Danton. Germany 1931. Director Hans Behrendt. Danton -- Fritz Kortner Robespierre -- Gustaf Gruendgens Louise Gely -- Lucie Mannheim Marat -- Alexander Granach Saint-Just -- Werner Schott Louis XVI -- Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur Desmoulins -- Gustav von Wagenheim Based on the book by H. J. Rehfisch. Opens with Danton asking that Louis XVI be sent to the guillotine and fades out with Danton being led to it. ------------------------------------------------ Die Stadt ist voller Geheimnisse Germany 1955. Director Fritz Kortner. Professor Siebrecht -- Carl Ludwig Diehl Ernie Lauer -- Annemarie Dueringer Doctor Guenther -- Werner Fuetterer Herbert Klein -- Paul Hoerbiger Gerhard Scholz -- Adrian Hoven Susi Ecker -- Bruni Loebel Karina -- Lucie Mannheim Boehnke -- Walther Suessenguth Paula -- Margot Trooger Frida Binder -- Grete Weiser Screenplay by Fritz Kortner and Curt J. Braun, based on the play by Curt Braun. When a factory closes, it affects the lives of its former employees in various ways. A suicide by one leads the factory owner's daughter to persuade her father to re-open the plant. ------------------------------------------------ East meets West. Great Britain 1936. Director Herbert Mason. Sultan -- George Arliss Marguerite -- Lucie Mannheim Sir Henry Mallory -- Godfrey Tearle Dr. Shagu -- Romney Brent Nezim -- Ballard Berkeley Carter -- Ronald Ward Lady Fallory -- Norma Varden Dr. Fergusson -- John Laurie Osmin -- O. B. Clarence Takasato -- Campbell Cullan Goodson -- Eliot Makeham Stanton -- Peter Cawthorne Abdul -- Ralph Truman O'Flaherty -- Pat Barr Crowell -- Peter Croft Suleeka -- Stella Moya Screenplay by Edwin Greenwood. A British thriller about the sultan of a small country who plays England against Japan, both countries being desirous of this small country's key harbor. ------------------------------------------------ Green fire USA 1954. Director Andrew Marton. Rian Mitchell -- Stewart Granger Catherine Knowland -- Grace Kelly Vic Leonard -- Paul Douglas Donald Knowland -- John Ericson El Moro -- Murvyn Vye Manuel -- Jose Torvay Father Ripero -- Robert Tafur Jose -- Joe Dominguez Officer Perez -- Nacho Galindo Dolores -- Charlita Hernandez -- Natividad Vacio Antonio -- Rico Alaniz Roberto -- Paul Marion Juan -- Robert Dominguez Screenplay by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts. Music: Miklos Rozsa. An emerald miner's operation changes the course of a river and threatens to ruin the coffee plantation owned by the woman he loves. ------------------------------------------------ Nachts auf den Stra§en Germany 1952. Director Rudolph Jugert. Heinrich -- Hans Albers Leischen -- Hildegard Knef Anna -- Lucie Mannheim Brother -- Marius Goring Screenplay by Helmut Kaeutner and Fritz Rotter. An aging truck driver finds smuggled money and becomes involved with a hijacking crowd. ------------------------------------------------ The 39 steps. 1935. Director Alfred Hitchcock. Pamela -- Madeleine Carroll Richard Hannay -- Robert Donat Annabella Smith -- Lucie Mannheim Professor Jordan -- Godfrey Tearle Margaret -- Peggy Ashcroft John -- John Laurie Mrs. Jordan -- Helen Haye Sheriff -- Frank Cellier Memory -- Wylie Watson Maid -- Peggy Simpson Commercial Traveler -- Gus MacNaughton Commercial Traveler -- Jerry Verno Screenplay by Charles Bennett, Alma Reville, and Ian Hay, based on the novel of the same name by John Buchan. One of the best of Alfred Hitchcock's early films, this suspenseful blend of intrigue, wit, and romance stars Robert Donat as Richard Hannay, who unwittingly becomes involved in a dangerous spy plot. Mistakenly sought as a murderer, Hannay becomes handcuffed to a beautiful girl (Madeleine Carroll) as he attempts to expose the spy-group's leader, Professor Jordan. "The 39 steps" is vintage British Hitchcock at its best, and, similar to "The lady vanishes" (1938), it manages to blend comedy and suspense to just the right degree. Yet the reason for much of the appeal of "The 39 steps" lies not in its direction or in the fairly obvious studio-bound production, but in the script. Full credit for this must go to Charles Bennett, who took the original novel by John Buchan and completely rewrote it for the screen, adding not only a romantic interest but also a new story, leaving in essence nothing of Buchan's original but the basic idea. Charles Bennett's contribution to the success of Hitchcock's British films should never be underestimated; he was involved with the director's most famous films of that era: "Blackmail" (1929), "The man who knew too much" (1934), "The 39 steps", "The secret agent" (1936), "Sabotage" (1936), and "Young and innocent" (1937). "The 39 steps" features Robert Donat, fresh from his success in "The count of Monte Cristo" (1934), and Madeleine Carroll, who might be described as the first in a long line of classic and cool Hitchcock blondes, a line which was later to include Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren. The two have the distinction of being starred in a film which Alfred Hitchcock has described as one of his favorites and one of his first major successes in the United States. Richard Hannay, a Canadian living in London, is first seen at a London music hall, where an act named "Mr. Memory" is onstage. In the act, Mr. Memory identifies Hannay as a Canadian, and that is about all the audience ever learns of him. Outside the music hall, Hannay meets Annabella Smith, who has fired some shots in the auditorium; she explains to him that she was forced to do so in order to create a diversion and thus escape from two men who were trying to kill her. She tells Hannay, "I'd like to come home with you," to which he replies, prophetically as it transpires, "It's your funeral." At Hannay's appartment, Annabella tells him of a plot to take military secrets out of England and that her destination is Scotland. Hannay is somewhat unbelieving, again prophetically telling her that the episode sounds like a spy story; but Hannay is rapidly made aware of the reality of the situation when he is literally awakened in the middle of the night by Annabella's staggering into his room and falling dead across his bed, a knife in her back. Hannay finds himself trapped in his apartment, and is only able to escape by changing places with the milkman. He heads for Annabella's destination, Scotland, with no further clues and pursued not only by her killers, but also by the police, who suspect him of being Annabella's murderer. On the train, there is a brief comic interlude with two traveling salesmen, surely forerunners to Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford in "The lady vanishes"; this is one of a series of comedy moments which enliven what has now become little more than a chase film. Another great comedy sequence has Hannay forced, for his own protection, to pretend to be a political candidate addressing a meeting; the speech is so full of double-talk and sounds so much like a genuine political tirade that it warrants a round of applause from the audience in the Assembly Hall. Back on the train [?], Hannay is forced to fake a friendship with a woman named Pamela to evade the police; however, she identifies him to the law, and Hannay jumps from the train as it crosses the Forth Bridge. Fleeing across the Scottish moors, Hannay takes shelter with a stern, middle-aged Calvanistic crofter named John, magnificently played by character actor John Laurie, and with the crofter's young wife Margaret (Peggy Ashcroft). The wife seems romantically inclined towards Hannay and helps him; but later she suffers a beating from her husband for her interest in him. The crofter directs Hannay to the house of a professor who seems to be the most pleasant of the characters in "The 39 steps". He is a genial family man, the only character who welcomes Hannay with friendship, but he is also the leader of the spies. Annabella, before she died, had warned Hannay to beware of a man with part of his finger missing, and Hannay recognizes that man as the professor. Hannay escapes from the professor, locates and again turns to Pamela for assistance, this time during the political speechmaking at the Assembly Hall. He is again turned in by her, this time to the spies who are forced to take Pamela with them; she and Hannay are handcuffed together. Because of the obtrusion of a flock of sheep, Pamela and Hannay are separated from the spies, and, handcuffed together, wander across the moors. The handcuffs obviously have sexual overtones, not only as a form of fetish -- symbols of a love-hate relationship -- but because they force the couple to spend the night very much together. While Hannay sleeps, however, Pamela manages to slip off the handcuffs since they are a man's and she has a small feminine wrist. She is about to desert Hannay, when she overhears the professor talking of "thirty-nine steps" and arranging a meeting with his fellow conspirators at the London Palladium. At the Palladium, Mr. Memory's act is again on the bill and all the elements of the plot merge. As the police arrive to arrest Hannay, he shouts out the question to Mr. Memory, "What are the thirty-nine steps?" Mr. Memory, who has been taught all his life to respond with the truth even if that truth means his death, replies before he is shot by the professor,"The thirty-nine steps is a political organization of spies collecting information on behalf of the foreign office of...." We never do discover which foreign government was involved. Unlike John Buchan's novel in which the thirty-nine steps are a place, in the film the designation refers to a group of people. "The 39 steps" was remade in 1960 and 1978, in versions starring Kenneth More and Robert Powell respectively; both the later versions are dull, tedious affairs, perhaps because they are closer to John Buchan's novel than they are to Charles Bennett's script, and both were only moderately successful, with the 1978 remake not even being released in the United States until 1980. ------------------------------------------------ The Godfather Part III (1/91) Watching "The Godfather Part III" is like watching a confusing tribute to "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II," two of the greatest movies ever made. One of the most startling problems with the new film is that it is an homage that was made by the same director who filmed the original masterpieces. This time around, instead of presenting a powerful, vivid, (and understandable) story, what Francis Ford Coppola ends up with is a great looking, though emotionally stale and half-scripted piece of work. It salutes its predecessors instead of getting the real job done, which is to continue the engaging character studies. At its worst, "The Godfather Part III" feels like Coppola's cinematic tour of the locations where the original films were shot. Coppola was once was an intelligent, daring and influential storyteller and moviemaker--a truly great director. His sensibility in getting ideas across on screen has been long gone. "The Godfather Part III" has a promising opening, a seeming return to the discipline that helped propel the original stories. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) has made the family business legitimate and receives an honorary award from the Vatican, and his son, (Franc D'Ambrosio) daughter (Sophia Coppola) and nephew (Andy Garcia) are introduced. There is an interesting scene between Michael and his separated wife, Kay, (Diane Keaton) in which she tells him that she liked him better when he was "a common Mafia hood." Another good idea was to have Michael's own son be uninterested in having anything to do with the family's work. Before long, the film's plot raises questions which require explanations, an expansiveness, and Coppola and his co-writer, Mario Puzo, provide little grasp of deeper meanings as to why characters are behaving as they do. One yearns to see more of how Michael Corleone legitimated himself, of how Michael's daughter, here portrayed as little more than a girl, was chosen to head the family business should anything happen to her father. Not enough is done with the part of the family lawyer; Robert Duvall's background intensity is desperately missed. None of the supporting characters are as vivid in the mind as, say, Hyman Roth from "The Godfather Part II." The neglected Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna) is meant to be an arrogant criminal (like Don Fanucci in "Godfather II") but one never feels any satisfaction in his demise because we never really know what he did wrong to the Corleone family in the first place. One man (Eli Wallach) is described as "a friend from the old days;" (like Frank Pentangelli in "Godfather II"), another is a corrupt cardinal, another a German banker, and that's all they are. Even the character of Moe Green, the casino owner from the original film made a more memorable impression than an outright assassin does here. Then there is the major problem with the Andy Garcia character, who comes on jittery and hot tempered like his father Sonny once was, and halfway through the film somehow takes on the delicate mannerisms of the young Vito Corleone, as portrayed by Robert DeNiro in the second installment. The audience doesn't have a clue as to what brought this startling change about. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that whereas in the first two films death carried a tragic force no matter who the person was, in "The Godfather Part III," when somebody dies, it's just a matter of whether they're a good guy or a bad guy. Michael Aita ------------------------------------------------ The tawny pipit. Great Britain 1944. Directors Charles Saunders and Bernard Miles. Colonel Barton-Barrington -- Bernard Miles Hazel Broome -- Rosamund John Jimmy Bancroft -- Nioll MacGinnes Nancy Forester -- Jeoff Gillie Russian Sniper -- Lucie Mannheim Reverend Kingsley -- Christopher Steele Uncle Arthur -- Bunfi O'Rourke Whimbrel -- George Carney Screenplay by Bernard Miles and Charles Saunders. A young couple discovers a nest of rare birds. ------------------------------------------------