A wartime director
Helmut Käutner helped Germany exorcise its disturbing past. Puja Goyal visits the well-known director's on going film exhibition in Bangalore.
Dated: Sunday Vijay Times, 06 August 2006, Centrestage
HELMUT KÄUTNER (born March 25, 1908, Düsseldorf,Germany; died April 20, 1980, Castellina, Italy), a German film director, actor, and screenwriter; was known as one of the most intelligent and humanistic directors of the Third Reich and he remains a leading figure in German cinema today.
Käutner began his professional career in 1931 as a writer, director, and performer for the Munich Student Cabaret troupe Die vier Nachrichter (The Four Executioners). His directorial debut in 1939, Kitty und die Weltkonferenz (Kitty and the World Conference), gently satirised German-Italian relations and portrayed a British cleric in a sympathetic manner which was not well taken by Joseph Goebbels, Hitlerís minister of propaganda. Käutner then began to avoid political subject matter during Germany's engagement in the war.
Most of Käutner's wartime films were musicals or romantic fantasies. He was especially praised for his light, deft touch with romantic comedy and for innovative, swirling camerawork he employed for grand scale musical numbers. These can be experienced in films such as Kleider machen Leute (1940; Clothes Make the Man), the tale of a humble tailor mistaken for a Russian prince, and Auf Wiedersehen, Franziska! (1941; Goodbye, Franziska!), which concerns the marital troubles between a reporter and his neglected wife.
One of Käutner's best film was Romanze in Moll (1943; Romance in a Minor Key), an adaptation of Guy du Maupassant's short story Les Bijoux. It is a traditional love-triangle story; and was praised for its compositional perfection and technical virtuosity. Käutner's last film was Unter den Brücken (1945; Under the Bridges)- a movie made under the arduous conditions of the final days of war, when filming was frequently interrupted by the noise of Allied bombers en route to Berlin. It is considered one of the greatest love stories in the history of German cinema.
His highly regarded and financially successful film from this period is Die letzte Brücke (1954; The Last Bridge), which won the International Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Käutner's success during this period won him a contract with Universal Pictures in 1957. His two American- made films were The Restless Years (1958) and A Stranger in My Arms (1959), which features a memorably neurotic performance by Mary Astor.
Post World War II has changed the way the world looks at German cinema, and how cinema is being produced German filmmaker, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg directed a shocking documentary, The Confessions of Winifred Wagner. In the film, Winifred talks about her cultural and political influence during the Third Reich. Winifred cannot contain her amusement when she recalls that after the collapse of the Third Reich, she was the only person left in Germany who would admit that she was a Nazi.
The New German cinema of the 1960s and 1970s provided the Federal Republic with an opportunity to distinguish itself from a dictatorship that nationalised all cultural produce: a regime that turned film into an agency of Nazismís reactionary ideology.
Käutner was a victim of political pressure; his work was largely influenced by officials and reflected on the quality of cinema produced in Germany. On the other hand artists like Hans-Jurgen Syberberg did not hesitate to come to terms with their situation and talk about how the fall of the Third Reich and its influences have affected them.
These films could be viewed as acts of mourning; indicating that Germans were "coming to terms" with a past they had defensively lived in denial with and for which they began to accept responsibility. The exhibition of Käutner's films is going on in Max Mueller Bhavan which will serve to ultimately exorcise a past that has had an undeniably disturbing impact upon the German name.
Dated: Sunday Vijay Times, 06 August 2006, Centrestage
HELMUT KÄUTNER (born March 25, 1908, Düsseldorf,Germany; died April 20, 1980, Castellina, Italy), a German film director, actor, and screenwriter; was known as one of the most intelligent and humanistic directors of the Third Reich and he remains a leading figure in German cinema today.
Käutner began his professional career in 1931 as a writer, director, and performer for the Munich Student Cabaret troupe Die vier Nachrichter (The Four Executioners). His directorial debut in 1939, Kitty und die Weltkonferenz (Kitty and the World Conference), gently satirised German-Italian relations and portrayed a British cleric in a sympathetic manner which was not well taken by Joseph Goebbels, Hitlerís minister of propaganda. Käutner then began to avoid political subject matter during Germany's engagement in the war.
Most of Käutner's wartime films were musicals or romantic fantasies. He was especially praised for his light, deft touch with romantic comedy and for innovative, swirling camerawork he employed for grand scale musical numbers. These can be experienced in films such as Kleider machen Leute (1940; Clothes Make the Man), the tale of a humble tailor mistaken for a Russian prince, and Auf Wiedersehen, Franziska! (1941; Goodbye, Franziska!), which concerns the marital troubles between a reporter and his neglected wife.
One of Käutner's best film was Romanze in Moll (1943; Romance in a Minor Key), an adaptation of Guy du Maupassant's short story Les Bijoux. It is a traditional love-triangle story; and was praised for its compositional perfection and technical virtuosity. Käutner's last film was Unter den Brücken (1945; Under the Bridges)- a movie made under the arduous conditions of the final days of war, when filming was frequently interrupted by the noise of Allied bombers en route to Berlin. It is considered one of the greatest love stories in the history of German cinema.
His highly regarded and financially successful film from this period is Die letzte Brücke (1954; The Last Bridge), which won the International Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Käutner's success during this period won him a contract with Universal Pictures in 1957. His two American- made films were The Restless Years (1958) and A Stranger in My Arms (1959), which features a memorably neurotic performance by Mary Astor.
Post World War II has changed the way the world looks at German cinema, and how cinema is being produced German filmmaker, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg directed a shocking documentary, The Confessions of Winifred Wagner. In the film, Winifred talks about her cultural and political influence during the Third Reich. Winifred cannot contain her amusement when she recalls that after the collapse of the Third Reich, she was the only person left in Germany who would admit that she was a Nazi.
The New German cinema of the 1960s and 1970s provided the Federal Republic with an opportunity to distinguish itself from a dictatorship that nationalised all cultural produce: a regime that turned film into an agency of Nazismís reactionary ideology.
Käutner was a victim of political pressure; his work was largely influenced by officials and reflected on the quality of cinema produced in Germany. On the other hand artists like Hans-Jurgen Syberberg did not hesitate to come to terms with their situation and talk about how the fall of the Third Reich and its influences have affected them.
These films could be viewed as acts of mourning; indicating that Germans were "coming to terms" with a past they had defensively lived in denial with and for which they began to accept responsibility. The exhibition of Käutner's films is going on in Max Mueller Bhavan which will serve to ultimately exorcise a past that has had an undeniably disturbing impact upon the German name.
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