The Fiend (1996)

Director
Volker Schlöndorff

Main cast
John Malkovich; Agnès Soral; Volker Spengler; Gottfried John; Armin Mueller-Stahl

Genres
Drama

Description
Frenchman Abel Tiffauges likes children, and wants to protect them against the grown-ups. Falsely suspected as child molester, he's recruited as a soldier in the 2nd World War, but very soon he is taken prisoner of war.


Similar movies

Vera von Schalburg is a German prostitute working in Nazi Germany. In 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, Schalburg is arrested by the Berlin police. She is offered to work as a spy for the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, instead of facing jail time. Completely unaware of the secret war preparations being conducted by her government, and unwilling to leave her teenage son who later joins the Hitler Youth, she accepts the offer.
A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth. Although improbabilities and happenstance are cornerstones of the film, it is based upon a true story.
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.
In this highly speculative historical thriller, Colonel Franz Ritter (George C. Scott), a former hero pilot now working for military intelligence, is assigned to the great Hindenburg airship as its chief of security. As he races against the clock to uncover a possible saboteur aboard the doomed zeppelin he finds that any of the passengers and crew could be the culprit.
Based on the childhood memories of actor Michael Degen, the movie deals with the everyday struggle to survive as a Jewish boy in Nazi Germany. As his father had died in 1940 after being released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Michael and his mother fear to be deported themselves. They manage to live in Berlin with false names and faked papers, hidden by several, often broken, people...
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
The story of a close-knit group of young kids in Nazi Germany who listen to banned swing music from the US. Soon dancing and fun leads to more difficult choices as the Nazi's begin tightening the grip on Germany. Each member of the group is forced to face some tough choices about right, wrong, and survival.
This lurid exposé of the Hitler Youth follows the woes of an American girl declared legally German by the Nazi government.
The film "O Drakos" is about a mousy, timid, bespectacled guy in Athens who sees a newspaper photo of a fugitive criminal mastermind called "The Fiend". It's the spitting image of the harmless nerd. A gang of starstruck crooks sees our hapless hero, mistakes him for the Fiend, rescues him from imminent arrest and more or less forces him to lead a desperate criminal scheme they've got going. And finally, the poor little man becomes enamoured of the idea, decides for once in his sad life to be a tough guy and a hero. He surrenders to his bizarre destiny, to be "The Fiend of Athens"... O Drakos is brilliant: a dark, satirical noir masterpiece... is like a French New Wave picture crossed with a British Ealing comedy, with something of Fellini in its zinging energy, and Carol Reed's Odd Man Out and The Third Man. The stark, dramatic key-lighting in the "arrest" scene gives the imagery a Weegee-type crime-scene aesthetic...
A Nazi propaganda film based upon the life and death of Hitler Youth Heini Volker, killed while distributing flyers in a Communist neighborhood.
Last months of World War II in April 1945. As the Allies make their final push in the European Theater, a battle-hardened U.S. Army sergeant in the 2nd Armored Division named Wardaddy commands a Sherman tank called "Fury" and its five-man crew on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. Outnumbered and outgunned, Wardaddy and his men face overwhelming odds in their heroic attempts to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.
The film "Amen." examines the links between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. The central character is Kurt Gerstein, a member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS who is horrified by what he sees in the death camps. Moreover, he is shocked to learn that the process he used to purify water for his troops, by using zyklon, served as a basis to kill people in gas chambers.
Nazi skinheads in Melbourne take out their anger on local Vietnamese, who are seen as threatening racial purity. Finally the Vietnamese have had enough and confront the skinheads in an all-out confrontation, sending the skinheads running. A woman who is prone to epileptic seizures joins the skins' merry band, and helps them on their run from justice, but is her affliction also a sign of impurity?
An American goes to Germany to find his mother and discovers her in a concentration camp. With the help of a German countess he engineers her escape.
This is a contemporary fable loosely based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment". Roseanne is outwardly a perfect and popular teen. However, her image is hiding the abuse at her stepfather's hands, and she decides to take revenge. The events that follow are a mix of dark humor and an exploration of modern morality as Roseanne faces not only a fellow suburbanite who knows, but her own conscience as well.
German boy Emil comes to live with his American uncle who tries to teach the former Hitler Youth to reject Nazism.
The series is based on a true story of a Russian spy Colonel Isaev (Stirlitz) in Fascist Germany during 17 days in very end of WWII. Stirlitz has worked his way to the very top of the Fascist hierarchy without being caught. However, his "colleagues", top Hitler's officers Borman, Mueller, Schellenberg are beginning to suspect him. Stirlits is constantly walking on the edge between his two identities, sending information to Russia, while skillfully maintaining the appearance of loyalty to fascist regime.
Charlie is a dope smuggler who lives on his own private desert island and rules over the natives with an iron fist. When the native stooges get out of line, Charlie literally cracks the whip on his insubordinate subordinates. When a sexpot named Glory comes to the island, he holds her prisoner and makes her go-go dance for him.
The film centers on a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon Sorowitsch, who is coerced into assisting the Nazi operation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The film won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 80th Academy Awards in 2008.
JULIA covers the 1930s when Lillian attained fame with the production of her play "The Childrens' Hour" on Broadway. It centers on Lillian's relationship with her friend, Julia. It's a relationship that goes beyond mere acquaintance and one for which the word "love" seems appropriate. While Julia attends the University in Vienna, Lillian suffers through revisions of her play with her mentor and sometimes lover Dashiel Hammett. After becoming a celebrated playwright, Lillian is invited to a writers conference in Russia. Julia, having taken up the battle against fascism, enlists Lillian en route to smuggle money through Nazi Germany which will assist in the Anti-Fascist cause. During a brief meeting with Julia on this trip, Lillian learns that Julia has had a child which is called Lilly.
A tender fable about childhood innocence amid the realities of war is set against the rugged landscape of Kashmir, so long a flash point for the territorial claims of neighboring India and Pakistan. The title character, an eight year old mountain boy, often hears distant gunfire. But it is not until he goes on a quest to reclaim his beloved donkey, which has been confiscated as payment of his poor family's debts, that he is drawn toward a violence he has no capacity to understand.
A fable of five vastly separate inner-city lives who struggle against their limitations in an interlocking tale assembled by a dark orchestrator.
King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.
Summer 1943. Tuur and Lambert are best friends. The surrounding of their idyllic village has no secrets for the teenagers. From the farm of Lamberts dad to the marl caves in the woods - it's their world. But the war is closing in and is about to change their lives forever. Tuurs dad joined the resistance and even his big brother seems so be part of it. Lamberts family on the other hand choose to obey the Germans. Then a new girls from the city shows up, befriending the boys but telling her secret to only one of them. A choice that separates the boys and ultimately gets her in trouble. Tuur not only risks losing his friendship with Lambert, but even his whole family. He will have to stop at nothing to save both.
The rematch of the century.
The Pianist is a film adapted from the biography of Wladyslaw Szpilman. A Jewish-Polish pianist who during the second world war lived and hid miraculously in Warsaw after having gone through a terrible tragedy. A film from Roman Polanski.
Adventurer Allan Quartermain leads an expedition into uncharted African territory in an attempt to locate an explorer who went missing during his search for the fabled diamond mines of King Solomon.
A businessman finds himself trapped at a hotel and threatened by women en masse.
A tale of an inner city drug dealer who turns away from crime to pursue his passion, rap music.
A story set in a small village in Sudetenland between 1937 and 1945. "Habermann" is based on true events.
Max Manus is a Norwegian 2008 biographic war film based on the real events of the life of resistance fighter Max Manus (1914–96), after his contribution in the Winter War against the Soviet Union. The story follows Manus – played by Aksel Hennie – through the outbreak of World War II in Norway until peacetime in 1945.
The blood-soaked tale of a Norse warrior's battle against the great and murderous troll, Grendel. Heads will roll. Out of allegiance to the King Hrothgar, the much respected Lord of the Danes, Beowulf leads a troop of warriors across the sea to rid a village of the marauding monster.
Set in rural France during the end of the Algerian war, and immersed in the music of the sixties, this film follows four students in friendship and love. Francois's best friend is a girl Maite, but instead he falls in love with a boy Serge, while Serge is falling for Maite. Henri is the outsider, an Algerian-born frenchman who has fled the war, and the catalyst for Francois to find his identity.
Curt Jurgens stars as a courageous Luftwaffe officer. Jurgens loves the service, even though he barely tolerates the Hitler regime. Sickened by wartime Nazi atrocities, Jurgens renounces his government, and is imprisoned and tortured as a result. Once released, the general takes pity on a downtrodden Jewish family. This isolated act of kindness is a point in his favor when Jurgens stands before Satan himself for his final judgment. The Devil's General was based on an immensely successful postwar play by German author Carl Zuckmeyer.
Thor along with his friends travels to mysterious island seeking glory and fame. Upon arriving they encounter strange creatures and they start searching the island for answers. Meanwhile Thor keeps seeing visions for a mighty warrior and a big hammer and Freyja tells him that his visions are clues so they start searching for the hammer.
Praised for its fine photography and production design if not its narrative, Sergei Bondarchuk directed this adaptation of the tale by Alexander Pushkin. Boris Godunov came to the Czarist throne at the end of the 16th century, after the original heir to Ivan the Terrible had died. At first, things went well for Godunov (played by Bondarchuk), but when the Russian people began to believe he had killed Ivan the Terrible's son in order to gain the throne, an alliance sprang up against the new Czar. Events continued to spin out of control as a young monk was presented as the son Godunov had supposedly killed. Now he was openly accused of failing an assassination attempt, which seems to be even worse than succeeding. In addition to these woes, Boris Godunov began to suffer serious health problems. So much for the joys of kingship.
1944 : Occupied France. Juliette (Vice) is Wehrmacht General Bamberg's mistress and enjoys a privileged life. Her younger sister Justine (Virtue) is about to marry Jean who is in the Resistance and come to Juliette for help. Both sisters end up at "la Commanderie", where Juliette becomes SS Colonel Schonberg's mistress and Justine is detained with other pretty girls who must satisfy the sexual needs of high-ranking nazi officials. Inspired by "Justine ou les infortunes de la vertu" by the marquis de Sade
Compilation of the show Blue Light.
Renowned journalist Torgny Segerstedt declares war against Hitler as he criticizes Swedish politicians who tried to look away from the tyranny of the Nazis with the good excuse of “neutralism”. His only weapon is his pen and his life is full of gossip such as an affair with his boss’ wife, a love scandal with a secretary younger than his daughter, and the suicide of his wife. However, he continues to fight a one man battle against Hitler and the Nazi regime until his death, throwing the question “Can one person really change history?” to the audience.
Wounded in Africa during World War II, Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg returns to his native Germany and joins the Resistance in a daring plan to create a shadow government and assassinate Adolf Hitler. When events unfold so that he becomes a central player, he finds himself tasked with both leading the coup and personally killing the Führer.
When in 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, their troops quickly besieged Leningrad. Foreign journalists are evacuated but one of them, Kate Davies, is presumed dead and misses the plane. Alone in the city she is helped by Nina Tsvetnova a young and idealist police officer and together they will fight for their own survival and the survival of the people in the besieged Leningrad. Written by Marcio Eduardo
For 15 years, Adam Curtis has concentrated on a cultural history behind the politics of the 20th century and beyond. In 1992, he made Pandora’s Box, six “fables” on the consequences (often dangerous) of political and technocratic rationality, especially when used to crush common sense and a clear reporting of the facts. Nothing concerns Curtis more than the way public relations and spin doctoring have become ways of masking the true nature of modern history - and nothing is so vital to the new forms of modern bureaucratic totalitarianism, the dulcet “order” that has come to fill the ground left by fascism and communism. In other words, the “enlightened” problem solving favored in the most advanced countries, but employed to obfuscate democratic impulses.
Newspaperman Bill Bradford becomes a special agent for the tax service trying to end the career of racketeer Nick Carston. Julie Gardner is Carston's bookkeeper. Bradford enters Carston's organization and Julie cooperates with him to land Carston in jail. An informer squeals on them. Julie is kidnapped by Carston's henchmen as she is about to testify
Max is a handsome young man who, after a fateful tryst with a German soldier, is forced to run for his life. Eventually Max is placed in a concentration camp where he pretends to be Jewish because in the eyes of the Nazis, gays are the lowest form of human being. But it takes a relationship with an openly gay prisoner to teach Max that without the love of another, life is not worth living.
Based on the only extensive prose work by the surrealist painter Josef Capek, Shades of Fern most resembles the philosophical fairy tales and fables of Josef’s older brother, the legendary Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek. Two young poachers, more boys than men, kill a gamekeeper when they are caught illegally hunting. Panicked, they retreat into a forest that grows steadily more forbidding and deadly as their fear for the future—and guilt over their action—mounts. Loosely based on hundreds of oral folk tales and legends that haunt the woods of Czechoslovakia, Vlácil’s contemporary updating artistically underscores the relationship between man and nature, crime and punishment, isolation and society, and guilt and memory.
Bruno is the story of a unique young boy genius, Bruno (Alex D. Linz), whose expression of his own individuality leads his family and community along an emotional journey. By the time he reaches his final destination, Bruno's story becomes a fable of the importance of each person's uniqueness and originality.
Based on testimony from the Nuremberg Trials, this East German drama explores the collusion between international corporations and Nazi scientists. Considering himself politically neutral, a chemist remains silent when his company creates the gas that kills millions of prisoners in concentration camps. This vintage film was used as propaganda for the new German Democratic Republic.
A war drama set during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, in which Russian troops held on to a border stronghold for nine days. The film shows the heroic defense of Brest Fortress, which has taken upon the first stroke of German fascist invaders on June 22 1941.
A fable of emotional liberation and chocolate. A mother and daughter move to a small French town where they open a chocolate shop. The town, religious and morally strict, is against them as they represent free-thinking and indulgence. When a group of Boat Gypsies float down the river the prejudices of the Mayor leads to a crisis.
A dramatised historical account of the rise and fall of Urbain Grandier, a 17th-century Roman Catholic priest accused of witchcraft following alleged demonic possessions of sexually repressed nuns.
A Jewish woman named Jettel Redlich flees Nazi Germany with her daughter Regina, to join her husband, Walter, on a farm in Kenya. At first, Jettel refuses to adjust to her new circumstances, bringing with her a set of china dishes and an evening gown. While Regina adapts readily to this new world, forming a strong bond with her father's cook, an African named Owuor.
Major Jasbir Singh Rana (Amitabh Bachchan) trains cadets to become officers in the national defence academy. A spoilt brat Virendra Pratap Singh (Ajay Devgan) joins the academy. Little does he know the major is a strict disciplinarian who takes a row to straighten him and make him a soldier. Thus starts a war between the two. In the meantime Virendra falls in love with a beautiful girl NISHA (Sonali Bendre) whose marriage was fixed by his father to a wealthy contractor's son. But the girl loves Virendra against her father's will and so starts the fight between Virendra and the girl's father supported by the contractor and his son with gang. Majorsaab helps Virendra to get his love and to change Virendra from spoilt brat to a good and brave soldier.
The final film in Rossellini's war film trilogy (the first two being Rome, Open City and Paisà). Germany Year Zero takes place in post-war Germany, unlike the others, which take place in German-occupied Rome and post-war Italy, respectively. The story follows a twelve-year-old boy, Edmund Kohler, who is mainly left to his own devices in order to survive and to help his family do the same.
It is the Second World War. The Nazis have invaded Britain. There is a split between the resistance and those who prefer to collaborate with the invaders for a quiet life. The protagonist, a nurse, is caught in the middle.
The two-part TV movie Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil crystallizes that evil by concentrating on two Berlin brothers. In 1931, Helmut Hoffman (Bill Nighy) a brilliant student and self-styled opportunist, joins Hitler's SS. At the same time, his younger brother Karl (John Shea), a top athlete and idealist, becomes a chauffeur for the "S.A." (storm troopers).
Tells the story of operation Market Garden. A failed attempt by the allies in the latter stages of WWII to end the war quickly by securing three bridges in Holland allowing access over the Rhine into Germany. A combination of poor allied intelligence and the presence of two crack German panzer divisions meant that the final part of this operation (the bridge in Arnhem over the Rhine) was doomed to failure.
Documents reveal in 1980 that the Germans planned to kill the Big Three in Teheran in 1943.This story starts in 1980 in Paris as the memories of Andrei Borodin (Igor Kostolevsky), a Soviet agent, take the action back to 1943 during the Teheran meetings of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. A high-ranking Nazi officer developed a plan to assassinate the three world leaders in order to undermine the Allied forces. He commissioned the German agent Max Richard (Armen Dzhigarkhanian) to carry out his plan, but it failed miserably due to the quick action and thinking of Andrei. While in Teheran, Andrei met a French woman, Marie Louni (Natalia Belokhvostikova), living in the city and they had a brief but intense affair. Nearly four decades later, the Nazi officer has been captured - but not for long. Freed by terrorists, the officer is hunting down the German agent who failed to carry out the planned assassinations. Max lives at Françoise (Claude Jade), a young French woman, who hides him.
Four 1950's cultural icons (Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Senator Joseph MacCarthy) who conceivably could have met and probably didn't, fictionally do in this modern fable of post-WWII America. Visually intriguing, the film has a fluid progression of flash-backs and flash-forwards centering on the fictional Einstein's current observations, childhood memories and apprehensions for the future.

© Valossa 2015–2024