Sound

Hanns Eisler

Born July 6, 1898 · Leipzig, Germany

Died September 6, 1962 · aged 64

Hanns Eisler (1898–1962) was a German-Austrian composer. He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artistic association with Bertolt Brecht, and for the scores he wrote for films. Because of his Jewish background and his communist convictions, Eisler was in exile during the 1930s and 1940s.

Known For

Night and Fog

Night and Fog · 1956

MovieDocumentaryHistory

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Hangmen Also Die!

Hangmen Also Die! · 1943

Hangmen Also Die!

MovieDramaThriller

During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda, a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny and his daughter Mascha.

A Scandal in Paris

A Scandal in Paris · 1946

A Scandal in Paris

MovieCrimeRomance

A smooth-talking French thief wangles his way into an important position as prefect of police.

The Spanish Main

The Spanish Main · 1945

The Spanish Main

MovieAdventureDrama

Laurent van Horn is the leader of a band of Dutch refugees on a ship seeking freedom in the Carolinas, when the ship is wrecked on the coast of Cartagene, governed by Don Juan Alvardo, a Spanish ruler. Alvarado has Laurent thrown in prison, but the latter escapes, and five-years later is a pirate leader. He poses as the navigator on a ship in which Contessa Francesca, daughter of a Mexican noble, is traveling on her way to marry Alvarado, whom she has never seen. Laurent's pirates capture the ship and Francesca, in order to save another ship, gives her hand-in-marriage to Laurent, who sails her to the pirate hideout. This irks his jealous pirate comrades Anne Bonney and Captain Benjamin Black. They overpower Laurent and send Francesca to Alvarado, and then Mario du Billar, a trusted right-hand man, makes a deal to deliver Laurent to Alvarado.

The Witches of Salem

The Witches of Salem · 1957

The Witches of Salem

MovieDramaHistory

Salem 1692. The young Abigail, seduced and abandoned by John Proctor, accuses John's wife of being a witch in revenge. A series of tragic trials soon befall Salem as fear and suspicion blur the lines of reality.

The Woman on the Beach

The Woman on the Beach · 1947

The Woman on the Beach

A sailor suffering from post-traumatic stress becomes involved with a beautiful and enigmatic seductress married to a blind painter.

Hell on Earth

Hell on Earth · 1931

Hell on Earth (German: Niemandsland) is a 1931 German film directed by Victor Trivas. The film is also known as No Man's Land in France.

Deadline at Dawn

Deadline at Dawn · 1946

Deadline at Dawn

MovieMysteryThriller

A young Navy sailor has one night to find out why a woman was killed and he ended up with a bag of money after a drinking blackout.

Filmography

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Night and Fog

Night and Fog · 1956

MovieDocumentaryHistory

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Original Music Composer

Hangmen Also Die!

Hangmen Also Die! · 1943

Hangmen Also Die!

MovieDramaThriller

During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda, a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny and his daughter Mascha.

Music

A Scandal in Paris

A Scandal in Paris · 1946

A Scandal in Paris

MovieCrimeRomance

A smooth-talking French thief wangles his way into an important position as prefect of police.

Original Music Composer

The Spanish Main

The Spanish Main · 1945

The Spanish Main

MovieAdventureDrama

Laurent van Horn is the leader of a band of Dutch refugees on a ship seeking freedom in the Carolinas, when the ship is wrecked on the coast of Cartagene, governed by Don Juan Alvardo, a Spanish ruler. Alvarado has Laurent thrown in prison, but the latter escapes, and five-years later is a pirate leader. He poses as the navigator on a ship in which Contessa Francesca, daughter of a Mexican noble, is traveling on her way to marry Alvarado, whom she has never seen. Laurent's pirates capture the ship and Francesca, in order to save another ship, gives her hand-in-marriage to Laurent, who sails her to the pirate hideout. This irks his jealous pirate comrades Anne Bonney and Captain Benjamin Black. They overpower Laurent and send Francesca to Alvarado, and then Mario du Billar, a trusted right-hand man, makes a deal to deliver Laurent to Alvarado.

Music

The Witches of Salem

The Witches of Salem · 1957

The Witches of Salem

MovieDramaHistory

Salem 1692. The young Abigail, seduced and abandoned by John Proctor, accuses John's wife of being a witch in revenge. A series of tragic trials soon befall Salem as fear and suspicion blur the lines of reality.

Original Music Composer

The Woman on the Beach

The Woman on the Beach · 1947

The Woman on the Beach

A sailor suffering from post-traumatic stress becomes involved with a beautiful and enigmatic seductress married to a blind painter.

Original Music Composer

Hell on Earth

Hell on Earth · 1931

Hell on Earth (German: Niemandsland) is a 1931 German film directed by Victor Trivas. The film is also known as No Man's Land in France.

Original Music Composer

Deadline at Dawn

Deadline at Dawn · 1946

Deadline at Dawn

MovieMysteryThriller

A young Navy sailor has one night to find out why a woman was killed and he ended up with a bag of money after a drinking blackout.

Original Music Composer

Far from Vietnam

Far from Vietnam · 1967

Far from Vietnam

MovieDocumentaryWar

In seven different parts, Godard, Ivens, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais, and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War.

Music

None But the Lonely Heart

None But the Lonely Heart · 1944

None But the Lonely Heart

MovieDramaRomance

When an itinerant reluctantly returns home to help his sickly mother run her shop, they're both tempted to turn to crime to help make ends meet.

Music

Galileo

Galileo · 1975

MovieDramaHistory

Challenged by a new student, tutor and theorist Galileo co-opts emerging telescope technology and discovers irrefutable proof of the heretical notion that the earth is not the center of the universe. But in a rigid society ruled by an uneasy alliance of aristocracy and clergy already undermined by the Plague and the Reformation, science is a threat and enlightenment is a luxury. Faced with either death at the hands of the Inquisition or recantation to a hypocritical but all-powerful Papacy, Galileo must choose between his own life and the restless scientific curiosity that he has spurned family, friends, and wealth to pursue.

Original Music Composer

Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World?

Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World? · 1932

Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World?

Kuhle Wampe takes place in early-1930s Berlin. The film begins with a montage of newspaper headlines describing steadily-rising unemployment figures. This is followed by scenes of a young man looking for work in the city and the family discussing the unpaid back rent. The young man, brother of the protagonist Anni, removes his wristwatch and throws himself from a window out of despair. Shortly thereafter his family is evicted from their apartment. Now homeless, the family moves into a garden colony of sorts with the name “Kuhle Wampe.”

Original Music Composer

Communists

Communists · 2014

Jean-Marie Straub pushes this musicality of blocks to a paroxysmal extreme, mixing blocks of time (40 years separate the various extracts that are going to be used, and what is to be filmed), blocks of text (Malraux, Fortini, Vittorini, Hölderlin) and blocks of language (French, Italian, German), and from this ruckus emerges the history of the world, yes, History with a capital H, and from the same movement, the political hope of its being overtaken. So this is an adventure film, about the Human adventure, still one that is always, in the end, overtaken by Nature.

Music

The 400 Million

The 400 Million · 1939

The 400 Million

MovieDocumentary

Joris Ivens’s wartime documentary of China’s resistance to the Japanese invasion, cross-cutting civilian exodus and bombing with the Nationalist state’s mobilization—schools, industry, dispersed war production, foreign relief—and guerrilla fighting. Framing an ancient nation of “400 million,” it contrasts tradition with modernization and closes on the unresolved question of victory.

Music

Herr Puntila and His Servant Matti

Herr Puntila and His Servant Matti · 1960

Herr Puntila and His Servant Matti

This first film adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s play about class distinctions was made in 1955 in the Vienna Rosenhügel studios, but it was only premiered five years later. Curt Bois plays the rich capitalist Puntila who only becomes somewhat agreeable when he is drunk (which he is most of the time in this film). In his inebriated state, Puntila not only gets amorously involved with three different ladies but also suggests that his daughter Eva marries his chauffeur Matti. The chauffeur, however, doesn’t really agree…

Original Music Composer

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread · 1949

Our Daily Bread

A story about a family after the Second World War. The petty bourgeois cashier Karl Weber of Berlin observes from a distance how his son Ernst participates in the building of a new socialist society. Karl does not understand Ernst's visions, instead he confides in his other son Harry. However, Harry becomes involved in illicit business and Karl quickly realizes that it would be best to join his son Ernst in the citizen-owned factory.

Original Music Composer

Destinies of Women

Destinies of Women · 1952

Destinies of Women

Berlin 1952, seven years after WWII. Four women are looking for a good man and happiness in the divided city. Their destinies are loosely connected through one person: the West Berlin dandy and womanizer, Conny.

Music

Bel Ami

Bel Ami · 1955

In the 1880s, Georges Duroy, back from the Colonies, arrives in Paris with the firm intention of conquering the capital through his power of seduction, his selfishness and cynicism. Entering into journalism through the back door he will soon rise to the top with the support of several women: Madeleine Forestier, the wife of his journalist friend Charles; Clothilde de Marelle, his first mistress; Virginie Walter, the wife of a newspaper owner; Suzanne Walter, her daughter who eventually marries Duroy.

Music

Leben des Galilei

Leben des Galilei · 1947

Leben des Galilei

Galileo, an eminent professor and scientist in the 17th century Venetian Republic, is short of money. A prospective student tells him about a novel invention, the telescope, that is being sold in Amsterdam.

Music

So Well Remembered

So Well Remembered · 1947

So Well Remembered

MovieRomanceDrama

A mill-owner's ambitious daughter almost ruins her husband's political career.

Music

Council of the Gods

Council of the Gods · 1950

Council of the Gods

Based on the records of the Nuremberg trial of the chemical giant IG Farben; a story about the collaboration between international corporations and Nazi scientists, whose research contributed to the death of millions. The chemist Dr. Hans Scholz lives through a tortuous political transformation and maturation process. Eventually, he adopts political neutrality and closes his eyes to the fact that the poison being produced in his factory is being used in the extermination camps. Standing before the judges at the Nuremberg trials, he must face the fact that he is implicated in the deaths of millions in the gas chambers of the concentration camps.

Music

Song of the Streets

Song of the Streets · 1933

Song of the Streets

MovieRomanceDrama

A gang of poverty-ridden juvenile delinquents progress from petty theft to hard crime, but a kindly judge manages to set most of them on the right path after they are finally apprehended.

Music

Abdul the Damned

Abdul the Damned · 1935

Abdul the Damned

MovieDramaHistory

In 1908, Sultan Abdul Hamid rules the Turkish Empire, but he is faced with the threat of revolt by the Young Turk party. He allows Hilmi Pasha, the leader of the Young Turks, to return from exile and form the country's first constitutional government. With tensions still growing, chief of police Kadar Pasha assassinates Hassan Bey, the leader of the Old Turk party, and makes it look as if a Young Turk committed the crime, in order to give Abdul an excuse for arresting the Young Turk leaders. Meanwhile, Abdul becomes infatuated with a visiting Austrian singer. When she rejects his advances, she endangers both herself and her fiancé, a Turkish officer who also knows who really shot Hassan Bey.

Original Music Composer

Geschwader Fledermaus

Geschwader Fledermaus · 1958

Geschwader Fledermaus

An American transport squadron led by former General Lee supports the French colonial army in Vietnam in return for high pay. Originally their mission was only to help the wounded, but as the advance of the Vietnamese liberation army puts the French under increasing pressure, they also fly ammunition - in return for even more money and in defiance of international law. Chief pilot Bryk refuses to fly, secretary Flessy becomes the unscrupulous general's mistress after one lover after another fails to return from a mission, and the rest of the squadron is shot down during an ammunition flight. The French army shows up at the camp to arrest the interpreter Thao for espionage. Bryk rescues her and flees with her to the liberated part of Vietnam.

Music

Das Leben des Galileo Galilei

Das Leben des Galileo Galilei · 1978

Das Leben des Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei seeks evidence to support the Copernican model of the universe, but the new theory contradicts Church dogma. Based on the design of a telescope sold in Holland, he constructs a telescope for astronomers, which he uses to substantiate his hypotheses..

Original Music Composer