A superb, moving and thrilling interview with American actor Sterling Hayden (1916-86), held in Besançon, France, on board a dilapidated barge, when he was 65 years old. An unparalleled portrait, in his own words and without any qualms, of a legendary Hollywood star, icon of film noir and the western, who was also a marine, an OSS agent, an anti-communist informer, a writer and a wandering sailor: the hero of his own life.
Filmmaker Manfred Blank (director of the excellent Pharos of Chaos) interviews Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub at some length about their then-current production, Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations), in which he, himself, performed as an actor.
1. A modern Bavarian brewer, Emanuel Holzbauer, faces a sales crisis and targets his competitors to save his brewery. 2. In 1567, Protestant merchant Johann Christof Paumgartner—outlawed by church and state—compassionately aids the poorest in his town. 3. A fairy-tale rivalry: peasant boy Franz Niederholzer learns a harsh lesson about greed when he mistakes ordinary metal for gold. 4. A Moritat set during hyperinflation, as shopkeeper Max Geiger is forced to desperate measures to survive. 5. April 9, 1865: In her diary entry on the Confederacy’s surrender, Missis Marilyn Haley-Care confronts the illusion of freedom that costs the enslaved Ben his life. 6. A musical conversation piece finds Laura Wohlbrück passionately campaigning to humanize industrial labor, earning unexpected acclaim. 7. At displaced Walter Gladek’s wedding, a friend’s song about a hunter’s horn rekindles memories of building an industrial enterprise in their homeland.
