I have known for a while, that Kevin Durand is one class act performer, but not until I saw Maury Sterling in this (after his hilarious performance in Smokin' Aces a few years back) did I realize that both men - together - are an unstoppable team.Wow...
This East German film by Konrad Wolf did not reach the West until after the Cold War, and is rarely seen today. It concerns the story of a corporal, named 'Walter' (although his real name is never known) and played by Jürgen Frohriep with quiet complexity, and his relationship with interred German Jewess Ruth (played by the beautiful and powerful Sasha Krusharska) against the background of Nazism in Bulgaria, populated by inhuman oafs like Kurt (a repellent character played well by Erik S.
First of all an almost unthinkable idyll is presented to the spectator, considering that we are in times of war: A sergeant named Walter and his superior Kurt are far off the combat action and supervise civil workers in a small Bulgarian town, where they are also responsible for a community of Greek Jews, waiting to be transported to their final destination. This happy constellation encourages Kurt to nothing else but to find intensified sensual pleasures in dissipated carousals, gluttonous feasts or with local prostitutes, whereas Walter experiences an important dawning of consciousness that will change his life.
Even the two German states co-existed side by side for almost 40 years the cultural exchange was a minimum. One thing, West Germans should learn from the neighbors is the fact how seriously the East German cinema treated the difficult subject of the holocaust.
Yes, I saw this film myself back in Calcutta, India at the Goethe Institut. Unfortunately films such as these do not have any kind of DVD/VHS distribution at all.
"Sterne" or "Stars" is an East German / Bulgarian black-and-white film from 1959, so this one is already almost 60 years old. The director is Konrad Wolf, one of the GDR's most successful filmmakers.