All made up? Conspiracy theories in movies

US director Oliver Stone has often dealt with conspiracies in his films. His 1991 movie "JFK" looks into the alleged cover-up of President John F. Kennedy's assassination. Prosecutor Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) does not believe that a lone gunman killed JFK; his theory is that a widespread network, the "deep state," is behind the assassination.

After the Kennedy assassination, the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War, sections of American society felt a sense of unease. Filmmakers like Alan J. Pakula picked up on this in the 1970s; he directed three films on conspiracy theories arising from such events, one of which was the 1974 "The Parallax View," starring Warren Beatty (right).

Another Pakula film shot two years later is also a classic conspiracy movie. It tells the story of journalists Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), who became famous for uncovering a political conspiracy that later went down in history as the Watergate scandal.

Richard Condon's novel "The Manchurian Candidate" was filmed twice: in 1962, as a Cold War thriller starring Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey, and in 2004 with Meryl Streep and Denzel Washington (photo). In the more recent film, the story takes place in a Middle East conflict setting. The complex plot is about "remote-controlled" murders under hypnosis and all kinds of conspiracy myths.

This story was also filmed twice, first in 1997 in Spain, as "Open Your Eyes" by Alejandro Amenabar, and again in 2001 in Hollywood by Cameron Crowe under the title "Vanilla Sky," starring Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz. Not so much about political conspiracy, the film pinpoints a corporation that programs and controls people. Or is it really — as the film plot suggests — just a conspiracy theory?

Based on the bestseller by Dan Brown, "The Da Vinci Code" (2006) is a contemporary classic of the conspiracy genre. There is not enough space here to list all the conspiracies or theories that play a role in this film. Let's just say it is about religion and the church, about Opus Dei and the Holy Grail. The film was a blockbuster, followed by its sequel, "Illuminati."

Ten years ago, Roman Polanski directed a particularly successful film starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan (photo). "The Ghost Writer," a thriller about political scheming in foreign and economic policy is actually set in the US, but was for the most part shot in Germany.

A master of the political film genre, Constantin Costa-Gavras has often looked into conspiracies of all kinds. The Greek-French director shot to fame with "Z" (photo), a fictionalized depiction of the assassination of democratic Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis. The filmmaker followed up with a few more movies about alleged and actual conspiracies.

German filmmakers have also tackled the topic of conspiracies. In "23," Hans-Christian Schmid fictionalizes the real-life case of a young hacker who was obsessed by a worldwide conspiracy and died of a presumed suicide in 1989. The number 23 plays a key role in the story. The 1998 film remains relevant to this day.

Between 1933 and 1945 the Nazis commissioned anti-Semitic conspiracy films for propaganda purposes. The best known one was "Jud Süss" (Süss the Jew) with Ferdinand Marian (photo). But unlike the other films listed in our selection — made to entertain people — these conspiracy films had a dead-serious background, aiming to spread anti-Semitic hatred.