Ralph grows up in pre-war Dresden as the eldest son of a principled and orderly streetcar conductor. With the rise to power of the Nazis, the war, the collapse and the hesitant new beginning, his firmly established middle-class world is also thrown off course. His father is one of the first to be called up to the front. His mother is left alone with the responsibility for Ralph and his younger brother Achim. In the air-raid shelter, during the nights of bombing and later in the daily struggle against misery and hunger, the mother quickly abandons all moral baggage and develops a pragmatic will to survive, for which she admires Ralph. At the same time, the boy is frightened by his mother's desperate claim to happiness because he perceives her affairs as a betrayal of his father, who has gradually faded into a symbol of a happy, carefree childhood.
At the turn of the sixteenth century, Michelangelo (Mark Frankel), Raphael (Andrea Prodan), and Leonardo Da Vinci (John Glover) create their masterpieces, while dealing with religious persecution, political turmoil, and the discovery of America.
A series of rapes causes a stir in a German university town. A special commission led by senior public prosecutor Schildt and detective Gawilek investigates.
The Herlihys are a working class family from Chicago whose three children take wildly divergent paths: Brian joins the Marines right out of High School and goes to Vietnam, Michael becomes involved in the civil rights movement and after campaigning for Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy becomes involved in radical politics, and Katie gets pregnant, moves to San Francisco and joins a hippie commune.
A decorated NYPD detective returns to her hometown after her sister is charged with the murder of her boss and attempts to make amends with her estranged family while exposing the dark underbelly of a long-suppressed secret that threatens to tear the town apart.
Felipe goes home for a holiday and discovers that everything in town has changed in his absence; old don So-and-so is running around forcing people to sell their farms to him and killing them if they refuse.
An escaped convicted murderer invades the cottage of a man, his wife and the wife's sister, whereupon he proceeds to torment this already dysfunctional trio with rape and violence.
A small-town bar, open only from 9AM to 3PM and owned by Buck (Earl Holliman), is the setting where bored housewives and wandering husbands go to find some adventure in their miserable lives.
Comments
Have you watched Meines Vaters Straßenbahn yet? What did you think about it?
