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28-731: Paul Rudolf Parsifal " Percy " Adlon ( German: [ˈpɛɐ̯si ˈaːdlɔn] ; 1 June 1935 – 10 March 2024) was a German director, screenwriter, and producer. He is associated with the New German Cinema movement (ca. 1965–1985), and is known for his strong female characters and positive portrayals of lesbian relationships. He is best known for his 1987 film Bagdad Cafe , starring Marianne Sägebrecht , CCH Pounder and Jack Palance and subsequent films such as Rosalie Goes Shopping (1989), Salmonberries (1991) and Younger and Younger (1993). Adlon's films were shown in competition regularly at international film festivals, such as

56-725: A "halting, awkward effort" with "stilted direction" and "sharp camera angles, arty editing". In 1993, Adlon directed the film Younger and Younger , starring Donald Sutherland , Brendan Fraser and Lolita Davidovich . The film won Adlon the Silver Raven Award at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival . Leonard Klady of Variety considered it to be an "unusual human comedy", a family yarn which "spins out from its simple premise into fantasy, music, black comedy and innumerable offbeat digressions." Klady further noted that

84-529: A picture starring k.d. lang as Kotzebue, an orphaned Eskimo and young woman of androgynous appearance who has a lesbian relationship with an East German widowed librarian. The film was generally well-received, with Kevin Thomas of the L.A. Times describing it as "endearing, remarkably assured and stunning-looking" and noted that Adlon with sensitivity "raises crucial questions of cultural and sexual identity", though Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it

112-547: A reconciliation between the new cinema and the old. In addition, a distinction is sometimes drawn between the avantgarde "Young German Cinema" of the 1960s and the more accessible "New German Cinema" of the 1970s. For their influences, the new generation of filmmakers looked to Italian Neorealism , the French Nouvelle Vague and the British New Wave but combined this eclectically with references to

140-459: A woman as the lead reviewer at The New York Times . In a 2005 interview with Aaron Aradillas at Rockcritics.com, Maslin explained she quit reviewing films because she experienced burnout, expressing gratitude it ended when it did. Filmmaker Harmony Korine , whose directorial debut feature Gummo (1997) Maslin famously called "worst film of the year", noted how Maslin stopped working as a movie critic not long after. From 1994 to 2003, Maslin

168-502: Is Romaner... She fully inhabits the role of this complex personality whose passion for love and art collides with her role of wife and mother." Percy Adlon was the great-grandson of Lorenz Adlon , the founder of the Hotel Adlon . He was the grandson of Louis Adlon Sr., and the son of opera tenor Rudolf Laubenthal  [ de ] . His son, Felix, also a film director, is the former husband of American actress Pamela Adlon and

196-434: Is dead. We believe in the new cinema"). Other younger filmmakers allied themselves to this Oberhausen group, among them Volker Schlöndorff , Werner Herzog , Jean-Marie Straub , Wim Wenders , Hans-Jürgen Syberberg and Rainer Werner Fassbinder in their rejection of the existing West German film industry and their determination to build a new industry founded on artistic excellence rather than commercial dictates. Despite

224-541: Is president of its board of directors. Maslin graduated from the University of Rochester in 1970 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. Maslin began her career as a rock music critic for The Boston Phoenix and became a film editor and critic for that publication. She also worked as a freelancer for Rolling Stone and worked at Newsweek . Maslin became a film critic for The New York Times in 1977. From December 1, 1994, she replaced Vincent Canby as

252-613: The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film . Although overlooked in early scholarship on New German Cinema, female directors were an important part of it, which encompassed the works of directors such as Danièle Huillet , Helma Sanders-Brahms , Helke Sander , and von Trotta. Rosa von Praunheim , who formed the German lesbian and gay movement with his film It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But

280-715: The Cannes Film Festival , the Berlin International Film Festival , and others. Adlon was born on June 1, 1935 in Munich , Germany. He grew up in Ammerland, Starnberger See . He studied art, theater history, and German literature at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilian University ; took acting and singing classes; and was a member of a student theater group. Adlon started his professional career as an actor, became interested in radio work,

308-813: The Film-Fernseh-Abkommen (Film and Television Accord) was agreed between the Federal Republic's main broadcasters, ARD and ZDF , and the German Federal Film Board (a government body created in 1968 to support film-making in West Germany). This accord, which has been repeatedly extended up to the present day, provides for the television companies to make available an annual sum to support the production of films which are suitable for both theatrical distribution and television presentation (the amount of money provided by

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336-604: The Couch (2010) with his son Felix, a period film about an affair between Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius , and the subsequent psychoanalysis of Mahler's husband Gustav Mahler by Sigmund Freud . In a review for The Hollywood Reporter , Kirk Honeycutt wrote that the film "manages to pose a serious, intimate study in obsessive jealousy while, like a gaga celebrity hunter, bumping into just about everybody who's anybody in Viennese society circa 1910... The film's great gift, though,

364-498: The New German Cinema, gained a much greater opportunity to enjoy box-office success before they played on television. The artistically ambitious and socially critical films of the New German Cinema strove to delineate themselves from what had gone before and the works of auteur filmmakers such as Kluge and Fassbinder are examples of this, although Fassbinder in his use of stars from West German cinema history also sought

392-739: The Society in Which He Lives (1971), can also be counted to the movement. Janet Maslin Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, who served as a film critic for The New York Times from 1977 to 1999, serving as chief critic for the last six years, and then a literary critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000, Maslin helped found the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York . She

420-465: The chief film critic. Maslin continued to review films for The Times until 1999, when she briefly left the newspaper. Her film criticism career, including her embrace of American independent cinema , is discussed in the documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism (2009). In the documentary, Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbaum recalls the excitement of having

448-624: The father of her three daughters, including actresses Odessa and Gideon Adlon . Percy and Eleonore Adlon lived in Pacific Palisades , California . Percy Adlon died there on 10 March 2024, at the age of 88. Thomas Meyerhöfer  [ de ] is a half-brother of Percy, 15 years younger and son of Emil Meyerhöfer. New German Cinema Most of the directors of the New German Cinema movement were members of their self-owned Filmverlag der Autoren association founded in 1971, which funded and distributed most of their films, and

476-659: The film 3½ out of 4 stars in his review, stating that "[Percy Adlon] is saying something in this movie about Europe and America, about the old and the new, about the edge of the desert as the edge of the American Dream" and that the charm of Bagdad Cafe is that "every character and every moment is unanticipated, obscurely motivated, of uncertain meaning and vibrating with life". The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited Bagdad Cafe as one of his 100 favorite films. In 1989, Adlon directed Rosalie Goes Shopping , starring Sägebrecht, Brad Davis , and Judge Reinhold , which

504-468: The film illustrated "Adlon's unique method of tackling everyday life", which has "ironically been the greatest strength and most problematic aspect to his commercial appeal". In 1997, Adlon co-produced Eat Your Heart Out , a romantic comedy film filmed in Venice Beach, California , which was directed by his son, Felix Adlon  [ de ] . Adlon co-directed his final picture, Mahler on

532-658: The foundation of the Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film (Young German Film Committee) in 1965, set up under the auspices of the Federal Ministry of the Interior to support new West German films financially, the directors of this New German Cinema, who rejected co-operation with the existing film industry, were consequently often dependent on money from television. Young filmmakers had the opportunity to test their mettle in such programmes as

560-558: The history of New German Cinema from the 1970s onwards was largely synonymous with it. As a reaction to the artistic and economic stagnation of West German cinema, a group of young filmmakers issued the Oberhausen Manifesto on 28 February 1962. This call to arms, which included Alexander Kluge , Edgar Reitz , Peter Schamoni , Haro Senft and Franz-Josef Spieker among its signatories, provocatively declared "Der alte Film ist tot. Wir glauben an den neuen" ("The old cinema

588-405: The public broadcasters has varied between € 4.5 and 12.94 million per year). Under the terms of the accord, films produced using these funds can only be screened on television 24 months after their theatrical release. They may appear on video or DVD no sooner than six months after cinema release. As a result of the funds provided by the Film-Fernseh-Abkommen , German films, particularly those of

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616-417: The stand-alone drama and documentary series Das kleine Fernsehspiel ( The Little TV Play ) or the television films of the crime series Tatort . However, the broadcasters sought TV premieres for the films which they had supported financially, with theatrical showings only occurring later. As a consequence, such films tended to be unsuccessful at the cinema box-office. This situation changed after 1974 when

644-568: The subject of his first film. Adlon's first feature film Céleste (1980) was about the relationship between the French writer Marcel Proust and his cook Céleste Albaret during the last years of Proust's life. In 1987 he directed Bagdad Cafe , starring Marianne Sägebrecht as a German tourist, CCH Pounder as a motel and truck stop cafe owner in the Mojave Desert , and Jack Palance . Critically acclaimed, Roger Ebert awarded

672-655: The well-established genres of Hollywood cinema. The new movement saw German cinema return to international critical significance for the first time since the end of the Weimar Republic. Films such as Kluge's Abschied von gestern ( Yesterday Girl , 1966), Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Fassbinder's Fear Eats the Soul (1974) and The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), and Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) found international acclaim and critical approval. Often

700-534: The work of these auteurs was first recognised abroad rather than in West Germany itself. The work of post-war Germany's leading novelists Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass provided source material for the adaptations The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975) (by Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta ) and The Tin Drum (1979) (by Schlöndorff alone) respectively, the latter becoming the first German film to win

728-451: Was a frequent guest on Charlie Rose with 61 appearances on the program. From 2000 she worked as a book reviewer for The New York Times ; from 2015 as a contributor as opposed to being their full-time critic. As of 2023 , Maslin continues to review books for the newspaper, albeit sparsely. In her review for Dennis Lehane 's novel Small Mercies , she speculated it might be the author's last concluding with "As epitaphs go, you could do

756-634: Was a narrator and editor of literature series and a presenter and voice-over actor in television for 10 years. In 1970, Adlon made his first short film for Bavarian television, followed by more than 150 documentary films about art and the human condition. His first was a one-hour portrait of French artist and writer Tomi Ungerer , entitled Tomi Ungerer's Landleben . Adlon became fascinated by Ungerer after meeting at an exhibition in Munich and spending time at his home in Nova Scotia , so decided to make him

784-407: Was screened at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival . The film met mixed critical reviews, with Deseret News describing it as "dark satire masquerading as bright comedy" and a comment on American consumerism , while Rita Kempley of The Washington Post considered it to be "deficit of dramatic tension" and thought that Adlon's message was "scatterbrained". In 1991, Adlon directed Salmonberries ,

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