Richard Oswald

Directing

Biography

Richard Oswald was an Austrian director, producer, actor and screenwriter. He directed more than 100 feature films from 1914 to 1951. Among them the classics "Nachtgestalten" (1920), "Unheimliche Geschichten" (1919/1932), "Die Prostitution 1-2" (1919) and "Alraune" (1930). Being Jewish, Oswald was forced to flee Nazi Germany, first for occupied France and later emigrating to the United States.

Filmography Movies

Acting

MOVIE

Eerie Tales

5.5(0.0K)

A demon, a reaper, and the ghost of a prostitute read gothic short stories and act them out.

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Eerie Tales

MOVIE

Tales of Hoffmann

5.2(0.0K)

This movie, directed by Richard Oswald, is based on the operetta "Les contes de Hoffmann" by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), which is a genial musical potpourri from various short stories and novels by the Prussian writer, composer, painter, lawyer and judge E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). While Hoffmann's literary work was longtime considered to be merely fantastical, it was finally researched, in the last years, according to its metaphysical background. Characteristic for Hoffmann's work is his life-long fight against rationalism and for the revelation of nature morte, culminating mostly in carnival-like scenes anticipating literary techniques only described in the works of Bachtin and Bachelard.

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Tales of Hoffmann

MOVIE

The Eternal Jew

4.7(0.1K)

A Nazi propaganda film made to promote anti-Semitism among the German people. Newly-shot footage of Jewish neighborhoods in recently-conquered Poland is combined with preexisting film clips and stills to defame the religion and advance Hitler's slurs that its adherents were plotting to undermine European civilization.

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The Eternal Jew

Self (archive footage)

Production

MOVIE

Alraune

6.1(0.0K)

A scientist, Professor Jakob ten Brinken, interested in the laws of heredity, impregnates a prostitute in a laboratory with the semen of a hanged murderer. The prostitute conceives a female child who has no concept of love, whom the professor adopts. The girl, Alraune, suffers from obsessive sexuality and perverse relationships throughout her life. She learns of her unnatural origins and she avenges herself against the professor.

The Living Dead

6.6(0.0K)

A crazed scientist murders his wife, walls her up, then flees. A reporter sets out to track him down. Remake of Unheimliche Geschichten (Richard Oswald, 1919).

Eerie Tales

5.5(0.0K)

A demon, a reaper, and the ghost of a prostitute read gothic short stories and act them out.

Eerie Tales

5.5(0.0K)

A demon, a reaper, and the ghost of a prostitute read gothic short stories and act them out.

The Living Dead

6.6(0.0K)

A crazed scientist murders his wife, walls her up, then flees. A reporter sets out to track him down. Remake of Unheimliche Geschichten (Richard Oswald, 1919).

The Living Dead

6.6(0.0K)

A crazed scientist murders his wife, walls her up, then flees. A reporter sets out to track him down. Remake of Unheimliche Geschichten (Richard Oswald, 1919).

Different from the Others

7.1(0.1K)

Conrad Veidt plays a famous musician who is blackmailed for being gay. Eventually he stands trial and is convicted. At the end the film pleads for the abolition of §175 (the law that punishes homosexuality).

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Different from the Others

Director

MOVIE

The Lovable Cheat

6.0(0.0K)

Posing as a wealthy Parisian, Mercadet fleeces friends and casual acquaintances alike. He is forced into this life of crime to keep up appearances, so that his daughter Julie can land herself a rich husband.

The Lovable Cheat

Vienna, City of Song

7.0(0.0K)

Steffi is in love with the unemployed musician Pepi. Still, her father the musical instrument retailer, Ignaz Korn, wants her to marry one of his card playing buddies, the butcher Burgstaller. When the typesetter, Cäsar Grün, purposely misprints a winning lottery number in the newspaper, Korn and Burgstaller, thinking they have won, pay the drinks for everybody in the Bock Café and then give away their businesses.

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Vienna, City of Song

Producer