The best Paul Graetz’s drama movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Paul Graetz’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Paul Graetz.
The Wildcat
6.9/10
A charismatic lieutenant newly assigned to a remote fort is captured by a group of mountain bandits, thus setting in motion a madcap farce that is Lubitsch at his most unrestrained. A wonderfully anarchic and playfully subversive satire of military life from one of the great comedy filmmakers.
Jew Süss
6.4/10
A historical satire critical of the rising tide of Anti-Semitism in Germany. Based on the novel by Lionel Feuchtwanger, Jew Süss is the story of life in the 18th century Jewish ghetto of Württemberg. Süss (Veidt) works himself out of the ghetto and into a position of power himself with the help of an evil Duke.
18 Minutes
6/10
A lion-tamer's partly innate and partly acquired attitude to other living beings - that they shall submit without question to his will - is applied with unseeing kindness to an orphan girl whom the lion tamer adopts.
Sumurun
6/10
The favorite slave girl of a tyrannical sheik falls in love with a cloth merchant. Meanwhile, a hunchback clown suffers unrequited love for a traveling dancer who wants to join the harem.
Red Wagon
6.5/10
Adapted from Lady Eleanor Smith’s novel, this 1934 feature tells the story of Joe Prince, an orphan child of circus people who, after many struggles, achieves his life-long ambition of owning a circus.
The Scotland Yard Mystery
5.1/10
A doctor uses his unique medical knowledge to mastermind a lucrative life-insurance scam; in a rare film role, legendary thespian Gerald du Maurier stars as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner who sets out to uncover the secret of five empty coffins and catch the villainous swine responsible for such depravities.
The Fight for the Matterhorn
7/10
Struggle for the Matterhorn (German: Der Kampf ums Matterhorn) is a 1928 German-Swiss silent drama film co-directed by Mario Bonnard and Nunzio Malasomma and starring Luis Trenker, Marcella Albani, and Alexandra Schmitt. The film is part of the popular cycle of mountain films of the 1920s and 1930s. Art direction was by Heinrich Richter. Based on a novel by Carl Haensel, the film depicts the battle between British and Italian climbers to be the first to climb the Matterhorn. Trenker later remade the film as The Challenge in 1938.
Mountains on Fire
6.8/10
Two of Germany's best and busiest directors collaborated on Berge in Flammen (Mountain in Flames). The storyline should be of interest to pro-ecologists, inasmuch as the directors take to task the warmongers of the world for despoiling the natural beauties of the European mountain ranges with their shell-fire. The final outrage occurs during a battle between the Austrians and the Italians in the Dolomites, culminating with the destruction of an entire mountain (hence the film's title). The harrowing images on screen were complemented perfectly by the musical score of Giuseppe Beece. Also known as The Doomed Batallion, Berge in Flammen was filmed in three different languages -- German, English, French -- for a total cost of $150,000.
