mag7bela

The Plunderers are four youngsters who come to a peaceful little western town without any money. Actually they're no gunfighters at all but enjoy staying there getting all for free and watching how they can get the people more and more frightened. Onearmed Jeff Chandler wants to stay out of trouble but is increasingly convinced that something must be done to help the citizens against the troublemakers. Lovely Dolores Hart is the daughter of the local store owner and the Mexican youngster Rondo, played by John Saxon, pays a lot of attention to her. She tries to avoid him but with no success. The dramatic final scenes include an unusual fight with knives. This is a classic black-and-white western from 1960 highly recommended. You can easily find resemblances to Brando's 1954 motorcycle movie "The Wild One".

To put it simply, it's brilliant: the direction by Emilio Fernández, the black and white photo by Gabriel Figueroa, the music by Francisco Dominguez and not least the acting by the legendary stars Dolores del Rio and Pedro Armendáriz. I think this film is the top peak in the career of Emilio Fernández, even if he made many other movie classics like Enamorada, Flor Silvestre or La Perla. Maria Candelaria (Xochimilco) is perhaps a Cinema Classic most people have been searching for but never found. And there are English subtitles. I am wondering why this movie never comes to discussion when film people make lists about the Best Movie of the Century. Think it's a kind of mystery.

Try to pronounce it - Hódmezövásárhelykutasipuszta. Yes, that's the name of the place where the young German student Andreas finds his Piroschka. It's a very small railway station in the southeast of Hungary in the glossy 20's. Rural and idyllic.

Liselotte Pulver is lovely as Piroschka, the 17 years old daughter of station master Gustav Knuth. It's a movie full of joy. Beautiful and charming. It really makes you happy when watching it. Music, csàrdàs and feast in a true Hungarian way. But perhaps it's a bit too grievous when it comes to the final part, when Andreas has to leave, when his Hungarian summer is over. He shall never return to Piroschka - just living with sweet memories of her and a wonderful summer in - Hódmezövásárhelykutasipuszta...

Originally it's a German TV production in three parts directed by Michael Lähn in 1987. The story is about the Ostprussian tailor family Steputat who like anybody else in their village (Jokehnen) believes much in what Hitler can do to protect them from the big eastern threat. In 1934 Karl and Martha Steputat had their newborn baby boy christened Hermann. That happens the very same day Germany's old Reichpresident Hindenburg dies.

For some years the family is having a happy life in Jokehnen and Wolfshagen, even if there are both a mighty manor estate as well as Nazi collaborators in the neighborhood, making people implicated into disagreeable things.

However, dark clouds begin to show up when war rumbling moves closer and closer towards the village. Soon illusions are completely crushed. Hitler portraits have to be removed from the walls. After a while the villagers must leave their homes. The Russians were back in Ostprussia! Elderly people recall the invading troops in 1914 - how they bombed and destroyed.

Armin Mueller-Stahl is brilliant as Karl Steputat. Actually he was once born in Tilsit in northern Ostprussia.

"JOKEHNEN" is a very thrilling drama, affecting to watch how people tragically are driven away from the land they were born in. Arno Surminski wrote the story. In real life it was he who was born in Jokehnen that particular day in 1934. And the real name of the village was actually Jaeglack (Jeglawki), situated by the old causeway right between the smaller towns of Drengfurt and Barten. When the World War II was over Jokehnen (near the Masurischer Lakes) became Polish, while the northern part including Hauptstadt Königsberg became a part of the Soviet Union. All surviving Ostprussians were forced to move west, thousands of them crowding aboard in freight train wagons. The film is brilliantly telling the story how these people were suffering with broken dreams, broken ideals, broken everything. And the fate of the Steputats was just one out of thousand others.