Director:
Volker Schlöndorff
VOLKER SCHLÖNDORFF
BEST OF EDITION
10 DVD BOXES
1999
1212 mins
Language: German / English / French
Subtitles / Subtitles: German
FSK 16
"The Young Törless"
Thomas Törless goes to a boarding school for boys from wealthy circles. He quickly sees through the power structures, but consciously stays in the background. He forms a kind of secret society with two students. When the outsider Basini is convicted of theft, they don't report him to the boarding school management, but instead torture and abuse him. Törless is fascinated and disgusted by violence at the same time.
"Baal"
1969: Baal, poet and anarchist, has an ambivalent relationship with bourgeois society. Sometimes she tries to take him over, then she pushes him away again. The poet leads an unstable life: when he is not in his attic, he wanders around. His path leads through forests and on highways - and always back to the bottle. He sleeps with many people of both sexes and impregnates a young actress, but he cannot stay with her. She is a burden to him, his inner animal feels locked in a cage - an animal that drives him to murder a friend. But is it really him who is behaving antisocially? Or maybe society?
"The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum"
Cologne, February 1975. At a carnival party, young Katharina Blum meets the attractive Ludwig Götten and falls in love. She has no idea that Ludwig is wanted as a deserter and anarchist. The night she spends with him changes her life forever: her apartment is searched, she is arrested, interrogated and humiliated. The tabloid press, Allen the sensationalist journalist Tötges, launches a merciless smear campaign against the simple woman, publishes details from her private life and portrays her as a criminal. Humiliated and robbed of her honor, Katharina becomes a murderer.
"The catch shot"
In 1919, the Prussian officer Erich von Lhomond fought against the Bolsheviks in the Baltics. The pretty Sophie von Reval, in whose castle he has quartered with his soldiers, falls head over heels in love with the young man. But Erich rejects her. To provoke him, Sophie randomly gets involved with other soldiers. When Erich shows no reaction, she defects to the Russian resistance fighters, humiliated and disappointed. A crime that carries the death penalty. When Sophie is caught, she demands that Erich carry out the execution himself...
"The Tin Drum"
Gdansk 1927. The extremely precocious and wide-awake Oskar has just turned three years old. And yet it is already clear to him: he cannot and does not want to accept the petty-bourgeois life of adults. It just stops growing. From then on, the anarchic dwarf passionately protests on his tin drum against fanatical Nazis and their cowardly followers. He repeatedly raises his voice against the stuffy bourgeois of the Weimar Republic and their crude eroticism. So shrill until glass cracks. Only when a more humane time begins after the war does Oskar decide to take part in life again and continue to grow.
"The Fake"
War correspondent Georg Laschen travels through the ruins of Beirut every night with his photographer. There they soon experience firsthand all the horrors of the Lebanon conflict. Laschen is torn between a longing for death and a fascination for the simmering life in the oriental metropolis. One day he meets Ariane, an Arab employee at the German embassy. It changes his view of the country, but also of his life and his work
"A Love from Swann"
Paris 1885: The bon vivant Charles Swann gets involved in a casual liaison with the demimonde Odette von Crécy. When he finally falls in love with her, the relationship fails because of his possessiveness and his pathological jealousy.
"Death of a Salesman"
Willy Loman has been working quite unsuccessfully as a traveling salesman for almost four decades. When he is suddenly laid off, he continues to try to maintain his unshakable belief in the American dream and the illusionary world that comes with it with his family. His son Biff shows him the reality and triggers a momentous reaction from his father.
"A Revolt of Old Men"
In racist Louisiana, the brutal white farmer Boutan chases the frightened black man Charlie through the fields. Charlie flees to old Mathu's hut, who shoots Boutan and kills him. But when Sheriff Mapes arrives on the scene to arrest Mathu, eighteen old black men have gathered outside the cabin with guns fired. Every single one of them claims to have shot Boutan...
"Homo Faber"
On a plane trip, 50-year-old UNESCO engineer Walter Faber meets the brother of his college friend Joachim Henke. He had married Faber's childhood sweetheart Hannah, but before he could visit him, Joachim committed suicide. Faber's life begins to falter. On a ship to Europe he meets 20-year-old Sabeth. Fascinated, he accompanies the young woman and ends up sleeping with her. When Sabeth has an accident, Faber learns that her lover is his daughter...
Bonus:
interviews; audio commentary; Making Ofs; Documentation “Memories of Volker Schlöndorff”; "The Catch Shot - A Review"; biographies; Work photos
BRAND NEW
1969: Baal, poet and anarchist, has an ambivalent relationship with bourgeois society. Sometimes she tries to take him over, then she pushes him away again. The poet leads an unstable life: when he is not in his attic, he wanders around. His path leads through forests and on highways - and always back to the bottle. He sleeps with many people of both sexes and impregnates a young actress, but he cannot stay with her. She is a burden to him, his inner animal feels locked in a cage - an animal that drives him to murder a friend. But is it really him who is behaving antisocially? Or maybe society?
Gdansk 1927. The extremely precocious and wide-awake Oskar has just turned three years old. And yet it is already clear to him: he cannot and does not want to accept the petty-bourgeois life of ad