1929

7.00

The young student Mary spends the beginning of her holiday with boat trips, visits to her wealthy groom, and gardening. In fast-paced, rhythmic cuts, Louise and Jakob Fleck draw their audience into a carefree, urban romantic comedy. With a single scene, however, it turns into a melodrama about sexual violence, shame and perpetrator-victim reversal.

1929

Love's Clover Leaf

Love's Clover Leaf 1930

6.00

A comedy about love and winter sports. A funny game of confusion from the beauty of a winter paradise and the romantic amorous adventures of four young people who were brought together by whim and chance and united by happiness.

1930