"Actor: Heinz B"

• The Tin Drum | DVD | (10/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The narrator of the film is little Oscar a precocious child of a permissive petty bourgeois couple. He decides to stop growing on his third birthday as if refusing to enter the sordid sexuality of his surroundings and the unstoppable growth of Nazism the same year that Hitler came to power. With his noisy tin drum always at his side and a piercing scream that can shatter glass Oscar makes his disturbing but often darkly comic way through Hitler's Germany... This powerful adapt

• Regular Guys | DVD | (24/10/2005) from £9.97   |  Saving you £5.02 (33.50%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Not your typical buddy movie Regular Guys is a refreshingly witty German comedy that takes a tongue-in-cheek peek at the complexities of relationships - gay straight and somewhere in-between. Christoph a macho cop goes on a bender after his fiance throws him out of the house. After waking in the arms of the very cute (and very naked!) Edgar a gay auto-mechanic Christoph's world is immediately changed. Did he - in a drunken haze - get it on with a man? If he did i

• Swedish Erotica Exposed | DVD | (23/01/2012) from £8.08   |  Saving you £-2.09 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Christina Lindberg stars as Lena Svensson, a 17 year-old living a double life of fantasy and reality. Her young boyfriend, Jan, is weak and unable to meet her salacious appetite for sex, whilst displaying an unhealthy oedipal relationship with his mother. In order to satisfy her wild side, Lena becomes involved with an older man named Helge, a brutal figure who hosts drug and sex-fuelled parties and who forces the young Lena to be photographed in uncompromising positions. When Lena tries to run away, Helge uses the photographs to blackmail her into remaining under his sadistic control. Directed by Gustav Wiklund, Exposed is a complex and twisted Lindberg classic. Banned in 36 countries, the film explores themes of sadomasochism and sexual oppression, showing the dark side of sex and human nature.

• From The Life Of The Marionettes | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Made in Munich while Bergman was in self-imposed exile from Sweden, From the Life of the Marionettes is not so much a "whodunit" as a "whydunnit". The film opens with the shockingly violent and senseless murder of a prostitute by Peter, a young, successful businessman. Through a series of non-chronological flashbacks to a time before the crime, we attempt to fathom just what impelled Peter to perpetrate this terrible murder. Along with wife Katarina, the character Peter also featured in Bergman's 1973 film Scenes from a Marriage. Here, as there, we see that they are wedded in the sense of being emotionally chained to each other, yet hating each other for their mutual dependency. There is also a perturbing scene in which they both appear to "get off" when he takes a knife to her throat. His cold and duplicitous psychiatrist glibly ascribes the murder to a repressed homosexuality resulting in a violent outburst, while Katarina's business partner, who is gay, appears to harbour a desire to sabotage the pair's marriage. This film has an airless, fake-lit quality about it, which reflects the conditions of the characters' lives but by the end, leaves you mesmerised and still uncertain as to why what happened has happened. A late but great Bergman work. On the DVD: This edition adequately enhances the stark monochrome in which most of the film is set. Bergman's notes reveal that his depictions of Peter in his psychiatric ward were based on his own behaviour during a recent spell in a similar institution following his arrest for tax evasion. Philip Strick's critical notes observe that the sparing use of colour at the beginning and end of the film signify what may have been the only times in Peter's life when he "experienced reality". --David Stubbs

• Franz Lehar - Das Land Des Lachelns (Ebert) | DVD | (19/09/2005) from £15.04   |  Saving you £4.95 (24.80%)   |  RRP £19.99

  1974 film version of Franz Lehar's operetta Das Land Des Lachelns famous for the song 'Dein ist mein ganzes Herz'.

• The Last Metro | Blu Ray | (29/09/2014) from £22.72   |  Saving you £-2.73 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  François Truffaut again tackles the elusive nature of creativity and creation in his thoughtful, sumptuous 1980 film The Last Metro. Nominated for the Best Foreign Language film Oscar, and a winner of various Césars, The Last Metro is set in occupied France during World War II. Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve) manages the Theatre Montmarte in the stead of her Jewish husband, director Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent). He has purportedly fled France but is really hiding in the basement of the theatre. The one hope to save the Montmarte is a new play starring the dashing Bernard Granger (Gérard Depardieu). The attraction between Marion and Bernard is palpable, and as usual Truffaut creates tension and drama from even the most casual of occurrences. The theme of the director locked away while his lover and his creation are appropriated by others makes for interesting Truffaut study, but first and foremost this is a well-spun romance.--Keith Simanton, Amazon.com

• Nosferatu | DVD | (16/11/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Nosferatu ... the name alone can chill the blood!". F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, released in 1922, was the first (albeit unofficial) screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Nearly 80 years on, it remains among the most potent and disturbing horror films ever made. The sight of Max Schreck's hollow-eyed, cadaverous vampire rising creakily from his coffin still has the ability to chill the blood. Nor has the film dated. Murnau's elision of sex and disease lends it a surprisingly contemporary resonance. The director and his screenwriter Henrik Gaalen are true to the source material, but where most subsequent screen Draculas (whether Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Frank Langella or Gary Oldman) were portrayed as cultured and aristocratic, Nosferatu is verminous and evil. (Whenever he appears, rats follow in his wake.)The film's full title--Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror)--reveals something of Murnau's intentions. Supremely stylised, it differs from Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) or Ernst Lubitsch's films of the period in that it was not shot entirely in the studio. Murnau went out on location in his native Westphalia. As a counterpoint to the nightmarish world inhabited by Nosferatu, he used imagery of hills, clouds, trees and mountains (it is, after all, sunlight that destroys the vampire). It's not hard to spot the similarity between the gangsters in film noir hugging doorways or creeping up staircases with the image of Schreck's diabolic Nosferatu, bathed in shadow, sidling his way toward a new victim. Heavy chiaroscuro, oblique camera angles and jarring close-ups--the devices that crank up the tension in Val Lewton horror movies and edgy, urban thrillers such as Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice--were all to be found first in Murnau's chilling masterpiece. --Geoffrey Macnab

• Judgment In Berlin | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £4.88   |  Saving you £-2.89 (N/A%)   |  RRP £1.99

  An American judge in Germany must decide if the hijacking of an East German plane into West Berlin was justified.

• The Last Metro | DVD | (26/08/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  François Truffaut again tackles the elusive nature of creativity and creation in his thoughtful, sumptuous 1980 film The Last Metro. Nominated for the Best Foreign Language film Oscar, and a winner of various Césars, The Last Metro is set in occupied France during World War II. Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve) manages the Theatre Montmarte in the stead of her Jewish husband, director Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent). He has purportedly fled France but is really hiding in the basement of the theatre. The one hope to save the Montmarte is a new play starring the dashing Bernard Granger (Gérard Depardieu). The attraction between Marion and Bernard is palpable, and as usual Truffaut creates tension and drama from even the most casual of occurrences. The theme of the director locked away while his lover and his creation are appropriated by others makes for interesting Truffaut study, but first and foremost this is a well-spun romance.--Keith Simanton, Amazon.com

• Herold - La Fille Mal Gardee | DVD | (10/04/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Herold: La Fille Mal Gardee (Lanchbery Wiener Symphoniker)

• Berg: Wozzeck | DVD | (15/11/2001) from £34.31   |  Saving you £-9.32 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The bleakness of Berg's operatic masterpiece Wozzeck is relatively easy to bring off: the plot, after all, tells of a man who is bullied, cuckolded and mocked by the society around him. What are harder to realise are the gallows humour and pitch-black comedy--and it's those qualities, along with the brilliant acting and edge-of-seat orchestral playing, that make this 1987 Vienna Staatsoper staging a stunning televisual operatic production. Everything works: the simple yet evocative sets translate effortlessly to the small screen, the pacing of the 15 short scenes is worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster and the singing is beautifully focussed. Baritone Franz Grundheber is vocally and dramatically outstanding as Wozzeck, cringing and shuffling around the stage in a bewildered hang-dog manner and yet never losing sight of the character's humanity. Hildegard Behrens (Marie) has rarely sounded better, and switches between Straussian lushness and spiky sluttishness with ease. The direction is also full of wonderful touches, such as Wozzeck squeezing the Captain's nose while he's shaving him (and making his voice sound like a kazoo), and the musicians of the on-stage band being fully integrated into the tavern scene. Ironic, emotionally rich, musically faultless--this one's got it all. On the DVD: the production works beautifully on DVD, and bar one or two moments in the second tavern scene (Act 3, Scene 3) the voices rarely move out of microphone range. There are subtitles in English, German, French and Spanish and four trailers for other Arthaus DVD operas, but no other special features. --Warwick Thomson

• Wagner - Siegfried (Boulez, Bayreuther Festspiele) | DVD | (11/07/2005) from £21.41   |  Saving you £3.57 (19.38%)   |  RRP £21.99

  The opera Siegfried.

• Fontane - Effi Briest | DVD | (17/10/2011) from £14.98   |  Saving you £-1.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In the nineteenth century, seventeen year old Effi Briest is married to the older Baron von Instetten and moves into a house, that she believes has a ghost, in a small isolated Baltic town. She soon bears a daughter, Annie, and hires the lapsed Catholic Roswitha to look after her. Effi is lonely when her husband is away on business, so she spends time riding and walking along the shore with Major Crampas. Instetten is promoted to Ministerial Councillor and the family moves to Berlin, where Effi enjoys the social life. Six years later, the Baron is given letters from Crampas to Effi that convince him that they had an affair. He feels obliged to challenge Crampas to a duel and banish Effi from the house.Nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1974.

• After Darkness | DVD | (27/08/2002) from £11.15   |  Saving you £-5.16 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Lawrence Hunningford (Julian Sands) becomes insane when as a child he witnesses the tragic drowning of his twin brother in the sands. He becomes gradually schizophrenic and is committed to the clinic. His elder brother Peter (John Hurt) accepts an invitation to teach at the University near the clinic. After Lawrence attempts to end his life Peter discharges his brother from the clinic and moves with him into a huge run down apartment and commits to take care of his brother. But the

• God's Gun | DVD | (24/05/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Violence begins when a wild bunch of outlaws hit the town. No mortal man can stop them - but what about the man of God?

• Mozart: Die Entfuhrung Aus Dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) -- Stuttgart/Zagrosek | DVD | (02/04/2001) from £22.89   |  Saving you £2.10 (9.17%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Mozart's first operatic hit Die Enfuhrung aus dem Serial ("The abduction from the seraglio") was a singspiel, a forerunner of the musical comedy with spoken dialogue between the musical numbers. In this beautifully sung, imaginatively staged production from the Stuttgart Opera House the director Hans Neuenfels splits each character by placing an actor at every singer's side who not only takes over his role for the spoken dialogue but also interacts with his singing double and other characters in the opera. Sometimes the pairing brings a sparring match between actor and singer, adding a further dimension to the drama, at other times the conductor of the orchestra becomes involved, as when Belmonte, the Spanish nobleman, directs him to cue the orchestra for his first aria. The production, in modern dress with each character clearly delineated by the costume designer, takes a few minutes to warm up while we address the director's concept. Osmin, the keeper of the harem is a tattooed thug with a sidekick to match. The aristocratic Konstanze, who has been abducted and imprisoned under him, and her intended Belmonte are in fashionable black, while their two servants are the object of much merriment. The spoken role of the Pasha adds a dramatic frisson to the plans for the abduction. His entry with his retinue walking toward the audience on a raised platform holding stakes topped out with severed heads is a riveting piece of theatre. So too is the final appearance of the ensemble. But as ever with Mozart there's a human dimension to this tale. The close up camerawork shows the Pasha's reactions and those of Konstanze to his advances as she reveals in a moving aria how she loves another man from whom she was cruelly parted. In Act Two the double duet of reconciliation between Konstanze and Belmonte, Blonde and Pedrillo as they question each others' constancy not only brings a sublime quartet but a heart stopping scene of filmed opera as the camera catches the couples' feet moving toward one another as they embrace in an intimate dance. The continuation here of the action into Act Three without a break (as with the earlier acts) brings a plus factor in dramatic continuity where there would be another interval in the opera house. Aside from one momentary lapse from Belmonte in his last aria, the singing throughout this production, like the orchestral playing under Lothar Zagrosek, matches any version on CD now on the market. On the DVD: We have the customary choice of subtitles, cues for the musical numbers and a short commentary accompanying a still of the principal characters in the opera.--Adrian Edwards

• Highway To Battle | DVD | (28/09/2009) from £9.85   |  Saving you £0.14 (1.42%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Drama intrigue and espionage are at the very heart of this classic piece of British cinema. Set in London just months before the out break of World War Two suspicion falls on a German ambassador when one of his envoys fails to return to Berlin. The arrival of two ruthless Gestapo agents sent from Germany and charged with finding the missing man causes the ambassador his wife and daughter to rethink their Nazi allegiance but is it too late to escape from Hitler's evil grasp?

• Circle of Iron | Blu Ray | (19/05/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Essential Truffaut Collection | DVD | (05/12/2005) from £89.99   |  Saving you £-40.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Jules Et Jim (1960): Francois Truffaut's beautiful and enigmatic film about the lifelong friendship between two writers - French novelist Jim (Henri Serre) and Austrian children's author Jules (Oskar Werner) - and their mutual love for the eccentric Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). The story begins in 1920s Paris when Jules and Jim first meet and become friends. As young single men they gallavant about Paris chasing women or studying ancient art. When they meet the equally energetic Catherine whose impulses range from dressing up as a man to taking midnight plunges into the Seine their circle is complete. But when World War II erupts with Jules and Jim fighting on opposite sides everything changes. Jules marries Catherine before going off to battle. After the war they settle into a quiet existence in the French countryside. But Catherine is restless and unfaithful. Jim reunites with his oldest and closest friend and Catherine makes room for him in their house asking him to move in and become her lover. Jim complies as he wants nothing more than to please his friend Jules who agrees to the plan... The Last Metro (1980): Winning an incredible ten French Academy Awards in 1981 The Last Metro is one of Truffaut's most highly acclaimed and popular films. Starring Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu in magnetic performances the story is set in Paris 1942 during the Nazi occupation of France. When Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennett) the Jewish owner of the Montparnasse Theatre is forced into hiding his wife and lead actress Marion (Deneuve) takes over. Desperate to keep both the troupe and Lucas alive she stages a new play which must be a success to continue. She hires the womanising actor Bernard Granger (Depardieu) for the lead in their next production. Just as the actors begin their rehearsals an anti-semitic journalist ensconces himself in the theatre creating an atmosphere of fear and insecurity. Will he discover Lucas' hideaway and the political affiliations of the group's lead actor? Truffaut delivers a captivating study of artists (the actors) struggling against the odds (the Nazis) and a compelling insight into the atmosphere of wartime Paris and the theatre set against a backdrop of exquisite period detail. La Peau Douce (1964): Pierre is a successful happily married publisher who meets Nicole a lovely airplane stewardess and begins a lustful affair with her. As his passion deepens he realizes he must choose between his wife Franca and his mistress. However the movie takes a suprising twist leading to one of the most startling conclusions in film history... The 400 Blows (1959): Praised by film-makers and critics the world over Truffaut's 400 Blows launched the Nouvelle Vague and paved the way for some of cinema's most important and influential directors. Twelve-year-old Antoine Doinel has troubles at home and at school. Ignored and neglected by his parents his relationship with his mother is further strained when he discovers that she has taken a secret lover. Added to this his school teachers have written him off as a troublemaker and with luck seemingly never on his side it is Antoine who ends up getting the blame for bad behaviour. Finding refuge only in his love of cinema Antoine soon finds it necessary to break free and discover what the world can offer outside of the confines of his everyday life. This remarkable film features the extraordinary talent of Jean-Pierre Leaud as the rebellious Antoine a character based on Truffaut himself. Doinel was to make appearances in a number of Truffaut's films (including Stolen Kisses Bed and Board and Love on the Run) all of which chart his further adventures into adulthood.

• Wagner: Das Rheingold | DVD | (15/10/2001) from £3.54   |  Saving you £22.71 (996.05%)   |  RRP £24.99