German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1655/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Phoebus-Film. Elisabeth Bergner in Liebe/Love (Paul Czinner, 1927). Collection: Marlene Pilaete. While the novel was published in 1834, Bergner's costume and hairdo rather reminds of the 1860s.
The profoundly sensitive acting of Austrian-British actress Elisabeth Bergner (1897-1986) influenced the German cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. She specialized in a bisexual type that she portrayed in Der Geiger von Florenz and in other film and stage roles. Nazism forced her to go in exile, but she worked successfully in the West End and on Broadway.
Elisabeth Bergner was born Elisabeth Ettel in 1897 in Drohobycz, Austria-Hungary (now Drogobych, Ukraine). She was the daughter of a merchant, Emil Ettel, and his wife Anna Rosa Wagner. Soon after her birth, the family, whose surname had been changed to the more German-sounding Bergner, moved to Vienna. In 1911 she was enrolled at a private acting school and from 1912 to 1915 she attended the Academy for Music and the Performing Arts. She started acting in Innsbruck in 1915. By the end of that year, she had already appeared in the major role of Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. In 1916 she moved to Zürich, where she performed at the highly-regarded Stadttheater (Municipal Theatre). She also worked as an artist's model. She posed for the expressionist sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck, who apparently committed suicide in 1919 because Bergner rejected his advances. She eventually moved to Munich, and in 1921 to Berlin. On stage as Rosalind in William Shakespeare's As You Like It (a role in which she played a record 566 consecutive performances), she took Berlin by storm and won plaudits not only from theatregoers but also from such critics as Kurt Tucholsky. She made her film debut in Der Evangelimann/The Evangelist (Holger-Madsen, 1924) with Paul Hartmann. Under Max Reinhardt's direction, she reached international fame in the stage production of Saint Joan (1924) by George Bernard Shaw. She specialised in playing Hosenrollen (women in trousers with childlike or boyish traits), and captivated spectators and critics in such stage productions as Romeo and Juliet, Queen Christine, and Camille. Elfi Pracht-Jörns describes the 'Bergner Phenomenon' beautifully: "Seemingly contradictory elements created an inimitable aura, the magic she projected: she was at one and the same time both a tender, fragile child-woman and a 'femme fatale'. Behind her dreamy manner and engrossed concentration, one could detect intellect, vitality, tenderness, a strong will, humour and wit. With her androgynous appearance, nervous gestures and capacity for total selflessness, Bergner embodied a new, erotic ideal, a complex, fastidious type of female." Hungarian director Paul Czinner, who had come to Germany from Budapest via Vienna, gave Elisabeth Bergner a role in Nju - Eine unverstandene Frau/Husbands or Lovers (Paul Czinner, 1924). The film was an instant success, and Czinner became both her artistic and private partner. Their successful collaboration also included films like Der Geiger von Florenz/The Violinist of Florence (1926), Liebe/Love (1927), Doña Juana (1928), and the Arthur Schnitzler adaptation Fräulein Else/Miss Else (1929). Among her co-stars were the great film actors Emil Jannings, Conrad Veidt, and Albert Bassermann.
With the coming of sound, Elisabeth Bergner began to portray a more sentimental and delicate woman. Soon critics labelled her characters as fragile, emotional, or nervous. Bergner acted her roles in such a manner as to charm her audience in an almost hypnotic way. Czinner allowed her to play the whole gamut of emotional experiences in a series of films. The peak of her career is represented by her work in two films. In the first, Ariane (Paul Czinner, 1931), an adaptation of a novel by the French author Claude Anet, Bergner played a girl who plunges into adventure with an older, more experienced man (Rudolf Foster). The second is the drama Der träumende Mund (Paul Czinner, 1932), an adaptation of a play by Henri Bernstein. Here, Bergner played a sensitive, pure woman who cannot escape her passion for a musical virtuoso, but does not want to hurt her loving husband. This film was remade by Czinner in 1937 as Dreaming Lips, with Bergner again in the leading role. When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Bergner, who was in England working on a new film, did not return to Berlin. Bergner and Czinner, who were both Jews, went in exile in London, where they had married in 1931. She particularly infuriated the Hitler regime by encouraging other famous actors to leave Germany, even sending them money to help them escape. Rapidly learning English, she was soon able to resume her former stage and screen career. Her stage debut as Gemma Jones in Escape Me Never (1933) was met with great enthusiasm, and she repeated the role in New York (1935) and again for the film version, Escape Me Never (Paul Czinner, 1935), which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Another film The Rise of Catherine the Great (Paul Czinner, 1934) was banned in Germany because of the government's racial policies, reported Time magazine (26 March 1934). Her stage work in London included The Boy David (1936) by J.M. Barrie, his last play which he wrote especially for her. She repeated her stage role of Rosalind, opposite Laurence Olivier's Orlando, in As You Like It (1936), the first sound film version of William Shakespeare's play, and the first sound film of any Shakespeare play filmed in Great Britain. Bergner had previously only played the role on the German stage, and several critics found that her accent got in the way of their enjoyment of the film, which was not a success. In 1938 she became a citizen of Great Britain.
In 1940, Elisabeth Bergner and her husband emigrated to the United States. There, Bergner had to begin her career anew. While Czinner had no difficulty finding work in Hollywood, it was only at the end of 1941 that she herself received a major role in the anti-Nazi film Paris Calling (Edwin L. Marin, 1941) with Randolph Scott, which was not a success. She returned to the stage and scored a Broadway triumph in The Two Mrs. Carrolls, which was performed more than three hundred times in 1943–1944 and earned her the Delia Austrian Medal of the Drama League of New York. An incident with a fan/aspiring actress, while Bergner was performing in The Two Mrs. Carrolls on Broadway, inspired Mary Orr to write her short story The Wisdom of Eve. The story was ultimately filmed as All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950). In the story, Eve does not get a comeuppance - as was required by the Hollywood Production Code for the film - but gets away with everything and is last seen heading to Hollywood with a thousand-dollar-a-week contract in her pocketbook. After the war, Bergner worked in New York, for instance in the title role of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi in 1946. In 1950 she returned to England, and in 1954 temporarily to Germany. For nearly two decades she performed intermittently in German and Austrian theatres, and in 1970 she made her debut as a director. In 1961, after a 20-year absence, she made a come-back for the cinema. The child-woman had been transformed into a charming, though occasionally unfathomable, old lady. Among her later film appearances were Die glücklichen Jahre der Thorwalds/The Happy Years of the Thorwalds (John Olden, Wolfgang Staudte, 1962) with Hansjörg Felmy, Cry of the Banshee (Gordon Hessler, 1970) starring Vincent Price, Strogoff (Eriprando Visconti, 1970), Der Fussgänger/The Pedestrian (Maximilian Schell, 1973), and Der Pfingstausflug/The Pentecost Outing (Michael Günther, 1978) with Martin Held. Elisabeth Bergner won awards at the Berlin Film festivals of 1963 and 1965. She became the first actress to win the Schiller Prize (1963) for contributions to German cultural life. She also received the Ernst Lubitsch Prize in 1979, and the Eleonora Duse Prize of the city of Venice in 1982. In the Berlin district of Steglitz, a city park was named after her. Her Husband Paul Czinner died in 1972. Her last TV performance was the lead role in Wenn ich dich nicht hätte/When I Wouldn't Have You (Konrad Sabrautzky, 1984) with Rudolph Platte. Elisabeth Bergner passed away in 1986 in her London home, aged 88. A year later her memoirs, 'Bewundert viel und viel gescholten' (Greatly admired and often cursed), were published. The book received favourable reviews.
Sources: Elfi Pracht-Jörns (Jewish Women's Archive), Karel Tabery (Filmreference.com), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Androom (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 80/2. Photo: Phoebus-Film, Berlin. Maria Solveg and Rudolf Rittner in Der Meister von Nürnberg/The Master of Nuremberg (Ludwig Berger, 1927).
German film and screenwriter Maria Solveg or Maria Matray (1907-1993) was a star of the late Weimar cinema. When Hitler came to power, the Jewish actress went into exile and had a new career in the US as a choreographer and writer.
Maria Solveg was born as Maria Stern in Niederschönhausen German Empire (now a part of Berlin, Germany), in 1907. Her aunt was German artist Käthe Kollwitz. Two of her older sisters were the actresses Johanna Hofer and Regula Keller, and the third was the dancer Katta Sterna. Maria studied ballet as a child. At age 14, she left school and joined actor-director Ernst Matray's theatrical tour. She began appearing in German films at 16. She made her film debut as Maria Solveg in the Austrian silent film Der letzte Deutschmeister/The Last German master (Johann Leopold Pock, 1923). As the typical modern girl, Maria soon became a star of the late Weimar cinema. She co-starred with Ernst Matray in Die wunderlichen Geschichten des Theodor Huber/The whimsical stories of Theodore Huber (Richard Löwenbein, 1924). In 1927 she played the female lead in the silent historical comedy Der Meister von Nürnberg/The Master of Nuremberg (Ludwig Berger, 1927) starring Rudolf Rittner, Max Gülstorff, and Gustav Fröhlich. The film is based on the opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) by Richard Wagner. According to Wikipedia, it was considered artistically unsuccessful because of its overly theatrical presentation. While touring America in 1927, she married Matray. She developed into a fine choreographer and worked with Austrian theatre director Max Reinhardt. As a film actress, she continued to be credited as Maria Solveg and smoothly made the transition to sound film. In the mystery romance Der Sohn des weißen Berges/The Son of the White Mountain (Mario Bonnard, Luis Trenker, 1930) she co-starred with Trenker and Renate Müller. The film was part of the popular series of Mountain films of the era. It was followed by the musical Ich glaub nie mehr an eine Frau/Never Trust a Woman (Max Reichmann, 1930) starring Richard Tauber, Paul Hörbiger and Werner Fuetterer, and the historical biopic Elisabeth von Österreich/Elisabeth of Austria (Adolf Trotz, 1931) featuring Lil Dagover as Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Later films included the crime film Der Weg nach Rio/Road to Rio (Manfred Noa, 1931) also with Oskar Homolka and Oskar Marion, and the Harry Piel vehicle Der Geheimagent/The Secret Agent (Harry Piel, 1932). A success was Der Hexer/The Sorceror (Martin Frič, Karel Lamač, 1932) a screen adaptation of Edgar Wallace's thriller The Ringer. She played the female lead opposite Paul Richter and Fritz Rasp. Sadly, she only appeared in one more film, Ein Mann mit Herz/A man with heart (Géza von Bolváry, 1932) opposite Gustav Fröhlich.
Following the Nazi takeover in 1933, the Jewish Maria Matray went into exile with her husband – initially in France and Britain before moving on to the United States. She couldn’t find jobs as an actress, but in 1938 she became the assistant of Max Reinhardt for the stage production of Faust in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In Hollywood, she developed a new career as a choreographer and writer, now under her real name Maria Matray. Together with her husband, she choreographed several Hollywood movies, often without screen credit, most notably White Cargo (1942), Swing Fever (1943), and The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947). One of her stories was adapted for the musical mystery Murder in the Music Hall (John English, 1946) starring Vera Ralston. It involves a murder in Radio City Music Hall with The Rockettes as suspects. She also wrote the screenplay for the TV film The Last Act (William Asher, 1952), an episode of Invitation Playhouse: Mind Over Murder. The Matrays moved back to Germany in 1953. For television, she wrote screenplays for Der König mit dem Regenschirm/The king with the umbrella (Ernst Matray, 1954), and Abschiedsvorstellung/Farewell performance (Ernst Matray, 1955), with Elfie Mayerhofer. She and Ernest Matray then separated and in 1962, they officially divorced. Maria began writing novels and scripts for television with her new partner, Answald Krüger. They also worked for the cinema and wrote screenplays for Mein Vater, der Schauspieler/My father, the actor (Robert Siodmak 1956) featuring O.W. Fischer, Wie ein Sturmwind/Tempestuous Love (Falk Harnack, 1957) starring Lilli Palmer, and the musical ...und abends in die Scala/An evening at the Scala (Erik Ode, 1958) with Caterina Valente. The best known of these films is probably Die schöne Lügnerin/The beautiful liar (Axel von Ambesser, 1959) starring Romy Schneider and Jean-Claude Pascal. She continued writing scripts with Krüger until his death in 1977. One of their later scripts was for Maximilian von Mexiko/Maximilian of Mexico (Günter Gräwert, 1970), a German-Austrian historical television miniseries depicting the events of the French Intervention in Mexico which placed Emperor Maximilian on the throne of Mexico. Later. she worked with different authors. Maria Matray continued to write TV screenplays till her death in 1993 in Munich, Germany. She was 86.
Sources: C. Parker (Starlet Showcase), Film-Zeit.de (German), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin. Photo: Phoebus Film Julius Falkenstein in the historical comedy Der Meister von Nürnberg (Ludwig Berger, 1927), based on Richard Wagner's opera 'Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg'.
Julius Falkenstein (1879-1933) was a bald, often monocle-wearing German character actor. He was known for such films as Zopf und Schwert - Eine tolle Prinzessin (1926), Der Meister von Nürnberg (1927) and Ich und die Kaiserin (1933).
Julius Falkenstein was born in 1879 in Berlin, Germany. He was on stage from 1906 at the Residenztheater in Berlin. He was prolific in silent films from 1914, essaying diverse eccentric characters. He had his first film appearance in 1914 in the films Die geheimnisvolle Villa and Eine Nacht im Mädchenpensionat. He did his best work for the famous directors Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and Ernst Lubitsch. Julius Falkenstein belonged to the most popular film comedians of the German silent cinema.
The transition to the sound film didn't cause him any trouble. In the 1930s he made more films than he did in the 1920s. In the last four years of his life, he played in almost twenty films a year. Falkenstein was Jewish but he secured a special permit to continue making films following the Nazi rise to power in 1933. IMDb quotes Falkenstein: "It is my wish to play good tragic-comical roles under good directors - roles where the audience has to laugh and to cry at the same time". Julius Falkenstein died of meningitis in 1933 in Berlin, Germany. He was married to Helene Julie Zillinger.
Sources: IMDb and Wikipedia.
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German postcard. Ross Verlag, mo. Maria Solveg in the historical comedy Der Meister von Nürnberg (Ludwig Berger, Phoebus Film 1927), based on Richard Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
German film and screenwriter Maria Solveg or Maria Matray (1907–1993) was a star of the late Weimar cinema. When Hitler came to power, the Jewish actress went in exile and had a new career in the US as a choreographer and writer.
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German postcard by Ross Verlag. Photo: Phoebus Film. Maria Solveg and Gustav Froehlich in the historical comedy Der Meister von Nürnberg (Ludwig Berger, 1927), based on Richard Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Plot: The respected town clerk Beckmesser (Julius Falkenstein) wants to marry the daughter of the goldsmith Veit Pogner (Max Gülstorff), Evchen (Maria Solveg). But she can't stand the baldy and therefore makes the proposal, which at first sight seems highly implausible, to marry the much older master shoemaker Hans Sachs (Rudolf Rittner). The old man has been in love with the pretty Eva for some time and agrees to the idea with great joy, considering himself her groom already. The Master of Nuremberg faces stiff competition from his apprentice (Gustav Fröhlich), whose real name is Walther von Stolzing and who comes from a good family. He, too, has his eye on the good bourgeois daughter. Like the girl, Walther also wanted to avoid an unwanted marriage. When he tries to elope with Evchen Pogner, he is arrested. A poetry competition is held to decide who will be allowed to marry Evchen. Hans Sachs wins the poetry competition, but leaves his poem to the young Walther when he realizes that he and Evchen belong together.
The Österreichische Film-Zeitung wrote at the release of the film in September 1927: "Hans Sachs has been taken out of the bland craftsman's atmosphere and made the center of the whole film. He is not so much the coarse, honest master shoemaker, but an even more skillful communal diplomat who weaves threads of love along the way. (...) Director Berger is characterized by a very healthy sense of humor. (...) He has given Stolzing the face of a cheeky rascal, and Evchen is quite a rascal. The gentlemen of the council seem to come from Schilda, Beckmesser does not have the tragic undertone as in Wagner, but is a fool in love, and through the scuffles as well as through the council negotiations there is from time to time an effervescent, but at least always inwardly gurgling laughter. Rudolf Rittner, whose Hans Sachs is an almost splendid figure, excels in the performance."
Oskar Kalmus wrote in retrospect in his Zum Werden deutscher Filmkunst (1935): "It will always be a difficult experiment to film Richard Wagner. Of course, even a director as clever as Ludwig Berger knew that. That is why his film "The Master of Nuremberg" (1927) was almost not based on Wagner's opera at all. For his film he rejuvenated Hans Sachs and placed Walther Stolzing more broadly in the plot in order to create a folk play in the sense of both the Middle Ages and modern times. The whole pictorial design is therefore much reminiscent of the manner of the old woodcuts of a Dürer and the decorations of the Spitzweg manner. The actor Rudolf Rittner stands out as the Master of Nuremberg, and Maria Solveg as Eva."
(Source: German Wikipedia)
German film and screenwriter Maria Solveg or Maria Matray (1907–1993) was a star of the late Weimar cinema. When Hitler came to power, the Jewish actress went in exile and had a new career in the US as a choreographer and writer.
Smart German actor Gustav Fröhlich (1902-1987) played Freder Fredersen in the classic Metropolis (1927) and became a popular star in light comedies. After the war, he tried to escape from the standard roles of a charming gentleman with the part of a doomed painter in Die Sünderin/The Sinner (1951), but the effort went down in a scandal.
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