The Proud and Sad Life of Mathias Kneißl

The Proud and Sad Life of Mathias Kneißl

The beginning of the end is starting now

1980 · 72 min · ★ 7.0 · Drama

The Robber Mathias Kneißl became a legend in Bavaria. The film is based on the historical criminal case and describes the last year of the rebel and folk hero. At the age of 23, he is released from prison, where he has served an unreasonably harsh six-year sentence. When this becomes known, he loses his job as a carpenter and now wants to emigrate to America with his girlfriend. He hopes to earn the money for the journey by committing crimes. In the process, he fatally wounds a gendarme. Despite this, Mathias Kneißl does not leave the area and stays in the Dachau hinterland. Only when his girlfriend betrays him is he able to find his hiding place. The farm was besieged by 300 police officers for days and then shot up. Kneißl was seriously injured and treated in a clinic in Munich before being beheaded in Augsburg in 1902.

Directed by Oliver Herbrich · Written by Oliver Herbrich

Your Rating

Cast

Make it a double feature

1h 56m together

The Proud and Sad Life of Mathias Kneißl

Dead Heart

Both from Oliver Herbrich.

More from Oliver HerbrichSee all →

Priests of the Condemned

Priests of the Condemned · 1992

Priests of the Condemned

MovieDocumentary

The film depicts life in Nepal’s leper colonies, where leprosy, now curable, is seen as a divine curse. During the monsoon, when gods leave the Kathmandu Valley, people face afflictions like leprosy. Nepal has 170,000 cases, with many severely disabled and ostracized due to fear and religious beliefs. Lacking support and medical care, they end up as beggars in cities.

Dead Heart

Dead Heart · 1986

MovieDocumentary

The Australians call the endless deserts in the interior of the continent the "dead heart". Here lies the town of Birdsville, 23 houses and a bar with a liquor license. The long-awaited telephone connection arrived in 1979, 90 years after it had been applied for. For one weekend, this place at the end of the world turns into a cauldron when 5,000 Australians, tired of civilization, invade for the annual horse race, the "Birdsville Cup". They come in buses, off-road vehicles, motorcycles and sports planes and have become a veritable plague. Because here, everyone can do what they've always wanted to do: for example, get drunk until they drop and never get up again. The collective mass drinking reaches its peak on Saturday night. By Monday morning, the fun is over. What remains is a village with 23 houses, a bar and a street littered with 80,000 empty beer cans.

Earthbound

Earthbound · 1989

The movie "Earthbound" is based on an authentic story: Franz Seeliger, a 75 year old psychiatric patient wants to steer a self-built, muscle propelled flying machine. But he is kept in custody since the Thrid Reich.

Der Al Capone vom Donaumoos

Der Al Capone vom Donaumoos · 1986

Der Al Capone vom Donaumoos

MovieDocumentary

The autobiographical portrait of Theo Berger, who gained notoriety as the king of burglaries and escapes and spent most of his life in prison. His criminal career includes over 150 crimes committed since the age of 18. Theo Berger was sentenced twice to 15 years and twice to preventive detention. The film was made during his parole, which he received after contracting leukemia. But less than six months after filming was completed, Theo Berger was arrested again. Unprepared for a life in freedom, he was involved in a bank robbery. He was sentenced to a further 12 years in prison.

Wodzeck

Wodzeck · 1984

Franz Woyzeck, the protagonist of Georg Büchner's unfinished drama is incorporated in this adaption of a classic. The contemporary Franz Wodzeck lives in Germany's Ruhr industrial region. Wodzeck meanders back and forth between the monotony of working each day in a car factory and returning each evening to the cheerless desolation of the factory dormitory. Once his girlfriend, Maleen, snubs him for his boss, Wodzeck's personal and social frustrations escalate into a vista of emotions: he runs amok and bloodily stubs Maleen to death. After he has killed his one sole love Wodzeck resigns himself to his fate. A hollow shell of a man is admitted to a psychiatric asylum. He feels no more anxiety, no more desire. He simply exists. FBW Prädikat: "wertvoll".

Gesetz der Straße

Gesetz der Straße · 1994

Gesetz der Straße

MovieDocumentary

Travelers have wandered the Irish countryside for centuries. They were tinsmiths, harvesters and migrant laborers, fortune- and story-tellers, horse-traders and peddlers, knife grinders and scrap dealers, always performing a welcome chore for the settled society. As the centuries went by the so called tinkers adjusted their lifestyle to the changing conditions. Today, however, their traditional life on the road is coming to an end. "Rules of the Road" is a contemporary road movie forgoing the familiar cliché of romantic escape. Instead it focuses on Irish travelers who not only herald a sweeping economic migration, but also are the living exponents of an odyssey. An odyssey reflecting the state of mind in an absolute industrial society. The Irish travelers have no place to go. And they never had a place there they could stay. —Oliver Herbrich

The World beyond the World

The World beyond the World · 1986

The World beyond the World

MovieDocumentary

'Thinking machines' and 'people thinking as machines' (super-computerprogrammers who have internalized computerese) are perhaps two of a kind. But clashes with the 'real world' are preprogrammed for these machines of flesh and blood. The film traces humankind's striving to discover itself again in its mechanical creations, from the effort to construct automatons in Switzerland some 200 years ago, to a pinnacle display of the 1980ies achievements: a robot playing Haydn's 'Genesis' at the World Expo in Japan.

More Like This

Sissi

MovieComedyDrama

The young Bavarian princess Elisabeth, who all call Sissi, goes with her mother and older sister Néné to Austria where Néné will be wed to an emperor named Franz Joseph, Yet unexpectedly Franz runs into Sissi while out fishing and they fall in love.

Sissi: The Young Empress

Sissi: The Young Empress · 1956

Sissi: The Young Empress

MovieDramaComedy

Sissi is now the empress of Austria and attempts to learn etiquette. While she is busy being empress she also has to deal with her difficult new mother-in-law, while the arch-duchess Sophie is trying to tell the emperor how to rule and also Sissi how to be a mother.

Sissi: The Fateful Years of an Empress

Sissi: The Fateful Years of an Empress · 1957

Sissi: The Fateful Years of an Empress

MovieRomanceDrama

After a wonderful time in Hungary Sissi falls extremely ill and must retreat to a Mediterranean climate to rest. The young empress’ mother takes her from Austria to recover in Madeira.

Grave Decisions

Grave Decisions · 2006

Grave Decisions

MovieDramaComedy

In this black comedy set in small-town Bavaria, 11-year-old Sebastian thinks you can never be too young to be a murderer. He's convinced that he killed his mother on the day he was born and is certain he's already been condemned to purgatory. Deciding he might be able to knock off a few years of his sentence by doing good deeds, Sebastian sets out to find a wife for his father Lorenz. When Lorenz and Sebastian's schoolteacher Veronika fall madly in love with each other, it seems the heavens must be smiling. There's just one hitch: Veronika is married.

Winter Sleepers

Winter Sleepers · 1997

Winter Sleepers

MovieDramaRomance

Young blonde translator Rebecca lives with her boyfriend ski instructor Marco in a mountain villa owned by her friend, nurse Laura. Rene, local cinema projectionist, steals Marco's car and gets into a car crash with local Theo, whose daughter, after being in coma for a time, dies. Rene suffers from partial short term memory loss and starts a relationship with Laura. Meanwhile Marco is looking for the man who stole his car and Theo - for the man who killed his daughter...

Cinderella Man

Cinderella Man · 2005

MovieRomanceDrama

The true story of boxer Jim Braddock who, following his retirement in the 1930s, makes a surprise comeback in order to lift his family out of poverty.

Ronia: The Robber's Daughter

Ronia: The Robber's Daughter · 1984

Ronia: The Robber's Daughter

MovieAdventureDrama

Ronia lives happily in her father's castle until she comes across a new playmate, Birk, in the nearby dark forest. The two explore the wilderness, braving dangerous Witchbirds and Rump-Gnomes. But when their families find out Birk and Ronia have been playing together, they forbid them to see each other again. Indeed, their fathers are competing robber chieftains and bitter enemies. Now the two spunky children must try to tear down the barriers that have kept their families apart for so long.

No Good Deed

No Good Deed · 2002

MovieActionCrime

While doing a friend a favor and searching for a runaway teenager, a police detective stumbles upon a bizarre band of criminals about to pull off a bank robbery.

Lola

Germany in the autumn of 1957: Lola, a seductive cabaret singer-prostitute exults in her power as a temptress of men, but she wants out—she wants money, property, and love. Pitting a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building commissioner, Lola launches an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale. Shot in childlike candy colors, Fassbinder’s homage to Josef von Sternberg’s classic The Blue Angel stands as a satiric tribute to capitalism.

Smoke

MovieComedyDrama

Writer Paul Benjamin is nearly hit by a bus when he leaves Auggie Wren's smoke shop. Stranger Rashid Cole saves his life, and soon middle-aged Paul tells homeless Rashid that he wouldn't mind a short-term housemate. Still grieving over his wife's murder, Paul is moved by both Rashid's quest to reconnect with his father and Auggie's discovery that a woman who might be his daughter is about to give birth.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter