Confessions of Felix Krull 2021

Literary adaptation: a handsome youth of humble origins rises in society through his connections made as an elevator attendant in a luxury hotel.

Britten: Death in Venice 2010

A staging of Britten's opera filmed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice in June 2008.

Buddenbrooks 2008

Mid-19th-century, Baltic Sea port city of Lubeck, Germany. Follows the fourth generation of the Buddenbrook mercantile family as Tony and Thomas reach the age of marriage. Fatefully impeded every step of the way, the Buddenbrooks struggle as economic hardship and personal defeats weigh down family relations.

Mario and the Magician 1994

The Twenties: The German Fuhrmann family spend their holidays in Italy again. The country is full of mysteries in that time. The Fuhrmann's have to realize the upcoming and growing fascism and their children are fascinated by a magician visiting the town. Soon nothing is as usual. The times are changing ...

The Mirage 1992

An old woman who is unaware that she is near death, falls in love with her son’s young American tutor.

Der kleine Herr Friedemann 1991

Doctor Faustus 1982

A musician beds down a prostitute he knows is diseased in order to gain inspiration, an act he later believes to have been a tacit pact with Satan

The Magic Mountain 1982

Hans Castorp, fresh from university and about to become a civil engineer, comes to the Sanatorium Berghof in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin Joachim, an army officer, who is recovering there from tuberculosis. Intending to remain at the Berghof for three weeks, Hans is gradually contaminated by the morbid atmosphere pervading the place. Wishing very much to be considered a patient like the others, he achieves his ends and stays in the sanatorium for ...seven years. During this time, he has enough time to take part in the furious philosophical debates pitting against each other Settembrini, a secular humanist, and Naphta, a totalitarian Jesuit. And to fall in love with the beautiful but enigmatic Clawdia Chauchat. When he is finally discharged in 1914 - along with all the other patients - it is only to plunge into the horrors of World War I.

Death in Venice 1981

Gustav Von Aschenbach, a passionate composer, arrives in Venice as a result of wanderlust and there meets a young man by whose beauty he becomes obsessed.

Hitler: A Career 1977

A keen chronicle of the unlikely rise to power of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and a dissection of the Third Reich (1933-1945), but also an analysis of mass psychology and how the desperate crowd can be deceived and shepherded to the slaughterhouse.

Lotte in Weimar 1975

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was the author of Werther, the romantic novel that was transformed into a play during Goethe's lifetime and which initiated the whole German romantic movement. The book's story tells of young love and suicide. In this East German film, based on a book by Thomas Mann, Lotte (Lilli Palmer) was the woman who served as the model for the heroine in the novel Werther. She comes to Goethe's hometown for a visit, and her experiences there eerily re-create episodes from the book. Goethe comes across as a pompous old bore, and his friends as pandering sycophants, in this very proper communist party-sponsored, anti-heroic movie.

Death in Venice 1971

Composer Gustav von Aschenbach travels to Venice for health reasons. There, he becomes obsessed with the stunning beauty of an adolescent Polish boy named Tadzio who is staying with his family at the same Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido as Aschenbach.

Tonio Kröger 1964

This drama is taken from Thomas Mann's 1903 semi-autobiographical novel. Tonio (Jean Claude Brialy) is an aspiring writer and the son of a rigid aristocratic father and a music-loving mother. Wandering throughout Germany and Italy to "find himself," Tonio frequently remembers his childhood experiences in a series of flashbacks. The highlight of the film is the expert lensing by cinematographer Wolf Wirth. Erika Mann, the daughter of the late poet and author, collaborated with Ennio Flaiano on the screenplay.

Buddenbrooks - 2. Teil 1959

Second part of two of the saga of the troubled Buddenbrook family and their business in 19th century Germany.

Buddenbrooks - 1. Teil 1959

First part of two of the saga of the troubled Buddenbrook family and their business in mid 19th century Germany.

Confessions of Felix Krull 1957

Thomas Mann's witty and intimate story of a irresistible scoundrel.

The Severed Heads 1957

A short mime adaptation of a Thomas Mann story about a Parisian urchin who makes her living selling human heads. Lost for nearly 50 years, the movie was found in 2006 by the son of Ruth Michelly and Saul Gilbert when he found it in his mom's attic in Munich.

Königliche Hoheit 1953

An American heiress in Europe falls in love with a German prince, but he is required to marry someone else for reasons of state convenience.