Volker Schlöndorff

Illustrated with film clips, rare photographs and artwork, Billy Wilder Speaks is a lively lesson in filmmaking, from one of its undisputed masters. In a series of filmed interviews conducted by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum), acclaimed writer/director WIlder (Sunset Blvd. , Some Like It Hot) recounts the achievements and pitfalls of his 60-year career. As one might expect from the maker of The Apartment, Double...

A historical drama that depicts the relationship between Dietrich von Choltitz, the German military governor of occupied Paris, and Swedish consul-general Raoul Nordling.

As the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944, Hitler gives orders that the French capital should not fall into enemy hands, or if it does, then 'only as a field of rubble'. The person assigned to carry out this barbaric act is Wehrmacht commander of Greater Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, who already has mines planted on the Eiffel Tower, in the Louvre and Notre Dame and on the bridges over the Seine. Nothing should be left as a reminder...

"... the first major antiwar film to come out of Germany after World War II, as well as the nation's first postwar film to be widely shown internationally, even securing an Oscar nomination. Set near the end of the conflict, it follows a group of teenage boys in a small town as they contend with everyday matters like school, girls, and parents, before enlisting as soldiers and being forced to defend their home turf in a confused, terrifying battle....