Strongman Ferdinand (1976)

Director
Alexander Kluge

Main cast
Heinz Schubert; Vérénice Rudolph; Joachim Hackethal; Gert Günther Hoffmann; Siegfried Wischnewski

Genres
Drama

Description
The clownish security chief of a West German business is obsessed with protecting his factory from fancied and real breaches, especially from groups such as The Red Army Faction. Ferdinand's paranoia and methods can't be contained by his company. The sympathetically-drawn Ferdinand's ludicrous actions recall those of the cynical, disastrous axis between fascism and big business in 1930's Europe: satire of the rise of private security.


Similar movies

An entry-level employee at a powerful corporation finds himself occupying a corner office, but at a dangerous price: he must spy on his boss's old mentor to secure for him a multi-billion dollar advantage.
A group of friends search for fun, love and ultimately themselves in West Hollywood. This movie is an entertaining, and sometimes cynical look into the lives of six gay men trying to come to terms with what being gay and single (or gay and partnered) means to them.
Based on Michel Houellebecq's controversial novel, Atomised (aka The Elementary Particles) focuses on Michael and Bruno, two very different half-brothers and their disturbed sexuality. After a chaotic childhood with a hippie mother only caring for her affairs, Michael, a molecular biologist, is more interested in genes than women, while Bruno is obsessed with his sexual desires, but mostly finds his satisfaction with prostitutes. But Bruno's life changes when he gets to know the experienced Christiane. In the meantime, Michael meets Annabelle, the love of his youth, again.
Hotshot Washington lawyer Robert Dean becomes a victim of high-tech identity theft when a hacker slips an incriminating video into his pocket. Soon, a rogue National Security agent sets out to recover the tape -- and destroy Dean.
Simon is a nine-year-old autistic boy who has cracked the government's new "unbreakable" code. This skill renders the new billion-dollar secret code vulnerable, especially if enemies of the United States should learn of Simon's abilities and capture him. Program chief Nick Kudrow orders the "security threat" eliminated, but Kudrow hasn't counted on renegade FBI agent Art Jeffries (Bruce Willis).
The teenager and skateboarder Alex is interviewed by Detective Richard Lu that is investigating the death of a security guard in the rail yards severed by a train who was apparently hit by a skate board. While dealing with the separation process of his parents and the sexual heat of his virgin girlfriend Jennifer, Alex writes his last experiences in Paranoid Park with his new acquaintances and how the guard was killed, trying to relieve his feeling of guilty from his conscience.
A nurse from the Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life..
Craig and Day Day have finally moved out of their parents houses and into their own crib. The cousins work nights at a local mall as security guards. When their house is robbed on Christmas Eve they team up to track him down.
Security expert Will Griffith has been hired to secure the mansion of South American expatriate Hector Mejenes...
An American attorney on business in China, ends up wrongfully on trial for murder and his only key to innocence is a female defense lawyer from the country.
A single mom and her slacker sister find an unexpected way to turn their lives around in the off-beat dramatic comedy. In order to raise the tuition to send her young son to private school the mom starts an unusual business, a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service.
A powerful railroad executive, Dagny Taggart, struggles to keep her business alive while society is crumbling around her. Based on the 1957 novel by Ayn Rand.
When shadowy U.S. intelligence agents blackmail a reformed computer hacker and his eccentric team of security experts into stealing a code-breaking "black box" from a Soviet-funded genius, they uncover a bigger conspiracy. Now, he and his "sneakers" must save themselves and the world economy by retrieving the box back from their blackmailers.
The continuing saga of the Corleone crime family tells the story of a young Vito Corleone growing up in Sicily and in 1910s New York; and follows Michael Corleone in the 1950s as he attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba
Bi-polar mall security guard Ronnie Barnhardt is called into action to stop a flasher from turning shopper's paradise into his personal peep show. But when Barnhardt can't bring the culprit to justice, a surly police detective, is recruited to close the case.
During a weekend, two shady businessmen flee to the Cayman Islands to avoid federal prosecution. But their escape ignites a chain reaction that leads a British native to commit a crime that changes the nation.
Surviving family members and friends of a man who was conned by the cunning businessman Sabbarwahl, string together a series of their own cons in an attempt to bring him down.
Julie Styron thinks she is going to be fired, but instead discovers that she is being promoted. Trapped in an airport hotel, she wants to celebrate but finds only the company of her young assistant, Paula Murphy. As the night progresses, the two women get to know each other. They flirt, they drink, they lie; personal flaws are revealed and exposed. But at the end of the night their relationship turns and becomes a complex battle of power, authority, and wit.
Freya McAllister suddenly starts hearing voices in her head on the night of her High School Prom. One night Dr Michael Welles arrives telling Freya that she isn't crazy but that her voices are the thoughts of everyone around her. He teaches her to turn her telepathic powers into a powerful gift. What he doesn't say is that he works for the National Security Agency...
As election time nears, current Triad chairman Lok (Simon Yam) faces competition from his godsons. At the same time, Jimmy (Louis Koo) looks to increase his business relations with mainland China.
When Iraq invades Kuwait in August, 1990, a callous Indian businessman becomes the spokesperson for more than 170,000 stranded countrymen.
The young businessman Thomas Crown is bored and decides to plan a robbery and assigns a professional agent with the right information to the job. However Crown is soon betrayed yet cannot blow his cover because he’s in love.
An American Ambassador is killed during an attack at a U.S. compound in Libya as a security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos.
After three years, Nick's estranged daughter Holly returns home to find the spirit of Christmas in Santaville has dwindled, taking the family business with it. What starts out as an attempt to bail out her dad, ends up rekindling Holly's belief in Christmas all over again.
Story of a promising high school basketball star and his relationships with two brothers, one a drug dealer and the other a former basketball star fallen on hard times and now employed as a security guard.
It's a dreary Christmas 1944 for the American POWs in Stalag 17. For the men in Barracks 4, all sergeants, have to deal with a grave problem - there seems to be a security leak. The Germans always seem to be forewarned about escapes and in the most recent attempt the two men, Manfredi and Johnson, walked straight into a trap and were killed. For some in Barracks 4, especially the loud-mouthed Duke, the leaker is obvious: J.J. Sefton, a wheeler-dealer who doesn't hesitate to trade with the guards and who has acquired goods and privileges that no other prisoner seems to have. Sefton denies giving the Germans any information and makes it quite clear that he has no intention of ever trying to escape. He plans to ride out the war in what little comfort he can arrange, but it doesn't extend to spying for the Germans.
The world is closing in on Greta Driscoll. On the cusp of turning fifteen she can't bear to leave her childhood, it contains all the things that give her comfort in this incomprehensible new world. She floats in a bubble of loserdom with her only friend Elliott, until her parents throw her a surprise 15th birthday party and she's flung into a parallel place; a world that's weirdly erotic, a little bit violent and thoroughly ludicrous - only there can she find herself.
The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocates them to a high-security "escape-proof" camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.
A beleaguered small-business owner gets a harmonium and embarks on a romantic journey with a mysterious woman.
Alfred Eaton, an ambitious young executive, climbs to the top of New York's financial world as his marriage crumbles. At the brink of attaining his career goals, he is forced to choose between business success, married to the beautiful, but unfaithful Mary and starting over with his true love, the much younger Natalie.
Son de Mar (English: "Sound of the Sea") is a 2001 Spanish drama / erotic film directed by Juan José Bigas Luna based on the novel of the same title by Manuel Vicent. It revolves around Ulises (Jordi Mollà), who comes to a fishing village to teach literature at a local high school. During his stay he falls in love with Martina (Leonor Watling), the daughter of his landlord. Sierra (Eduard Fernández), a rich businessman, also falls in love with her and fruitlessly tries to win her heart.
A businessman is reunited with the four lost souls who were his guardian angels during childhood, all with a particular purpose to joining the afterlife.
A breakup leads Pepa Marcos (Carmen Maura) into a chain of ludicrous and hilarious events.
Molly and Terry Donahue, plus their three children, are The Five Donahues. Son Tim meets hat-check girl Vicky and the family act begins to fall apart.
A thriller set in New York City during the winter of 1981, statistically one of the most violent years in the city's history, and centered on a the lives of an immigrant and his family trying to expand their business and capitalize on opportunities as the rampant violence, decay, and corruption of the day drag them in and threaten to destroy all they have built.
At the beginning of the 19th century, white settlers regularly make and break treaties with the Native American inhabitants to gain possession of vast hunting grounds at ludicrously low prices without any bloodshed. Harrison, Governor of Indiana, has made and broke no less than fifteen such treaties, driving increasing numbers of Indians out to the infertile West. To put a stop to this criminal practice, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh tries to unite the Native Americans.
How, thanks to what's known as the "Butterfly theory" (a random series of unlinked events), can a young woman and a young man meet?
A two character movie, involving a college professor, John, who is confronted by a female student, Carol, who is failing his course. The two spend a long time talking to each other, during which time John says a few things that can be taken the wrong way. After the night the two spent talking, John is slapped with a sexual harassment accusation by Carol.
The King of Comedy is a bitterly evil satire of show business. Rupert Pupkins is obsessed with becoming famous so he aims at kidnapping one of the best in the business, Jerry Langford.
28-year-old Kansas University doctoral student Omar Razaghi wins a grant to write a biography of Latin American writer Jules Gund. Omar must get through to three people who were close to Gund--his brother, widow, and younger mistress--so he can get authorization to write the biography. Written by Marisa_Gabriella, edited by Krystal Frauendienst
Charles Price may have grown up with his father in the family shoe business, but he never thought that he would take his father's place. Yet, the untimely death of his father places him in that position, only to learn that Price & Sons Shoes is failing. While in despair at his failed attempts to save the business, Charles has a chance encounter with the flamboyant drag queen cabaret singer, Lola. Her complaints about the inadequate footwear for her work combined with one of Charles' ex-employees, Lauren, leads to a suggestion to change the product to create a desperate chance to save the business: make men's fetish footwear. Lola is convinced to be their footwear designer and the transition begins. Now this disparate lot must struggle at this unorthodox idea while dealing both the prejudice of the staff, Lola's discomfort in the small town and the selfish manipulation of Charles' greedy fiancée who cannot see the greater good in Charles' dream.
The film focuses on Angie (Kierston Wareing), a working class woman who, after being fired by the agency that she works for, decides to set up a recruitment agency of her own, running it from her kitchen with her friend Rose (Juliet Ellis). Taking advantage of the desperation of immigrants, Angie is able to build a successful business extremely quickly.
February 17 to March 3, 1860, inside Edo castle. A group of assassins wait by Sakurada Gate to kill the lord of the House of Ii, a powerful man in the Tokugawa government, which has ruled Japan for 300 years. They suspect a traitor in their midst, and their suspicions fall on Niiro, an impoverished ronin who dreams of samurai status, and Kurihara, an aristocratic samurai who befriends Niiro. Niiro longs to identify his father, knowing he is a high-ranking official who will disclose himself only if Niiro achieves samurai status. With American ships in Japan's harbors, cynicism among the assassins, and change in the air, Niiro resolves to reach ends that may prove ephemeral.
Rheinhardt, a cynical drifter, gets a job as an announcer for right-wing radio station WUSA in New Orleans. Rheinhardt is content to parrot WUSA's reactionary editorial stance on the air, even if he doesn't agree with it. Rheinhardt finds his cynical detachment challenged by a lady friend, Geraldine, and by Rainey, a neighbour and troubled idealist who becomes aware of WUSA's sinister, hidden purpose. And when events start spinning out of control, even Rheinhardt finds he must take a stand.
The story follows a married couple, apart for a night while the husband takes a business trip with a colleague to whom he's attracted. While he's resisting temptation, his wife encounters her past love.
Emmanuelle, a svelte,naive young woman, is en route to Bangkok where she'll join her new husband. He works for the French Embassy and has a lovely home, several dedicated servants, and an expensive car at his disposal. Once Emmanuelle arrives, her husband and a few friends introduce her to a realm of sexual ecstasy she'd never imagined.
The ups and downs in the lives and careers of a group of ambitious young actresses and show girls from disparate backgrounds brought together in a theatrical hostel. Centres particularly on the conflict and growing friendship between Terry Randall, a rich girl confident in her talent and ability to make it to the top on the stage, and Jean Maitland, a world weary and cynical trouper who has taken the hard knocks of the ruthless and over-populated world of the Broadway apprentice.
Louis XIV, the French sun-king has two passions, establishing absolute rule over the realm -after decades of religious/civil wars- by divine right and artistic brilliancy as a dancer
After finding religion, a cynical newspaperman tries to help young hoods.
Cynical British journalist Fowler (Michael Redgrave) falls in love with a young Vietnamese woman, but is dismayed when a naïve U.S. official (Audie Murphy) also begins vying for the girl’s attention. In retaliation, Fowler informs the communists that the American is selling arms to their enemy. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's drama paints a rosier picture of U.S. involvement in French Indochina than Graham Greene’s provocative 1955 novel.
When the beautiful, efficient and successful Christine, 42, arrives at their summer beach home with her husband and teenage daughter, a young hitchhiker catches her eye. What follows is the story of a woman who frees herself, tears her life into pieces and puts it back together in a different order.
When Alex enters the lives of the musical Tuttle family, each of the three daughters falls for him. He is charming, good looking and personable. Laurie and Alex seem made for each other and become engaged. When Barney comes into the picture to help Alex with some musical arrangements matters become complicated. He is seen as a challenge by Laurie, who can't believe anyone could be as cynical, and she is more than a match for his gloomy outlook on life.
1888: a luthier, Vedder, has to step aside when his home, opposite the recently completed Central Station in Amsterdam, must yield for the planned Victoria Hotel. His cousin Anijs, pharmacist in the Northern provinces of the Netherlands, has gotten into a fix after illegal medical practices, and is looking for a way out. For himself and his wife Martha, but also for a colony of poor peat cutters whom he promises a future in the United States. Committed - or is it pride? - the two of them think up a scheme from which they all will fully benefit. With tragic consequences.
After Japan's loss in the war, the wealthy, cultured, liberal Anjo family have to give up their mansion and their way of life. They hold one last ball at the house before leaving. The seemingly cold, cynical son secretly grieves for his defeated father and the values that the war destroyed, while the daughter tries to prevent father from taking his life and to find her own place in the new Japan.
An old Chinese gentleman rides into the town of Abalone, Arizona and changes it forever, as the citizens see themselves reflected in the mirror of Lao's mysterious circus of mythical beasts.
After being hurt in the face, Count de Roger Tinchebraye is forced to hide his disfigured face behind a leather mask. Dispirited for a while, he decides to become a Casanova-like seductor. When he meets true love, cynical Roger does not believe in it and lets pure Judith marry an old marquis. But once Judith's husband dies, he sees Judith again, shows her his disfigured face, which does not discourage the young woman from loving him. Nevertheless, he distances himself from her forever
Injustice begets a criminal. Kool is an artist without prospects, a black belt in karate, and in love with LaShawna, poised and college bound. One night she witnesses a stabbing and discovers the victim is a cop as he dies in her arms. She's jailed for murder by the infamous Ramparts Division of the LAPD. Kool wants to prove her innocence, and Tully, the cynical detective in charge, ignores LaShawna's case but uses Kool to break up an incipient crime operation. She's in danger because the guilty parties fear that the officer talked before he died. While in jail awaiting a hearing and legal help, she's beaten to death by a rogue cop. Kool vows revenge: the Hot Boyz are born.
Story about life as a homosexual man unwilling to comply with social norms in a 1930's boarding school. Based on play by Julian Mitchell.
Judas meets Jesus and at first doesn't know what to make of him or whether or not to trust him. A cynical city boy, Judas makes fun of the country bumpkin disciples who follow Jesus but eventually decides to join the band, as well. He and Jesus become good friends, even though they often see things very differently. Ultimately, Judas is convinced that Jesus needs to use his popularity and wonder-working powers to free the Jews from the Romans, and Jesus sees a larger, spritual perspective. As a friend, Judas convinces Jesus to give his disciples his miraculous powers, and he does with good results. Finally, the Jewish leaders spy on Judas and convince him of the greater good of betraying Jesus, in order to save the Jewish people. Judas gets caught between the corrupt leaders, Caiaphus and Pontius Pilate, and Jesus.

© Valossa 2015–2024