German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 1880. Photo: Fritz Richard. Emil Jannings in 'Kollege Crampton' by Gerhart Hauptmann.
If Weimar cinema had one film star, then it was Emil Jannings (1884-1950) for sure. He was a great actor in the silent era and won the first Oscar for Best Actor. Priceless are his performances as Louis XV in Lubitsch' Madame Dubarry (1919), as the doorman in Murnau's Der Letzte Mann/The Last Laugh (1924) and as Mephisto in Faust (1926), as the jealous acrobat in Dupont's Variété/Variety (1925) and as the professor in Von Sternberg's Der blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (1930).
Emil Jannings was born Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz in Rorschach, Switzerland, in 1884. He grew up in Leipzig and Görlitz. He left grammar school prematurely and worked as a ship's mate. In 1900, he started to work at the Görlitz Stadttheater, after which he played in several provincial theatres and with travelling companies. Occasionally he directed plays too. In 1914, he reached Berlin where he was engaged in 1915-1916 at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater. In between, he played on stage elsewhere and had his first film role in the war propaganda film Im Schützengraben/In the Trenches (Walter Schmidthässler, 1914). Until 1920 Jannings continued to play on stage, getting bigger and bigger roles.
From 1916 on, Emil Jannings played more and more in film, mostly in quickly staged melodramas and crime stories. In 1919 he had his big breakthrough as Louis XV in the lavish period piece Madame DuBarry, directed by his former theatre colleague Ernst Lubitsch. The film was such an international hit that former war adversaries such as the United States embraced German cinema. Jannings and his co-star Pola Negri became instant celebrities. For a while, he continued to play debauched rulers such as Henry VIII in Anna Boleyn (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920), Amenes in Das Weib des Pharao/Pharoah's Wife (Ernst Lubitsch, 1922) and Czar Peter the Great in Peter der Grosse (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922). Other strong historical characters were the title roles in Danton/All for a Woman (1921) and Othello (1922), directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki.
The Italo-German coproduction Quo Vadis was shot in Rome with an international cast including Lilian Hall-Davis, Alphons Fryland, Elga Brink, Elena Sangro, Rina de Liguoro, Raimondo Van Riel and Jannings. The producer was grand old man Arturo Ambrosio of the Unione Cinematografica Italiana, a Universal-like merger of many Italian prewar companies. The film had its Roman premiere in March 1925. Quo Vadis tried to equal the earlier version of 1913, adding enormous sets, designed by sculptor Brasini, and streaks of sadism and nudity. Still, it didn't have the worldwide success of Enrico Guazzoni's earlier version. People were a bit bored with epic films and the censor ordered cuts. The producer almost went bankrupt over copyright claims. It didn't help that the lion tamer Alfred Schneider was convicted because one of his circus lions had killed an extra. But Quo Vadis is a fascinating film, especially for Jannings's performance of the evil emperor. Eye Filmmuseum in the Netherlands restored the film, based on various existing copies. This restored version had its 're-premiere' at the Bologna film festival Cinema Ritrovato in 2002.
Emil Jannings managed to get away from his historical characters with two major films. In Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Der letzte Mann/The Last Laugh (1924) he is a proud hotel doorman who loses his self-esteem and the esteem of others when he is reduced to a toilet man, working in the basement of the hotel. In Varieté/Variety (Ewald André Dupont, 1925), he is the strong acrobat, who kills his rival out of jealousy. Jannings magnificently expressed the fears and doubts of proud and big-hearted men, who are cheated by their surroundings. Murnau directed him in two more silent classics Tartüff/Tartuffe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1925) with Lil Dagover, and Faust (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1926) as Mephisto opposite Gösta Ekman as Faust.
The success of these films earned Emil Jannings a 3-year contract with Paramount. In Hollywood, he again played men who had a social position and then ended in misery such as in The Way of All Flesh (Victor Fleming, 1927) and The Last Command (Josef von Sternberg, 1928). The two films earned him the first Oscar ever distributed to an actor. Together with Ernst Lubitsch, he tried to repeat their German successes in The Patriot (Ernst Lubitsch, 1928). When sound came, Jannings left Hollywood and returned to Berlin, where he was launched in his first sound film Der blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (1930), directed by Josef von Sternberg and based on a novel by Heinrich Mann, 'Professor Unrat'. Jannings is the local university professor Immanuel Rath who falls in love with cabaret singer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich). Once married to him, she shamelessly exploits and humiliates him. When the film came out, Dietrich's popularity overshadowed Jannings. The film was her ticket to Hollywood. Jannings returned to play on stage, until 1936.
With his sound films of the early 1930s, Emil Jannings could not compete with his earlier successes. Only after the Nazis came to power, his star rose again. He played rulers, just like in the early 1920s, but this time, not the decadent versions anymore. He performed historical characters such as Friedrich Wilhelm I in Der Alte und der junge König/The Making of a King (Hans Steinhoff, 1935), Geheimrat Clausen in Der Herrscher/The Ruler (Veit Harlan, 1937), the title roles in Robert Koch (Hans Steinhoff, 1939) and Ohm Kruger/Uncle Kruger (Hans Steinhoff, 1941), and Bismarck in Die Entlassung/The Dismissal (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1942). All were predecessors to Adolph Hitler, to be understood. In 1936 he became a board member of Ufa and in 1938 he was chairman there. He was allowed to direct his own films and thus was the main responsible for Ohm Kruger, one of the most expensive films of the Nazi era. His historical films contributed to the legitimisation of modern politics. In January 1945, he broke up work to the film Wo ist Herr Belling?/Where Is Mr. Belling? (Erich Engel, 1945), because of an illness. The film, never finished, was his last work. In 1946, Emil Jannings was denazified and in 1950, he died in Strobl am Wolfgangsee, Austria.
Sources: Filmportal.de and IMDb.
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German postcard by Verlag Herm. Leiser, Berlin-Wilh., no. 7554. Photo: Fritz Richard. Alexander Moissi as Fedja in the play 'Der lebende Leichnam' (The Living Corpse or Russian: Живой труп) by Leo Tolstoy
Albanian-Austrian Alexander Moissi (1879-1935), born as Aleksandër Moisiu, was one of the great European stage actors of the early-20th century. The attractive and charismatic women's idol also appeared in several silent and early sound films.
Alexander Moissi was born as Aleksander Moisiu in Trieste, Austria-Hungary (now Italy) in 1879. He was the fifth and last child of Konstantin Moisiu, a rich Albanian merchant in oil and wheat, and the half Albanian, half Italian Amalia di Rada, the daughter of a Florentine writer and doctor. After an international childhood in Trieste, Durrës, and Graz, 20-year-old Alexander finally settled with his mother and two sisters in Vienna. There he was spotted by Paul Schlenther, the director of the famous Burgtheater, and by the legendary actor Josef Kainz, who gave him acting lessons. In 1901 Moissi moved to Prague where he worked for the Neue Deutsche Theater, and in 1904 to Berlin, where he became a protégé of the influential director Max Reinhardt at the Deutsche Theater. Here he had his breakthrough as Oswald in the Henrik Ibsen play Ghosts. He would continue to play the part for more than two decades. Under Reinhardt he played parts in many William Shakespeare plays including the jester in King Lear, Romeo in Romeo and Juliet (1907), and Hamlet (1909). In 1911, Moissi followed the Reinhardt Ensemble to Russia and was acclaimed in St. Petersburg by critic and dramatist Anatoliy Lunacharsky for his interpretation of Oedipus. Travelling all over Europe and the Americas, he became a globally known star. His repertoire of leading roles encompassed the whole spectrum of European drama, from Greek tragedy to twentieth-century modernism. He was the first in Europe to interpret characters from Strindberg, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pirandello, and Hofmannsthal. His interpretations of Hamlet, Oedipus, Faust, Dubedat in George Bernard Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma, and many others, were celebrated at the time, as were his voice and emotional range. His most famous role was Fedya in Tolstoy's Buried Alive (or The Living Corpse). He performed this role 1500 times between 1913 and 1935 and more than one-and-a-half million people saw him playing the part.
Though primarily a stage actor, Alexander Moissi appeared in 17 films productions between 1913 and 1935. In 1913 he appeared in Germany in four silent films for the Deutsche Bioscop GmbH: the experimental pantomime Das schwarze Los/The black lot (Emil Albes, John Gottowt, 1913), Meier Helmbrechts Flucht und Ende/Meier Helmbrecht’s Flight and End (Leo Greiner, 1913), Die Augen des Ole Brandis/The Eyes of Ole Brandis (Stellan Rye, 1913), and he had a supporting role in the classic fantasy film Der Student von Prag/The Student of Prague (Stellan Rye, Paul Wegener, 1913) starring Paul Wegener. Two years later he starred in the films Kulissenzauber/Background magic (Heinrich Bolten-Baeckers, Leo Peukert, 1915) and Sein einziger Sohn/His Only Son (Adolf Gartner, 1915). It was World War I and in 1915 Moissi was mobilized by the Austrian army. As an airman, he was taken prisoner in France, but he got free five months later through a prisoner exchange. Till 1917 he worked as a stage actor in Switzerland. In 1918 he starred as Stanislaus in Pique Dame (Arthur Wellin, 1918), a film adaptation of Alexander Pushkin’s short story The Queen of Spades. That same year he appeared opposite Ria Jende in Der Ring der drei Wünsche/The Ring of the Three Wishes (Arthur Wellin, 1918). The following years he played in such silent films as Erborgtes Glück/Borrowed Happiness (Arthur Wellin, 1919) with Käthe Dorsch, Zwischen Tod und Leben/Between Life and Death (Arthur Wellin, 1919) with Bernhard Goetzke, Figaros Hochzeit/Figaro’s Wedding (Max Mack, 1920) based on the play by Beaumarchais, and Die Nacht der Königin Isabeau/The Night of Queen Isabeau (Robert Wiene, 1920) starring Fern Andra.
Alexander Moissi’s last silent film was Kean (Rudolf Biebrach, 1921) based on the play by Alexandre Dumas père. Edmund Kean, born in 1787, was the greatest Shakespearean actor of his day. Remarkable is that Moissi’s first sound film, the Hollywood production Die Königsloge/The Royal Box (Bryan Foy, 1929) also told the story of Edmund Kean. The German-language production by Warner Brothers was not a success. In the 1920s Moissi had more success in Russia, France, Austria, and Italy than in Germany. After the rise of the Nazis in Germany, Moissi reportedly became an Albanian citizen in 1934 (some sources say that he got an Italian passport). After a successful stage tour through Italy in 1934, Mossi starred in the Italian film production Lorenzino de' Medici/The Magnificent Rogue (Guido Brignone, 1935) with Maria Denis. It would be his final film. A year later, Alexander Moissi died of pneumonia in Vienna, (some sources say Lugano, Switzerland), and lies buried at the Morcote cemetery overlooking Lake Lugano. He was married twice. With his first wife, the Viennese actress Maria Moissi he had a daughter, Bettina, who also would become an actress. In 1919 he married actress Johanna Terwin. He is the over-grandfather of German actor Gedeon Burkhard. In his honor, the High College of Drama in Tirana, and the Professional Theatre of Durrës, Albania, are named ‘Aleksander Moisiu.’ The 60th anniversary of his death was remembered in Albania in 1995 with an Artistic Year dedicated to him; it was sponsored by the Aleksander Moisiu Foundation in Durrës.
Sources: Stephanie D’heil (Steffi-line) (German), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm. , no. 2297. Photo: Fritz Richard.
During his long career, German stage actor Paul Hartmann (1889-1977) made over 100 films, both in the silent and the sound period. Despite his commitment to the Nazi regime, he could continue his career quite smoothly into the 1950s and 1960s.
Paul Wilhelm Constantin Hartmann was born in Fürth, Germany in 1889. He was the son of Wilhelm Hartmann, the manager of a toy-export company, and his wife Maria Hartmann-Betz. From 1907 on, he studied acting with Adalbert Czokke, and in 1908 he had his first engagement at the Stadtheater Zwickau. In the following years, he played at the Bellevue-Theater in Stettin, the Stadttheater Zürich, and from November 1913 at the Deutsche Theater in Berlin under the direction of the legendary Max Reinhardt. He also started to work for the cinema. He made his film debut as a jeune premier in 1915 in Zofia - Kriegs-Irrfahrten eines Kindes/Zofia – the War Odysseys of a Child (Hubert Moest, 1915) with Ernst Pittschau and Hedda Vernon. Soon followed more films like Der Trick/The Trick (Fred Sauer, 1915) with Aud Egede Nissen, Die verschleierte Dame/The Veiled Lady (Richard Oswald, 1915), Ein Blatt Papier/A Page of Paper (Joe May, 1916), Feenhände/Hands of a Fairy (Rudolf Biebrach, 1916) with Henny Porten, the Harry Deebs detective Das Geheimnis der leeren Wasserflasche/The Secret of the Empty Water Bottle (Joe May, 1917) starring Harry Liedtke, Christa Hartungen (Rudolf Biebrach, 1917), and Es werde Licht!/Let There Be Light! (Richard Oswald, 1918). That same year, he appeared in Der Trompetter von Säkkingen/The Trumpeter of Säckingen (Franz Porten, 1918), based on a popular opera (1884) by Viktor Nessler, which in turn was based on a romantic book by Joseph Victor von Scheffel, published in 1854. The story is set in Heidelberg and Säckingen during the 17th century, after the Thirty Years War. Law student, later trumpeter Werner Kirchhof falls in love with Margareta, a baron's daughter, but her mother wants to marry her to the cowardly Damian. Werner proves to be a hero and a compassionate pope makes him marquis of Camposanto. Then, after five years of separation nothing can prevent a happy ending. Hartmann's stage and film career suffered a short break when he was called into the military service in 1917. After that he continued his film career smoothly. In the 1920s he played romantic and melancholic characters in films like Katharina die Grosse/Catherine the Great (Reinhold Schünzel, 1920) with Lucie Höflich, Anna Boleyn/Anne Boleyn (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920) with Emil Jannings and Henny Porten, Schloss Vogelöd/The Haunted Castle (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1921) with Olga Tschechova, Der Roman der Christine von Herre (Ludwig Berger, 1921) with Heinrich George, Luise Millerin (Carl Froelich, 1922) with Lil Dagover, Alt-Heidelberg/The Student Prince (Hans Behrendt, 1923) with Eva May, Zur Chronik von Grieshuus/The Chronicles of the Gray House (Arthur von Gerlach, 1925) and the silent film operetta Der Rosenkavalier/The Knight Of The Rose (Robert Wiene, 1925) with Jaque Catelain. In 1924 he worked at the Theater in der Josefstadt in Wien (Vienna), and in 1925 he moved over to the Burgtheater. From 1927 he turned away from the film business and devoted his career exclusively to the Burgtheater.
With the introduction of the sound film Paul Hartmann returned to the cinema. He played tough and adamant heroes, like the constructor and captain next to Hans Albers in the deluxe German/British production F.P.1 antwortet nicht/F.P.1 Doesn't Answer (Karl Hartl, 1932), or as the self sacrificing engineer in Der Tunnel/The Tunnel (Kurt aka Curtis Bernhardt, 1933). Other popular films were Der Läufer von Marathon/The Marathon Runner (Ewald André Dupont, 1933), Salon Dora Green/The House of Dora Green (Henrik Galeen, 1933) with Alfred Abel, and Mazurka (Willi Forst, 1935) with Pola Negri. From 1935 on he was a company member of the Preußischen Staatstheater in Berlin, where he stayed till the end of WW II. In 1934 he was named Staatsschauspieler (Stage Artist of the State), and from May 1937 he was part of the UFA Art Committee. He also appeared in such propaganda films as Pour le mérite (Karl Ritter, 1938), the biography Bismarck (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1940) and Ich klage an/I Accuse (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1941). In April 1942 he became the president of the Reichstheaterkammer. His commitment to the Nazi regime did not really harm his career or his popularity after the war. After being banned from the theatre in 1945 Hartmann could only return to the stage in 1948 as Faust in a production of the Goethe play in Bonn. During the 1950s he was engaged by the Schauspielhaus in Düsseldorf, the Theater am Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, and the Burgtheater in Vienna. He also returned to the cinema. The ageing star now mainly worked as a character actor in supporting roles, such as in Die Dame in Schwarz/The Lady in Black (Erich Engels, 1951) with Mady Rahl, Der grosse Zapfenstreich/The Sergeant's Daughter (George Hurdalek, 1953) with Johanna Matz, Regina Amstetten (Kurt Neumann, 1954), Die Barrings/The Barrings (Rolf Thiele, 1955) with Dieter Borsche and Nadja Tiller, Der Fuchs von Paris/The Fox of Paris (Paul May, 1957), Buddenbrooks (Alfred Weidenmann, 1959), and Rosen für den Staatsanwalt/Roses for the Prosecutor (Wolfgang Staudte, 1959). He finished his film career in the 1960s with productions like the TV-film Hermann und Dorothea (Ludwig Berger, 1961), the Heimatfilm Waldrausch (Paul May, 1962), and the international war film The Longest Day (Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, 1962), an all-star re-creation of the D-Day invasion, personally orchestrated by Darryl F. Zanuck. Hartmanns last appearance was in the TV-film Demetrius (Ludwig Berger, Heribert Wenk, 1969). In 1964 he was awarded the Filmband in Gold for his continuing and outstanding contributions to the German Film. Paul Hartmann died in 1977 in München (Munich). He was married twice. During WWI he had married a Slavic ballet dancer, who died in 1952. In 1955 he married the painter Elfriede Lieberun.
Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia (German), and IMDb.
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German postcard by Verl. Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm, no. 9937. Photo: Fritz Richard. Publicity still for a stage production of Othello by William Shakespeare.
German actor, writer, and film director Paul Wegener (1874-1948) is one of the true fathers of the horror and fantasy genre, particularly remembered for his three silent films centered around the Jewish legend of the Golem. Wegener was one of the pioneers of the German cinema who realized the potential of the new medium and used the possibilities of cinematic trick photography as a method for presenting fantastic tales in a serious matter.
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