Known for Acting
Anne-Marie Blanc became a symbol for an entire generation 60 years ago with her role as "Gilberte de Courgenay". Who is this woman who has given countless theater and film characters a face and a soul over the decades? What highs and lows did she experience during her artistic career, which began in 1938 and continues to this day? Anne Marie Blanc gives surprising and poignant answers in the film portrait of Anne Cuneo. Excerpts from films and plays illustrate the stages of her extraordinary career.
A singer flees from Nazi Germany, travels to Paris and befriends a young writer, his lover and a professor.
A native of Sennwald, Anna Göldi arrived in Glarus in 1765. For seventeen years, she worked as a maidservant for Johann Jakob Tschudi, a physician. Tschudi reported her for having put needles in the bread and milk of one of his daughters, apparently through supernatural means. Göldi at first escaped arrest, but the authorities of the Canton of Glarus advertised a reward for her capture in the Zürcher Zeitung on February 9, 1782. Göldi was arrested and under torture, admitted to entering in a pact with the Devil, who had appeared to her as a black dog. She withdrew her confession after the torture ended, but was sentenced on June 18, 1782 to execution by decapitation. The charges were officially of "poisoning" rather than witchcraft, even though the law at the time did not impose the death penalty for non-lethal poisoning.
Fred is a journalist who investigates the death of a man in room 36. He interviews the man's widow and her deranged mother for clues as to how the man died in a hotel room that is rented by the hour. Also under suspicion is a stranger named Becker who lives next to the room where the killing took place.
Fifty years after graduating from school, Senta von Meissen invites eight former school friends to a class reunion at her castle. The table is set for ten people. One place remains empty: Teddy, the hostess's former school sweetheart, died in an accident on her graduation trip to the Rhine Falls. But was it really an accident? The evening turns into a murderous act of revenge.
A classical who-dunnit-detective-story in an unusual setting: In the retirement-home for aging stage-artists "Ewige Rampe", an overly engaged doctor discovers what seems to be a murder by poison. The victim is the only inhabitant of the home who was not on stage, but a reporter of a gossip magazine. The two investigating police inspectors soon find out that the deceased lady blackmailed most of the inhabitants with little secrets she found out in her time as a reporter - nasty, but harmless things like a little shoplifting, alcoholism, a corrected date of birth, a success one never had... but are these little old secrets reason enough to kill someone? Or is there someone with a more important dark spot in the past? And
Steven Dyer, an executive working for a giant multinational drugs company, decides to report his employer for breaches of Common Market trading regulations. One night in Basle, Switzerland, he leaves his home to post a letter, the start of a nightmare journey that leads to terrible consequences for his life, his career and for his wife and children.
Even with good acting, pleasant music, and artistic photography, this "love-boat" story of romance is more like Alice in Wonderland rather than Alice on the streets of Zurich. The Zurich Alice is a flautist who plays for the passersby like many another street or Metro musician. While so engaged, she meets a VIP Russian flautist who has defected and is living in the city. He falls in love with her and as a gesture of his devotion decides to arrange her solo concert debut. Meanwhile, Alice easily figures out what his plans are and devises her own secret scheme. When the day of the performance arrives, her Russian heartthrob is in for a flattering surprise, sure to end his bachelor status. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
In this surreal, overstated, black-and-white film by Marcel Schuepbach, a young woman is slowly driven to near insanity by an inner desire for a passionate existence, while she lives a dull life at her grandmother's country home. The grandmother recalls how her own daughter lost hold of sanity and died on her lover's grave -- and she begins to see similarities in her granddaughter's behavior.