MC Consensus: I Know A Little German (He's Sitting Over There)

[Spinal]

Submit your TEN favorite films from Germany (or East Germany or West Germany) and .... eventually .... I will give you a top TEN TO TWENTY. Films should have Germany listed as a country of origin in IMDb. Hopefully, I won't have to make a ruling on this and it will be self-policing. But the purpose of the thread is to specifically address films that are from Germany.

The point system is as follows

1st Place- 10 points
2nd Place - 8 points
3rd Place - 7 points
4th Place - 6 points
5th Place - 5 points
6th Place - 4.5 points
7th Place - 4 points
8th Place - 3.5 points
9th Place - 3 points
10th Place - 2.5 points

(Point system is weighted to give your top film a boost and to minimize the discrepancy between the films in the bottom half of your list.)

There will be no restrictions on short films. A list must have ten films to be eligible. If you list more than ten films, I will assume that the top ten films are the ones you want to receive points. If you do not list your films 1-10, I will assign the points from the top on down.

If you decide to edit your ballot, please make a new post indicating the changes. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

If, for some reason, you would like to like to submit your ballot via private message, I will accept those as well. However, your ballot will be revealed after the final results are posted.

You may begin now.

[Melville]

1. In a Year of 13 Moons
2. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
3. Fitzcarraldo
4. Fata Morgana
5. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
6. Stroszek
7. Metropolis
8. Woyzeck
9. Paris, Texas
10. Kings of the Road

HMs: The Blue Angel, Alice in the Cities

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Metropolis (1927)
2. M (1931)
3. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
4. Germany Year Zero (1948)
5. The White Ribbon (2009)
6. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
7. Warning Shadows (1923)
8. Nosferatu (1922)
9. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)
10. Run Lola Run (1998)

The Golem (1920)

[baby doll]

Spies (Fritz Lang, 1927)
Pandora's Box (G.W. Pabst, 1929)
Vampyr: Der Traum des Allan Gray (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1947)
The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb (Fritz Lang, 1959)
Not Reconciled or: Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules (Danièle Huillet / Jean-Marie Straub, 1965)
The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Danièle Huillet / Jean-Marie Straub, 1968)
Katzelmacher (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969)
In a Year of Thirteen Moons (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978)
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979)

I assume it's not necessary to vote for Metropolis, M, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, or Paris, Texas. Also, I've yet to see a single film by Harun Farocki, Alexander Kluge, Werner Schroeter, or Hans Jürgen-Syberberg.

[Mysterious Dude]

I forgot about Germany Year Zero. Somehow, it seemed too German for the Italian list, but is it also too Italian for the German list? I think I'll include it.

[Grouchy]

I love the thread title.

Do Haneke films besides The White Ribbon count? Most of them take place in France and Haneke himself is Austrian.

EDIT: Also, Paris, Texas strikes me as too American to count. Maybe I'm approaching this the wrong way.

[Spinal]

Films should have Germany listed as a country of origin in IMDb.

Beyond that, it's up to your discretion.

[Spinal]

1. Metropolis
2. The Neverending Story
3. Pina
4. Aguirre, The Wrath of God
5. M
6. Run Lola Run
7. Das Boot
8. The Lives of Others
9. Stroszek
10. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

[Peng]

1. Metropolis
2. Aguirre, The Wrath of God
3. M
4. Das Boot
5. Fitzcarraldo
6. Phoenix
7. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
8. Veronika Voss
9. Nosferatu (1922)
10. Wings of Desire

[Lazlo]

1. The Princess and the Warrior
2. Das Boot
3. Fitzcarraldo
4. The Lives of Others
5. Metropolis
6. Run Lola Run
7. Das Experiment
8. M
9. The White Diamond
10. Nosferatu

[Yxklyx]

Search by German Language was the best way...

1. Run Lola Run (Tykwer)
2. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Herzog)
3. M (Lang)
4. Metropolis (Lang)
5. Asphalt (May)
6. The Blue Light (Riefenstahl)
7. Das Boot (Petersen)
8. The Stationmaster's Wife (Fassbinder)
9. Soul Kitchen (Akin)
10. Fitzcarraldo (Herzog)

edit: removed The Love of Jeanne Ney - added Fitzcarraldo

[baby doll]

Spies (Fritz Lang, 1927)
Pandora's Box (G.W. Pabst, 1929)
Vampyr: Der Traum des Allan Gray (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1947)
The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb (Fritz Lang, 1959)
Not Reconciled or: Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules (Danièle Huillet / Jean-Marie Straub, 1965)
The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Danièle Huillet / Jean-Marie Straub, 1968)
Katzelmacher (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969)
In a Year of Thirteen Moons (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978)
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979)Whoops, I forgot to include Vampyr (probably on account of Dreyer being Danish, and the movie being a German-French coproduction shot in three languages).

[baby doll]

Do Haneke films besides The White Ribbon count? Most of them take place in France and Haneke himself is Austrian.According to IMDb, La Pianiste is a French-Austrian-German co-production. It's based on an Austrian novel and is set in Vienna, and it features a German actress (Susanne Lothar) who's lines have obviously been dubbed into French by another actress. I'd take it.

[Stay Puft]

1. Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau)
2. Stroszek (Werner Herzog)
3. Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog)
4. The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke)
5. Head-On (Fatih Akin)
6. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene)
7. Nosferatu the Vampyre (Werner Herzog)
8. Fata Morgana (Werner Herzog)
9. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
10. Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders)

[Grouchy]

1. Metropolis
2. Downfall
3. The White Ribbon
4. Aguirre: the Wrath of God
5. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
6. Fitzcarraldo
7. Wings of Desire
8. The Piano Teacher
9. M
10. Possession

[Russ]

1. Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977)
2. A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Douglas Sirk, 1958)
3. Under the Bridges (Helmut Käutner, 1946)
4. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
5. Opfergang (Veit Harlan, 1944)
6. Rotation (Wolfgang Staudte, 1949)
7. Romance in a Minor Key (Helmut Käutner, 1943)
8. M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
9. Sterne (Konrad Wolf, 1959)
10. Our Heavenly Bodies (Hanns Walter Kornblum, 1925)

[baby doll]

2. A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Douglas Sirk, 1958)Good call. I didn't realize it was a West German co-production.

[Spinal]

We've got a fairly reasonable top 10 at this point. A few more votes might be nice to flesh this out. Another 24 hours?

[dreamdead]

I clearly need to see In a Year with 13 Moons.


1. Metropolis
2. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
3. Pandora’s Box
4. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
5. Possession
6. Phoenix
7. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
8. Nosferatu
9. Das Boot
10. The Blue Angel

[Melville]

I clearly need to see In a Year with 13 Moons.
Yes. So good.

I didn't think to vote for Possession; it doesn't feel any more German than a Hollywood movie filmed in Berlin. But since I may not get another chance to vote for Zulawski, I'll revise my ballot:

1. Possession
2. In a Year of 13 Moons
3. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
4. Fitzcarraldo
5. Fata Morgana
6. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
7. Stroszek
8. Metropolis
9. Woyzeck
10. Paris, Texas

[Grouchy]

I voted for Possession before it was cool.

[Melville]

I voted for Possession before it was cool.
Not high enough though. (It's in my top 10 of all time.)

[Spinal]

#10

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Possession_film_cover_zps9qz1p f9x.jpg
I can't exist by myself because I'm afraid of myself, because I'm the maker of my own evil.

Possession

Director: Andrzej Zulawski

Year: 1981

A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.

Won Best Actress at Cannes. (Isabelle Adjani was also cited for the film Quartet).
Won the César Award for Best Actress.
Won the Critics Award at the São Paulo International Film Festival.

The movie was a French-West German co-production shot in West Berlin, but it wasn't released in Germany until its DVD release in late 2009.

"Many directors have taken full advantage of Adjani's exotic, ethereal French beauty; only Żuławski saw beyond the exquisite surface to something unsettling. Most disconcerting is the way Adjani can register almost demonic ill-intent while never losing some trace of the alluring." - Budd Wilkins, Slant Magazine

[Spinal]

#9

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Lola_Rennt_poster_zpswmgvpcdg. jpg
But, in the end, isn't it always the same question? And always the same answer?

Run Lola Run

Director: Tom Tykwer

Year: 1998

After a botched money delivery, Lola has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks.

Nominated for Best Film not in the English Language at the BAFTA Awards.
Nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Won Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Won 6 German Film Awards including Oustanding Feature Film and Best Direction.
Won Best Film at the Seattle International Film Festival.
Won the World Cinema Audience Award at Sundance.

Hans Paetsch, who speaks the narration at the beginning, is Germany's most popular fairy tale narrator. His characteristic voice is easily recognized by anyone who grew up with fairy tale records in Germany.

"It's a furiously kinetic display of pyrotechnics from the director Tom Tykwer, who fuses lightning-fast visual tricks, tirelessly shifting styles and the arbitrary possibilities of interactive storytelling into the best-case scenario for a cinematic video game." - Janet Maslin, The New York Times

[Spinal]

#8

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/nosferatu_theatre_poster_zpsdv aqj1hs.jpg
Is this your wife? What a lovely throat.

Nosferatu

Director: F.W. Murnau

Year: 1922

Vampire Count Orlok expresses interest in a new residence and real estate agent Hutter's wife.

Ranked #21 in Empire magazine's The 100 Best Films of World Cinema in 2010.

In July 2015, it was reported that a remake of the film would be written and directed by The Witch director Robert Eggers.

"To watch F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu is to see the vampire movie before it had really seen itself. Here is the story of Dracula before it was buried alive in clichés, jokes, TV skits, cartoons and more than 30 other films. The film is in awe of its material. It seems to really believe in vampires." - Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#7

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/stroszek-18428-movieposter.267_zpsvwhjygtv.jp g
We are unable to find the switch to turn the lift off, can't stop the dancing chickens.

Stroszek

Director: Werner Herzog

Year: 1977

In Berlin, an alcoholic man, recently released from prison, joins his elderly friend and a prostitute in a determined dream to leave Germany and seek a better life in Wisconsin.

Won Best Film at the German Film Critics Association Awards.
Nominated for Best Actress (Eva Mattes) at the German Film Awards.

Herzog was originally going to film the story of Woyzeck with Bruno S. in the lead. However, a few days before production, he decided that story required Klaus Kinski. He told Bruno, who responded that he had already taken a leave of absence from his job in a steel mill. As a result, Herzog wrote this film in 3 1/2 days, deliberately choosing a similar sounding title.

"Stroszek is not a comedy, but I don't know how to describe it. Perhaps as a peculiarity." - Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#6

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/das-boot-17979-movieposter.175_zpsjifnnzg2.jp g
They made us all train for this day. "To be fearless and proud and alone. To need no one, just sacrifice. All for the Fatherland." Oh God, all just empty words.

Das Boot

Director: Wolfgang Petersen

Year: 1981

The claustrophobic world of a WWII German U-boat; boredom, filth, and sheer terror.

Nominated for 6 Academy Awards including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography.
Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes.
Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the BAFTA Awards.
Nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures by the Directors Guild of America.

The submarine models built for Das Boot were also the ones used in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

"You'll cheer for Nazis. That's how good the film is." - Harry Knowles, Austin Chronicle

[Spinal]

#5

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Das-Cabinet-des-Dr-Caligari-poster_zpsfd1hjtqf.jpg
You fools, this man is plotting our doom! We die at dawn!

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Director: Robert Wiene

Year: 1920

Dr. Caligari's somnambulist, Cesare, and his deadly predictions.

Ranked as the #12 film of all time during a poll organized at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair (https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/first-and-foremost). With input from 117 film critics, filmmakers and historians from around the world, it was the first universal film poll in history.

Writer Hans Janowitz claims to have gotten the idea for the film when he was at a carnival one day. He saw a strange man lurking in the shadows. The next day, he heard that a girl was brutally murdered there. He went to the funeral, and saw the same strange man lurking around. He had no proof that the strange man was the murderer, but he fleshed the whole idea out into his film.

"Undoubtedly one of the most exciting and inspired horror movies ever made ... There are plenty of extremely boring sociological/critical accounts of the film; best to avoid them and enjoy the film's extraordinary use of painted light and [Conrad] Veidt's marvelous performance." - David Pirie, Time Out

[Spinal]

#4

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/51JwketnbpL_zpsubjepm81.jpg
To Fitzcarraldo, the Conquistador of the Useless!

Fitzcarraldo

Director: Werner Herzog

Year: 1982

The story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an extremely determined man who intends to build an opera house in the middle of a jungle.

Won Best Director at Cannes.
Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes.
Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the BAFTA Awards.
Nominated for Best Actor (Klaus Kinski) at the German Film Awards.

In one of the region's driest summers on record, scavenging Amahuaca tribespeople launched a scavenging hit-and-run raid on the film camp. One man was lucky to survive an arrow through his throat, while his wife was hit in the stomach, necessitating eight hours of emergency surgery on a kitchen table. Herzog: "I assisted by illuminating her abdominal cavity with a torchlight and with my other hand sprayed with repellent the clouds of mosquitoes that swarmed around the blood."

"He seems meant to be a lovable loser, but it's hard to know quite what Kinski's Fitzcarraldo is because he's not like anyone else in the world-except maybe Bette Davis playing Rutger Hauer." - Pauline Kael

[Spinal]

#3

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/M-1931-poster_zpst5jgazyn.jpg
I want to escape, to escape from myself! But it's impossible.

M

Director: Fritz Lang

Year: 1931

When the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.

Named one of the year's top foreign films by the National Board of Review.
Ranked at #33 in Empire magazines' The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema.

MGM studio executive Irving Thalberg assembled his writers and directors for a private screening of this film, telling them that they needed to be making films of this power and caliber. He also admitted that if anyone had brought a story of a child killer to him, he would have rejected it.

"It takes guts to humanize a serial killer, but Lang goes further than that by making Lorre into a tragic hero, victimized by overwhelming forces from within and without. - Scott Tobias, The AV Club

[Spinal]

#2

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/10760_zps8qccfb6m.jpg
That man is a head taller than me. That may change.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Director: Werner Herzog

Year: 1972

In the 16th century, the ruthless and insane Don Lope de Aguirre leads a Spanish expedition in search of El Dorado.

Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the César Awards.
Won Best Cinematography from the National Society of Film Critics.
Won Best Cinematography at the German Film Awards. Also nominated for Best Film and Best Actor (Klaus Kinski).

In one of the opening scenes, when the carriage holding Aguirre's daughter tips over and threatens to collapse, a hand comes in from the right side of the frame to assist the actors in steadying their hold. That hand belongs to Werner Herzog.

"Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God is one of the great haunting visions of the cinema ... He does not want to tell a plotted story or record amusing dialog; he wants to lift us up into realms of wonder." - Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#1

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/97aa6185df645ab8643e52d2b2b757 8a_zpsrtydnyiv.jpg
Having conceived Babel, yet unable to build it themselves, they had thousands to build it for them.

Metropolis

Director: Fritz Lang

Year: 1927

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

Won a Special Award from the New York Film Critics Circle Awards for the 2002 restoration.
Placed #35 on the 2012 Sight and Sound poll of the Greatest Films of All-Time.

Much to Lang's dismay, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels were big fans of the film. Goebbels met with Lang and told him that he could be made an honorary Aryan despite his Jewish background.

"One of the last examples of the imaginative--but often monstrous--grandeur of the Golden Period of the German film, Metropolis is a spectacular example of Expressionist design (grouped human beings are used architecturally), with moments of almost incredible beauty and power (the visionary sequence about the Tower of Babel), absurd ineptitudes (the lovesick hero in his preposterous knickerbockers), and oddities that defy analysis (the robot vamp's bizarre, lewd wink). It's a wonderful, stupefying folly." - Pauline Kael

[Spinal]

1. Metropolis (64.5)
2. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (51.5)
3. M (37)
4. Fitzcarraldo (32)
5. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (29)
6. Das Boot (25)
7. Stroszek (25)
8. Nosferatu (22.5)
9. Run Lola Run (21.5)
10. Possession (17.5)

The White Ribbon (15)
Pandora’s Box (15)

In the event of a tie, the film with the most total mentions gets the higher slot.

[Grouchy]

I did not expect White Ribbon to miss the list. Which is very good, by the way.

[Yxklyx]

I need to rewatch Stroszek.