Among the pieces featured in Fragments are the final reel of John Ford's The Village Blacksmith (1922) and a glimpse at Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh (1927), the only Oscar®-winning performance in a lost film. Fragments also features clips from such lost films as Cleopatra (1917), starring...
"Basher Bill," a retired prizefighter turned criminal, pretends to reform by joining a Salvation Army shelter in London run by a pious wraith named Elizabeth. Attracted to Elizabeth (although he is engaged to a street girl named Annie), Bill confesses to a bank robbery, has a spiritual revelation,...
An anti-British propaganda film from Nazi Germany which depicts the life of the South African politician Paul Kruger and his eventual defeat by the British during the Boer War.
Der Herrscher (The Sovereign) was based on Before Sunset, a play by Gerhart Hauptmann. The great Emil Jannings stars as Mathias Clausen, a self-made businessman who is forced to do a great deal of soul-searching when his wife unexpectedly dies. Determining to start life anew, he falls in love with...
This film is a fascinating showcase for Emil Janning's theatrical play. He's a gentle school teacher who believes in his boys and is easily fooled about all things, while the other town officials want him dismissed. Curiously it's very hard to see what the film is exactly aiming for. Disaster...
The only surviving excerpt of a documentary on film production in Weimar Germany, featuring the different personalities of several famous directors of the era at work on the set including Fritz Lang, Robert Wiene, and E.A. Dupont.
Somewhere in Southern Bavaria Xaver wants to marry Gretel, but her father Kohlhiesel wants his elder daughter Liesel to marry first. The problem is, nobody wants to marry her, because she is too brutal. Seppel suggests, that he should marry Liesel first, get rid of her and then he can marry...
An enslaved girl, Leila, is bought by Vaco Juan Riberda as a gift for his friend, Dr. Jan van Zuylen. van Zuylen is outraged, and refuses. Years later, van Zuylen meets Riberda and Leila again, and finds that they have married. Leila and van Zylen acquaint themselves and fall in love.
Rupp (Jannings) is a former butcher, made rich in the meat packing industry as a result of the reversal of fortunes brought on by WWI. He is crude, uncouth and uneducated. His son, Fred, is the apple of his father's eye and is an auto enthusiast. The widowed Rupp falls in love with a former...
The intricate history of UFA, a film production company founded in 1917 that has survived the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, the Adenauer era and the many and tumultuous events of contemporary Germany, and has always been the epicenter of the German film industry.
Die Ratten was produced by actress and singer Grete Ly. Her company, Grete Ly-Film, made five films between 1919 and 1921. Die Ratten, which is based on the play of the same name by Gerhart Hauptmann, was the last one. Hauptmann, one of the most important promoters of literary naturalism, had...
A married restaurant owner is persuaded to become a bootlegger by a beautiful young girl. When he starts making money at it, she steals it, then runs off with another man. His wife finds out what happened. Complications ensue.
German chancellor Otto von Bismarck promises the dying emperor Wilhelm I. to be loyal to his grandson. But the gap between young Kaiser Wilhelm II. and old Bismarck is rapidly widening. It soon appears that an era is coming to an end.
The husband of Countess Manon Moreau is found murdered. André Rabatin, who belongs to the same club as Count Moreau, is the suspect. Rabatin, a old-school gentleman, affirms his innocence to the widow and claims that the death of the count must have been a tragic accident. Manon believes Rabatin...
