Category: Articles

The Last Days of East Germany: The Mistake

By Joe Bendel. The personal should not have to be political, but it always was in the former DDR, often with tragic consequences. As a still attractive woman of advanced years, Elizabeth Bosch ought to be able to pursue a September romance with a handsome visitor to her provincial town in relative peace and privacy. Yet, since he is West German (a Hamburger), their affair attracts the wrong sort of attention in Heiner Carow’s The Mistake, the best and final film of the Anthology Film Archives’ Wende Flicks retrospective, which concludes at the landmark East Village theater this coming Wednesday.

Elizabeth Bosch has always cleaned up after other people, yet she does not even have hot running water in her modest pre-Wende East German home. That means she and her visiting grandchildren must take their baths in the yard, which catches the eye of the wandering Jacob Alain. Though he starts off on the wrong foot, he quickly wins over Bosch. It is not as if he has much competition, aside from Bosch’s boss Reimelt, a small man unfortunately blessed with a measure of power. The town’s slovenly mayor, he blusters about the hard work of building socialism unaware that it sounds like a punch-line to the weary Bosch.

While Bosch and Alain might ordinarily prefer to take things slowly, they simply do not have the time. For a while they make do with letters and all-too brief rendezvouses in East Berlin, but the situation is clearly not sustainable. When Bosch’s older Party loyalist son announces his promotion, it further complicates matters. Now family contacts with the West will come under increasing scrutiny.

Mistake is a sad but wise love story that also serves as a pointed reminder of what life was like under Communism. Bosch does not even have hot water, yet the Stasi still takes an active interest in her romantic affairs. The film also pays tribute to those who stood up to injustice in the DDR – bringing together Alain, Bosch, and her younger son Holger at a candlelight Christmas prayer service for East German dissidents. It all has remarkable emotional heft thanks to the finely nuanced work of its leads.

Angelica Domröse and Gottfried John look like an attractive, warts-and-all couple who we would like to see together. Yet we know the system is stacked against them. Domröse is especially compelling, finely balancing strength and vulnerability as Bosch. It is one of the great unsung performances of world cinema.

One of the best cinematic depictions of mature romance, Mistake is an outstanding film. It is also a heartrending and infuriating document of life under the oppressive Communist system, yet its inescapable political implications never eclipse the human drama. Highly recommended, it screens this Wednesday (11/3) in New York as the concluding film of the Anthology Film Archives’ Wende Flicks retrospective of the East German DEFA film studio’s final productions.

Posted on November 2nd, 2010 at 11:35am.

UPDATED: Stallone Rises … Then Falls

By Jason Apuzzo. Check this out above, from Sly Stallone on Twitter …

Stallone rises!

[UPDATE: … and now Stallone falls. He’s now walking back these remarks above, telling The Hollywood Reporter that his comments were not directed at Obama specifically, but were “a reference to all career politicians.” Sure, Sly. Did the heat get to ya?]

Posted on November 2nd, 2010 at 11:01am.

UPDATE: Tom Cruise would be the Lead in any Top Gun Sequel

Good to go: Tom Cruise, back when he was Tom Cruise.

By Jason Apuzzo. I wanted to update people on a story that we covered previously. Apparently the screenwriter on the proposed Top Gun sequel, Christopher McQuarrie, has come out and said: “There is no Top Gun 2 in which Maverick is not the starring role.” It had previously been reported that Cruise’s Maverick character would only have a relatively minor role in the sequel.

We’ll see how this plays out. I’ve already expressed my thoughts on this proposed project here.

[UPDATE: Tony Scott has confirmed that if a sequel happens, he will be directing it. Scott also told the Wall Street Journal the following about the proposed project:

“It’s not a reboot, it’s not a reinvention, it’s not a remake,” Scott insisted. “The world of ‘Top Gun’ today is very different. It’s really computer geeks sitting in Nevada playing war games. It’s the end of an era for fighter pilots, but those fighter pilots then become test pilots, and the planes now that they go to fight are drones, but while they’re perfecting [the drones], they fly them.” … “David Ellison is the guy that inspired me,” Scott said. “He’s a pilot. People kept talking about ‘Top Gun 2’ and talking with Jerry [Bruckheimer] and talking with me [about the possibility of doing it], but it wasn’t until David came and he showed me these visuals of what the Air Force is doing today that I said yes, I want to be involved. So it’s not a reboot at all. It’s a totally new movie.”

We’ll continue to keep you updated about this as we learn more.]

[UPDATE #2: And here’s more from Tony Scott about the film, from over at the MTV Movie blog.]

Posted on November 1st, 2010 at 1:43pm.

Kevin Smith’s Red State Poster

By Jason Apuzzo. Kevin Smith, movie maestro of white trash, has just put out this teaser poster for his new horror thriller about homophobic Christians, Red State.

He’s apparently hoping to debut the movie at Sundance.

I think the poster more or less speaks for itself.

[UPDATE: Smith is apparently intending to score the film with speed metal and country music. Perfect. What we have here, apparently, are the makings of a white-trash version of Machete – i.e., a hyper-political exploitation thriller being used to revive the career of a director whose career is gradually hitting the skids.

I doubt this strategy will work any better than it did for Robert Rodriguez, though.]

Posted on November 1st, 2010 at 9:35am.

The Last Days of East Germany: The Land Beyond the Rainbow

By Joe Bendel. Arthur Koestler and his fellow apostates from Communism called the ideology “The God that Failed.” One can see how apt a term that was in Herwig Kipping’s The Land Beyond the Rainbow, a scathing critique of the secular religious fervor mandated by Stalinism. A selection of the 1992 Berlinale, Beyond remains a scorching critique of Communism, and screens next Tuesday as part of the Wende Flicks retrospective of post-Fall of the Wall films from the East German DEFA studio at New York’s Anthology Film Archives.

It is hardly a coincidence that Beyond takes place during the eventful year of 1953. Of course, that was the year Stalin died.  Three months later, Soviet troops invaded East Germany to suppress an outbreak of strikes and demonstrations. However, life appears peaceful in the fictional provincial collective of Stalina. Both Hans and Rainbowmaker have eyes for Marie, the film’s ethereal narrator. Yet Rainbowmaker’s grandfather, a strict Party leader, brings the isolated community to grief.

From his cowl-like cloak to his prayer-like invocations to the recently deceased Stalin, Rainbowmaker’s grandfather is an unambiguous figure of orthodox faith. He also appropriates whatever he pleases from the collective and purges members at will. However, his greatest specialty appears to be encouraging children to inform on their parents. Unlike more allegorical films produced behind the Iron Curtain, there is absolutely no question what he represents. In fact, Stalin’s apologists are probably watching Beyond in Hell for the rest of eternity.

Yet the blistering Beyond cannot be dismissed as mere post-Wall score-settling, given the eerie rendering of the hyper-Communist community and Kipping’s occasional flights of surrealist fantasy. This is an angry film, but an artful one as well. It also features some surprisingly compelling turns from the then-young trio of Stefanie Janke, Thomas Ewert, and Sebastian Reznicek, as Marie, Hans, and Rainbowmaker – the pre-pubescent love triangle.

There may truly be no more viscerally anti-Communist film than Beyond. However, Kipping’s in-your-face Christ-like imagery might put off some Christian audiences. Indeed, there are strong visuals throughout the film, the cumulative effect of which is a damning indictment of the GDR. Accordingly, anyone with a scrap of interest in the Communist and immediate post-Communist eras should make a special effort to see Beyond when it screens Tuesday (11/2) as part of Wende Flicks at Anthology Film Archives.

Posted on November 1st, 2010 at 9:06am.

Happy Halloween! + Watch The Hideous Sun Demon For Free!

By Jason Apuzzo. With a little help from Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, we wanted to wish our Libertas readers a Happy Halloween!

I searched the web to find something classic to show everybody on Halloween, and discovered to my pleasant surprise that an old favorite of mine from the 1950s – The Hideous Sun Demon – was available in its entirety over at YouTube. The Hideous Sun Demon (1959) is an atom age cult classic that was written, produced, and directed by Robert Clarke – who also stars in the film (you can see him below, more or less, wearing the rubber ‘sun demon’ mask).

In good Roger Corman style, Clarke shot The Hideous Sun Demon for under $50,000 – which included the $500 he spent on the rubberized lizard suit. The movie was shot exclusively on weekends (12 of them, to be exact) so Clarke could get two days’ use of rental equipment for only one day’s fee! If you’ve ever been a low-budget filmmaker, you know exactly what that type of experience is like. [I know because I used the same trick on Kalifornistan.]

The Hideous Sun Demon stalks Nan Peterson.

As an actor Robert Clarke was a staple figure in 1950s science fiction films, and some of his best work includes The Man from Planet X (1951), The Incredible Petrified World (1957) and The Astounding She-Monster (1957). He would later do a lot of TV work, appearing on such big-time shows as: The Lone Ranger, Dragnet, Perry Mason, Sea Hunt, General Hospital, Marcus Welby, M.D., Adam-12, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Hawaii Five-O, Fantasy Island, Dallas, Knight Rider, Murder She Wrote, Falcon Crest and Dynasty. So all in all he had a pretty good career, given that he started it wearing a rubber lizard suit.

*** SPOILERS BELOW***

The premise of The Hideous Sun Demon is cool: research scientist Dr. Gilbert McKenna (Clarke) falls unconscious after accidentally being exposed to radiation during an experiment with a new radioactive isotope. Later, while recuperating in a nearby hospital, ‘Gil’ is taken to a solarium to receive the sun’s healing rays … but while he naps, he metamorphoses into a hideous, lizard-like creature! Fortunately, when out of the sunlight, Gil reverts back to his normal human form.

We eventually learn that Gil has actually experienced an evolutionary ‘regression’ back through the chain of mankind’s ancestors (primitive mammals, reptiles and amphibians) triggered by his exposure to the sun’s radiation. In order to control this regression, Gil has to stay out of the sunlight – and effectively live a completely nocturnal existence.

So what would any swinging 50s bachelor do, under such awkward circumstances? Why, Dr. Gil hits the bar scene – and becomes, in effect, a nocturnal ‘lounge lizard’! Haunting the nighttime bars, Gil drifts away from his repressed, brunette lab assistant, played by Patricia Manning – who loves him from afar, but can’t bring herself to express it – and takes up with a busty, atom age blonde bombshell played by Nan Peterson. The decidedly unrepressed Nan brings out the animal in Dr. Gil, you might say, in a way that the poor drab lab assistant can’t.

The morning after: Nan Peterson after a date gone horribly wrong!

Peterson, for her part, plays a torch-song lounge singer who finds Gil dark and dangerous – of course, she has no idea how dangerous – and eventually she spends a many-splendored night with Gil on the beach … before he has to run off just as the sun comes up (aren’t men always like that?). Gil, you see, doesn’t want her to glimpse his ‘lizard’ side. Whew! The problems couples had back in those days! [And you thought things were complicated on Mad Men!]

Though Gil is able to hide his animalistic side from Nan and the police for a while, his life spins out of control as his ‘lizard’ side eventually takes over – with things leading to an explosive climax after Gil goes on a murderous rampage one day in broad daylight. And we learn, after all the mayhem subsides, that not only is mankind’s tampering with nature a very dangerous thing – but those Marilyn Monroe-style blondes can sometimes bring out the worst in a man …

***END OF SPOILERS***

The Hideous Sun Demon is a lot of fun; it’s campy, sexy, and is probably best enjoyed with a few adult beverages on hand – yet the film has an interesting subtext that makes it almost (if not quite) on a par with similar sci-fi classics from its era, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Creature from the Black Lagoon. It’s a pity the movie wasn’t done in 3D, although Ms. Peterson certainly provides her own version of a third dimension. This version of The Hideous Sun Demon on YouTube lacks the Elvira opening, but you can probably imagine what the Mistress of the Dark would say about the film – and in particular what she might say about the plenteous Ms. Peterson …

We hope you enjoy the film in its entirety, and a Happy Halloween to everybody!

Posted on October 31st, 2010 at 4:01pm.