This Weimar Germany film classic uses an avant-garde, fragmented narrative to tell the story of a working-class family in Berlin in 1931. Survival is difficult, with massive unemployment in the wake of the Great Depression. After Anni’s brother commits suicide in despair, her family finds itself forced to move to Kuhle Wampe, a lakeside camp on the outskirts of Berlin, now home to increasing numbers of unemployed. When Anni’s relationship with Franz ends, she moves back to Berlin and gets involved in the workers’ youth movement. Already censored in March 1932, the film was then banned by the Nazis in 1933 for having “communist tendencies.”
Tag: 1930s
Teuvo Tulio’s oldest surviving film follows a spoilt and arrogant young man, the son of a landowner, playing fast and loose with the affections of a number of young women. In fact, he’s so busy seducing the women of the region that it’s a wonder any actual farming gets done at all. But eventually he finds himself forced to face up to his social and sexual responsibilities.
A gang of crooks evade the police by moving their operations to a small town. There the gang’s leader, John Madison, encounters a faith healer and uses him to scam the gullible public of funds for a supposed chapel. But when a real healing takes place, a change comes over the gang.
Racketeer Jim Barnes is trying to force the independent taxicab-drivers to join his ‘protection service” at the cost of five bucks a day. Champion race-car driver, Bob Kane, joins with his friends Lee and “Dad” Martin in a fight for the street rights of a big city.
Two sisters, May, older, naive, and June, younger and worldly, arrive in New York straight from the country and settle down in a boarding house. Their search for jobs leads them to find beaus and romantic trouble.
G-Man Charles Bent Martin is sent out to break up a nationwide racket. A transport company is aiding fugitives making a getaway in exchange for the lion’s share of their loot. Through an old friend, whom he once barnstormed in an air circus, Martin joins the gang as a pilot. He becomes interested in Carol Butler, a beautiful girl involved with the gang through the activities of her ne’er-do-well father.
City Commissioner Frank Kelly commits suicide after political boss Jim Blake frames him in Blake’s own grafting racket. Kelly’s daughter Wanda, who is in love with Blake’s son Tom, vows revenge against Blake when he insists innocent men do not commit suicide.
The rebellious daughter of an army general gets involved with a Communist agitator, mainly to annoy her father. He arranges to have her kidnapped and taken to Mexico–hoping that she will forget her “Red” boyfriend–by a young, handsome soldier named Jeff who, while somewhat of a goof-up, the general believes is still better for her.