Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.
This loosely plotted coming-of-age tale follows the life of 15-year-old Laurent Chevalier as he stumbles his way over the burgeoning swell of adolescence in 1950s France. After having his first sexual experience with a prostitute and dodging the lips of a priest, Chevalier contracts a case of scarlet fever. When the fever leaves him with a heart murmur, Chevalier is placed in a sanatorium, along with his over-attentive and adulterous mother.
Sometime during the 19th century in Switzerland: After a delirious night of drinking, three herdsmen who are all alone in the alps with their kettle, create a female doll from cloth and a strangely formed wooden root. When their creation comes to life in form of an evil and beautiful female demon, they have to fear for their lives...
The life and music of Johann Sebastian Bach as presented by his wife, Anna.
At an Austrian boys' boarding school in the early 1900s, shy, intelligent Törless observes the sadistic behavior of his fellow students, doing nothing to help a victimized classmate—until the torture goes too far. Adapted from Robert Musil's acclaimed novel, Young Törless launched the New German Cinema movement and garnered the 1966 Cannes Film Festival International Critics' Prize for first-time director Volker Schlöndorff.
Hans Castorp, fresh from university and about to become a civil engineer, comes to the Sanatorium Berghof in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin Joachim, an army officer, who is recovering there from tuberculosis. Intending to remain at the Berghof for three weeks, Hans is gradually contaminated by the morbid atmosphere pervading the place. Wishing very much to be considered a patient like the others, he achieves his ends and stays in the sanatorium for ...seven years. During this time, he has enough time to take part in the furious philosophical debates pitting against each other Settembrini, a secular humanist, and Naphta, a totalitarian Jesuit. And to fall in love with the beautiful but enigmatic Clawdia Chauchat. When he is finally discharged in 1914 - along with all the other patients - it is only to plunge into the horrors of World War I.
Pepe Nietnagel and his fellow students of the Mommsen school come up with all kinds of ideas to get out of doing any actual school work. This includes simulating suicides, setting off the air-raid sirens and abusing the school director's new broadcasting system. They succeed in sending their teacher to a sanatorium and get a replacement that turns out to not be so bad after all.
A new teacher, Dr. Dr. Bach, is transferred from his quiet village elementary school to the Mommsen Gymnasium, bringing along his nephew Jan. Bach's lackadaisical methods raise the suspicions of the other teachers.
This drama is taken from Thomas Mann's 1903 semi-autobiographical novel. Tonio (Jean Claude Brialy) is an aspiring writer and the son of a rigid aristocratic father and a music-loving mother. Wandering throughout Germany and Italy to "find himself," Tonio frequently remembers his childhood experiences in a series of flashbacks. The highlight of the film is the expert lensing by cinematographer Wolf Wirth. Erika Mann, the daughter of the late poet and author, collaborated with Ennio Flaiano on the screenplay.
An extravagant comedy with Heinz Rühmann.
A boy who was once a perpetual outcast finds friends in a new boarding school, united with his new peers gets involved in a heated rivalry with a group of students from a neighboring school.
A German comedy from 1972 directed by Franz Josef Gottlieb. Mommsen Gymnasium director Taft reminisces about his own time as a student.
Five film directors were given the task of making short films based on titles of drawings by Paul Klee.
The young Marion is arrested by the police for pimping, prostitution and indecent exposure. Reporter Axel Rottmann sense a lucrative story for his newspaper. He makes a deal with Marion, to tell her story.
A musician beds down a prostitute he knows is diseased in order to gain inspiration, an act he later believes to have been a tacit pact with Satan
Principal Gottlieb Taft's twin brother Gotthold Taft partakes in the most recent prank by faking his death and promising a large inheritance to the Mommsen-Gymnasium and the principal. Of course, the inheritance is tied to many embarrassing conditions.
Mommsen Gymnasium director Taft secretly places his nephew as a spy with the difficult class of Pepe Nietnagel. During the celebration for the 100th anniversary, a simulated fire forces the school to shut down for a week. The director's attempt to get a tough teacher assigned by the department of education results in the exact opposite because of Nietnagel's intervention.
France 1944: American pilot Philip Sturgess is shot down but found by a resistance group. In the neighborhood Sturgess meets another American and shortly thereafter the British Major Barton, called “Reiher”. He claims to have fled a German prison camp. Shortly before leaving for Spain to escape the Nazis, Sturgess discovers that Barton has written a letter to Germany. This confirms the suspicion that he could be a German spy…
