Teen-Age Crime Wave (1955)
Surprisingly enjoyable JD relic. Sue England’s haircut deserved its own billing. I don’t think this film should have been subject to mst3k mockery and suspect the attempt was unsuccessful.
Rebel also made good use of the Observatory that same year; TACW was filmed a few months earlier. Did Ray hear tell of that film’s finale? Anybody?
Mephisto (1981)
Actor driven sane(ish) by Nazis. Starts out as pretentious, neurotic, affected provincial wanna-be star; more or less turns sane and mature when full implications of Nazi rule become obvious even to him — alas too late. His sanity and maturity are necessarily unstable — the habits of a lifetime aren’t easy to unlearn, after all. I’m usually fine with “ambiguous” endings but this one left me cold. Again: anyone?
Watch again with Casablanca chaser.
I can’t imagine how painful it must have been for all involved to make this film, and for German audiences to watch it.
While leftist Weimar decadance proved no match for the Nazis, we should nevertheless bear in mind that the Germans and the Japanese were considered (and considered themselves) the most cultured people on earth when they all turned completely mental (with the equally cultured French rolling over with little — often exaggerated after the fact by, wait for it, decadent leftists — resistance) — and were ultimately demolished by drunk Russian peasants and American “vulgarians” who painted naked ladies on their airplanes and listened to “jungle” music.
