German postcard by Photo-Kitt, München, no. 504. Photo: Kurt Julius / Camera Film.
Helmut Käutner (1908-1980) was one of the most influential and acclaimed directors of the German post-war cinema and he was known for his sophisticated literary film adaptations. He already began his career as an actor and cabaret artist at the end of the Weimar Republic and he directed his first major films in Nazi Germany.
Paul Günther Helmut Käutner was born in 1908 in Düsseldorf, Germany. He was the son of merchant Paul Läutner and his wife Claire, born Röntgen. In 1916, the family moved to Essen where Käutner attended Helmholtz-Realgymnasium and participated in school theatre performances. He studied graphics, costume design, set design, and interior design at the Kunstgewerbeschule. In 1928, he went to Munich's university to study German studies, philosophy, psychology, art history, and theatre studies. From 1931 to 1935 he wrote, directed and performed at the Munich Student Cabaret troupe Die vier Nachrichter (The Four Executioners). The literary and rather unpolitical group was banned in 1935 for "lack of reliability and aptitude according to national socialist governance". Käutner wrote feuilletons and reviews for the Bavarian university newspaper. In 1932, he made his film debut as an actor in Kreuzer Emden/Cruiser Emden (Louis Ralph, 1932), but after that experience he turned to the theatre again and also wrote songs. From 1936 to 1938 he worked as an actor and director at the Schauspielhaus in Leipzig, at the Kammerspielen in Munich, at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, at the Komödie and at the Kabarett der Komiker in Berlin. In 1938 he drew attention to himself as a screenwriter for such films as Schneider Wibbel/Wibbel the Tailor (Victor de Kowa, 1938), Salonwagen E 417 (Paul Verhoeven, 1938), Die Stimme aus dem Äther (Harald Paulsen, 1938) and Marguerite: 3 (Theo Lingen, 1938). In 1939 began his career as a film director with the light-hearted comedy Kitty und die Weltkonferenz/Kitty and the World Conference (1939), featuring Hannelore Schroth. Käutner was not a member of the resistance but, during the period of National Socialism, he was able to maintain a certain independence in his work. Kitty and the World Conference was withdrawn by the Nazi censors due to its “pro-English tendencies”. Käutner rejected the UFA filmmaking establishment and produced thoughtful and poetic works like Kleider machen Leute/Clothes Make the Man (1940) starring Heinz Rühmann, Auf Wiedersehen, Franziska!/Goodbye, Franziska! (1941), and Romanze in Moll/Romance in a Minor Key (1943) starring Marianne Hoppe and Paul Dahlke. The latter was often seen as Käutner’s best film of this period. Romanze in Moll is an adaptation of Guy du Maupassant’s short story Les Bijoux. A somewhat traditional love-triangle story, the film was praised for its compositional perfection and technical virtuosity. Käutner’sfilms considered the struggles of the German people during a period of great turmoil. With Große Freiheit Nr. 7/Great Freedom No. 7 (1944) with Hans Albers, and Unter den Brücken/Unter the Bridges (1945) with Hannelore Schroth and Carl Raddatz, he created two films which, in their emphasis on the individual, strongly opposed the world view of the national socialists. Käutner’s work was noted for its more humanistic depiction of daily life than his contemporaries. Große Freiheit Nr. 7 is a melancholy, bittersweet story of disappointed love set amongst the sailors' clubs and bars of the Hamburg waterfront. The film title, which refers to a street next to Hamburg's Reeperbahn road in the St. Pauli red light district, caused a furor among the Nazis who feared that audiences would misinterpret the film’s meaning. As a result, the film was banned in Germany until the fall of the Third Reich. Unter den Brücken, which is set amongst the bargees of the River Havel, is now considered one of the greatest love stories in the history of German cinema. Käutner’s avoidance of overt political content in his films during the war, allowed him to continue his career unhindered after 1945.
In 1947 Helmut Käutner’s made the first German film after WWII, the Trümmerfilm In jenen Tagen/In Those Days (1947) with Gert E. Schäfer, Erich Schellow and Winnie Markus. The film which describes the post-war reality and people overwhelmed and traumatized by the impact of fascism, was a great success and launched the new German film. Käutner used the framing device of an automobile whose various owners serve as the film’s protagonists and initiate its episodic structure. In the next years he directed such films such as Der Apfel ist ab /The Original Sin (1948) and Königskinder/Royal Children (1950). He was acclaimed for these socially conscious, often starkly realistic post-war films, which depicted the plight of the common man, struggling with the traumatic effects of the war and its aftermath. However, the films were no audience successes. In 1954, he won the Prix International at the Cannes film festival for his stark, realistic anti-war drama Die letzte Brücke/The Last Bridge (1954). In the following years, he had great successes with Ludwig II: Glanz und Ende eines Konigs,(1955) and the Carl Zuckmayer adaptations Des Teufels General/The Devil’s General (1954), with Curd Jürgens, Der Hauptmann von Köpenick/The Captain from Kopenick (1956) with Heinz Rühmann and Der Schinderhannes (1958), again with Curd Jürgens. In 1956, Der Hauptmann von Köpenick was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 29th Academy Awards. Another international success was Monpti/Love from Paris (1957) , starring Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz. Käutner moved to Hollywood and produced two films for Universal: the family melodrama The Restless Years (1958) and A Stranger in My Arms (1959), with Charles Coburn and Sandra Dee. He soon returned to West-Germany and made Der Rest ist Schweigen/The Rest Is Silence (1959), a modern-day retelling of Hamlet, starring Hardy Krüger. He did not feel a connection with the Oberhausen Manifesto of 1962 or the New German Cinema, and Käutner distanced himself more and more from the cinema. His final feature films were Das Haus in Montevideo/The House in Montevideo (1963) with Heinz Rühmann and Ruth Leuwerik, Lausbubengeschichten/Tales of a Young Scamp (1964) and the remake of Der Feuerzangenbowle/The Fire Tongue Bowl (1970), with Walter Giller and Uschi Glas. He began to work for television and occasionally he appeared as an actor. In addition, he also increasingly directed for the theatre. In 1967, he received the Adolf-Grimme-Preis for his television production of Valentin Katayev, produced at the Saarland Radio, surgical interventions in the soul life of Dr. Igor Igorowitsch . In 1974 he played the title role in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's feature film Karl May. Helmut Käutner also worked for radio Hamburg. Since 1934, he had been married to the actress Erica Balqué who later was assistant director for almost all his films. His last years of life, already seriously ill, he spent with his wife in Tuscany in his house in Castellina in Chianti, in the north of the province of Siena. There he died in 1980 at the age of 72.
Sources: Julian Petley (Film Reference), Filmportal.de, Harvard Film Archive, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.
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