Fritz Lang's first sound movie, the serial-killer film M, has often been voted the best German film of all time, but, until now, most of us have never seen it properly. What we have seen is a heavily cut 1950s re-edit with extra sound and music patched in, where Lang was deliberately economical with the new technology. This new "Ultimate Edition" is dominated by a marvellous restoration which is true to his intentions and oft-voiced complaints about what had been done to his best film. The young Peter Lorre is terrifyingly ordinary as the child-murderer whom police and criminals hunt down in what is still one of the best forensic police procedurals ever made, while Gustaf Grundgens has effortless charisma as the chief gangster. Lorre's Hollywood exile and decay, and Grundgens' betrayal of old friends and principles under the Nazis, merely add a layer of irony to all this. Lang's ironic cuts-a gangster's gesture is completed by his police equivalent-and dark, studio-bound cinematography make this one of the great precursors of American film noir. Simply, seen without cracks and pops and lines running down the screen, M is revealed as a true classic-a film that shames everything made in its genre since. On the DVD: M on disc has a great deal of documentary material featuring scholars and technicians telling us just how clever they have been in preparing this splendid restoration. The film also comes with a detailed commentary into which has been spliced interview material with Lang talking in English about specific sequences. There is a German-language film interview with Lang in which he talks through his career and re-enacts the interview with Goebbels that led to his exile; an audio interview with Peter Bogdanovich; and an intelligent video critical essay by film historian R Dixon Smith. [+]

It's long been one of the revered classics of international cinema, but there is no fine layer of dust over La Grande Illusion. Jean Renoir's film is just as vibrant, exciting and wise as it has ever been. The story is set during World War I, mostly in a couple of German POW camps, where two very different French prisoners plot to escape: the working-class officer Maréchal (Jean Gabin, the French Spencer Tracy) and the upper-class de Boieldieu (Pierre Fresnay). The suspenseful backbone of the story is formed by these escape attempts, but Renoir is primarily concerned with the way people treat each other, and especially with how class and nationality inform human relations. Most compelling of all the film's characters is the aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, unforgettably incarnated by stiff-backed Erich von Stroheim; although he runs a prison camp, von Rauffenstein cannot help but strike up a friendship with de Boieldieu, a kindred spirit from the doomed nobility. There is nothing dewy or naive about Renoir's vision (and two years after the release of this antiwar film, Europe was plunged into another world war), yet La Grande Illusion is one of those movies that makes you feel good about such long-outmoded ideas as sacrifice and brotherhood. After it won a prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1937, the Nazis declared the film "Cinematographic Enemy Number One". There can be no higher praise. -Robert Horton, Amazon. com.

This early Max Ophuls melodrama became his first big success. A young philandering army officer, trapped in a loveless affair with the wife of a strutting Baron, falls in love with a shy young seamstress but cannot escape the repercussions of his past. As the giddy lovers frolic through an idyllic romance (a lovely sleigh ride through the snow-covered forest becomes a swooning expression of their emotional innocence), the suspicious Baron demands honour be served. Based on a play by Arthur Schnitzler (whose Reigen Ophuls was later adapted for La Ronde), Liebelei contrasts obsession with appearances, and the social decorum of high society with the rash sincerity and energy of youth in a style that is more visual than verbal. The restless camera of his later work is only hinted at here, but the handsome photography and lush decor create a constrictive world where tradition rules. The opening opera house scene is especially striking, where character and class become defined simultaneously, and the haunting climax is so effective that Ophuls revived and refined it for The Earrings of Madame de. The 1932 production was subsequently suppressed by the Nazis for its jaundiced view of honour and Prussian authoritarianism, and they attempted to destroy all copies of the film. [+]

Two things make it impossible to consign Josef von Sternberg's seedily atmospheric 1930 masterpiece The Blue Angel to the archives of museum land: it was the first film to put Marlene Dietrich in front of an international audience; and it features a towering performance from Emil Jannings as the professor whose fall from grace is precipitated by his obsession with Dietrich's archly vampish showgirl Lola-Lola. On both counts The Blue Angel remains a potent, vibrant work which still has moments of real relevance. Dietrich's performance is indeed hypnotic: von Sternberg lights her face and exposed flesh-shoulders and thighs-in a way that clearly indicates the erotic charge she generates among the men in the Blue Angel night club, and in Jennings in particular. Before our eyes his repressed, puritanical self-will disintegrates and his fate is sealed. The pivotal moment is, of course, when Dietrich teases her audience with "Falling in Love Again", her stockinged and suspendered legs astride a beer barrel, a top hat rakishly on her head. It would become the signature tune of her cabaret act in later years but here she delivers it with a far less studied, throwaway cheeriness; how, indeed, can it be her fault if men cluster around her like moths around a flame? This is the raw material on which an icon was built, but there is much else to fascinate in the film itself: you can still smell the pungent grim reality of a trouper's life on the road; and the professor's pathetic efforts to control his class of unruly boys still resonates today. this is an essential piece of film history. On the DVD: The Blue Angel is presented in its German and English-language versions, both restored and digitally remastered. [+]

Actually filmed at the end of the Second World War, La Régle du Jeu confused the public by its dark and modern undertone. Indeed Jean Renoir shows us through a tragic love triangle the acidic face of French society at the end of the 1930s. It was received at its French premiere with such hostility (the theatre was almost set on fire), that the distributors were granted the right to cut some of the then-offensives scenes. Booed by the public and mutilated by censorship, Renoir's black sheep has since won a share of greatness in the French cinematic pantheon. This prophetic movie is now studied in every film course, and celebrities such as Gérard Depardieu or director Emir Kusturica are open admirers of this rich piece of cinema. Rewarding an infinite number of viewings, one never gets bored with La Régle du Jeu's tale of a hunting party in Sologne (followed by a more intimate one at a castle) where masters and servants outwit each other in a game of black humour and cruelty, a work made all the more memorable because of the astounding performances of its remarkable actors. -David Mikanowski, Amazon. fr.

Alexander Nevsky, Sergei Eisenstein's landmark tale of Russia thwarting the German invasion of the 13th century, was wildly popular with home-grown audiences back in 1938, quite intentionally so, given the prevailing Nazi geopolitical advancement and destruction at the time. It can still be viewed as a masterful use of imagery and music, with the "Battle on the Ice" sequence as the obvious highlight. Unfortunately, the rest of the film pales in comparison. A great score by Prokofiev was effectively integrated by the Russian filmmaker, but stands on its own merit as well. -Bill Desowitz, Amazon. com.