Follows three men who are in love with a most beautiful waitress: An intellectual restaurant owner, a mysterious musician and an erratic businessman; taking place during the WWII.
The two youngest children of the Richard family disappear not long after they moves into their new secluded home, but this is only the beginning as the rest of the family struggle to hold themselves together.
Director:
Andrew Salter
Stars:
Michael Howlett,
Olivia Mackenzie-Smith,
Brendan Miles
Miklos, a magazine photographer, has a hard time finding the girl of his dreams. But in the summer of 1992 in Budapest, he meets Dora at a club and feels a strange attraction to her. But he... See full summary »
Amidst the war climate, a teenage boy discovering himself becomes love-stricken by Malèna, a sensual woman living in a small, narrow-minded Italian town.
Director:
Giuseppe Tornatore
Stars:
Monica Bellucci,
Giuseppe Sulfaro,
Luciano Federico
This is a family story that covers thirty years in the life of the Freytag family (narrated by the grandson, Robert). When his grandfather returns from Russia in 1949, he becomes part of ... See full summary »
Director:
Oskar Roehler
Stars:
Jürgen Vogel,
Meret Becker,
Moritz Bleibtreu
Budapest in the thirties. The restaurant owner Laszlo hires the pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody triggers off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans goes and falls in love with Ilona as well.Written by
anonymous
The Nazi called Wieck, played by Ben Becker, is a fictionalized SS Col. Kurt Becher, the who was acquitted in Nuremberg of war crimes and who ended up the richest man in Germany. See more »
Goofs
When the trio goes to a movie theater, they watch a newsreel that declares that the song "Gloomy Sunday" "drove 157 people in Hungary to suicide in the past eight weeks." We don't know whether that statement ever actually appeared in a German newsreel during the war. In any event, there is no evidence that the song ever actually drove more than a handful of people--if any--to suicide. See more »
Quotes
László:
Everyone would like it all: something for the body, something for the soul. Something that fills you up, something that makes you hungry.
See more »
Soundtracks
Gloomy Sunday
Version from Artie Shaw
Music by Alliance AG
Music by Schweiz See more »
Although there are plenty of fiction in it, the film is beautifully woven with exquisite actors/actresses and crew, not to mention the streamy version of the song.
Yet spoken in the most splendid sounds of the German language, if there is one thing I could hope for, I hope to see the same film overdubbed digitally in each characters' original languages -- Ilona, Laszlo, Andras and the song in Hungarian with Hans occasionally speaking German. It would probably be more dramatic to see some characters switching between German and Hungarian as history flows. Even though I don't speak either of the languages.
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Although there are plenty of fiction in it, the film is beautifully woven with exquisite actors/actresses and crew, not to mention the streamy version of the song.
Yet spoken in the most splendid sounds of the German language, if there is one thing I could hope for, I hope to see the same film overdubbed digitally in each characters' original languages -- Ilona, Laszlo, Andras and the song in Hungarian with Hans occasionally speaking German. It would probably be more dramatic to see some characters switching between German and Hungarian as history flows. Even though I don't speak either of the languages.