IDS 101: Exploring Visual Culture: Berlin, Vienna, and Shanghai

The film recounts Ruan Lingyu's life both public and private in the years immediately leading up to her premature death. She had quite a number of famous performances for Shanghai's Lianhua studios, including New Woman (1934) and Goddess (1934)....

A blind American diplomat develops a curious relationship with a young Russian refugee who works odd and sometimes illicit jobs to support members of her dead husband's aristocratic family.

Marlene Dietrich plays the notorious adventuress Shanghai Lily, who has been jilted by Captain Donald Harvey (Clive Brook). During the Chinese civil war, the couple meet on a train which is attacked by Chinese rebels. Dietrich becomes involved with a rebel leader in order to save the man she still loves

After spending four years in prison for killing his girlfriend, lumbering man-child Franz Biberkopf is finally released back into society. He wants to stay honest now he has left jail, but it is tough in the Alexanderplatz section of Berlin.

Imprisoned during the East German regime in Brandenburg, Martin Schulz, a former East German citizen, attempts to adjust to life in unified Berlin. He meets old friends and his wife who now lives with his son, whom he has never met, and another man.

After being commissioned by the 1936 Olympic Committee to create a feature film of the Berlin Olympics, Riefenstahl shot a documentary that celebrates the human body by combining the poetry of bodies in motion with close-ups of athletes in the heat of competition.

In one of his very best roles, Cagney plays C.R. MacNamara, a brash, top-ranking cola executive stationed in West Berlin. When his boss's harebrained daughter Scarlett falls in love and marries a fierce young Communist named Otto Piffl, Mac must break up the union or risk losing his chance for advancement.

Based on poems by Rainer Maria Rilke.
A romantic fantasy about an angel who wishes he were mortal and is willing to fall from the sky if it means a chance to fall in love. Set in modern day Berlin, the film follows angel Damiel's path from heavenly flight to earthly delight in a manner that's comical, touching and entertaining.

Premiered in Germany in 1926 and is based on the stories from "The Arabian nights", this movie has been hailed as the first full-length animated film.

A middle-aged instructor at a boys' prep school becomes infatuated with a singer from a sleazy cafe. He is forced to leave his respectable job. He marries the singer and travels with her performing troupe, sinking ever lower.

A somnambulist commits murders under a hypnotist's influence. This film is an example of the German Expressionist movement.

Set in the impoverished back alleys of Victorian London, The threepenny opera follows underworld antihero Mackie Messer (a.k.a. Mack the Knife) as he tries to woo Polly Peachum and elude the authorities. Music by Kurt Weill. Play by Bertolt Brecht.

At the height of the Depression, Anni and her parents are evicted from their Berlin home and sent to Kuhle Wampe, a camp that now accommodates the ever-growing numbers of the dispossed. The only Communist film to come out of Weimar Germany, Kuhle Wampe was swiftly banned upon Hitler's rise to power.

When a serial killer is stalking the children of the city, everyone, including the criminal underworld, wants to see him brought down.

The story of a 21st century city run by a "super trustee" and his collaborators who live in a paradise-like garden. Workers are totally enslaved by machines and condemned to live underground. In the midst of this misery, a young woman, Maria, arises and attempts to inspire the workers to throw off their oppressors.

The first film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. The insatiable Transylvanian vampire, Count Orlock (Nosferatu), leaves his castle in the Carpathians and travels by ship to Bremen, bringing coffins filled with dirt and plague rats.

A cross section of life in Berlin from dawn to midnight on a late spring day. Uses montage, cutting, and editing to capture the pulse and tempo of this city.

A young woman can only support and educate her son by working as a prostitute in 1930s Shanghai. One of the rare films of famed Chinese star Ruan Lingyu.

Drama about the hunger and passion of the people living under the distorted conditions of inflation-ridden, post-World-War-I Vienna.

An educated modern woman struggles with marital difficulties, unemployment, health problems, and social pressures.

Wang Renmei, in her first starring role, plays Xiao Feng or 'Little Wind' in this story about a young girl who loses her mother and then her father. Jin Yan, her co-star, is Jiang Bo, a wealthy painter who discovers her in a small fishing village and makes her his model. When she is left homeless after a fire destroys her home, Jiang takes her to Shanghai to live with his parents....