max Ophuls , pseudonym of Maximillian Oppenheimer , is a French scenario writer of German origin, born with Saarbrucken the May 6th 1902 and deceased with Hamburg the March 25th 1957.

Career

For its theatrical and cinematographic career, it took the Ophüls pseudonym not to obstruct his father, manufacturer of clothing, if it would fail. Thereafter, it removed the dieresis on U when it worked in France and in the United States. The appropriations of Lettre of an unknown factor ( Letter from year Unknown Woman ) of 1948 quote it in the form “max Opuls”. One must thus write Ophuls, according to his desire.

It began its career as training actor in 1919, but entered the theatrical production in 1924. Two years later, he became director of creation of the Burgtheater in Vienna. After having assembled 200 parts, it turned to the production of films in 1929, while becoming chief-dialogist under the direction of Anatole Litvak in Universum Film AG (in summary UFA) with Berlin. He worked in all Germany and directed its first film in 1931 with the comedy in short-measuring daN schon lieber Lebertran .

Envisaging the threat of the rise of the Nazism, Ophuls which was Jewish, took refuge in France in 1933 after the Incendie of the Reichstag and became French citizen in 1938. After the defeat of 1940, it gained the United States by Switzerland and Italy in 1941, but did not find work with Hollywood. Fortunately, it accepted the assistance of Preston Sturges which admired it for a long time and it continued to carry out a certain number of remarkable films. It returned to Europe in 1950. He died in Hamburg of a rheumatic Cardiopathie and was buried with the cemetery of the Père Lachaise in Paris. He had realized hardly more than twenty films.

Works

The best of its German films is undoubtedly Liebelei (1932); one finds there a certain number of topics which made its celebrity: purity of the women (purity which does not go without a certain frivolity and, sometimes, a great naivety), cruelty, violence of the men and generally, company which, under outside brilliances, scintillating, proves to be a crushing machine weakest, etc Once in France, it realized inter alia Werther , very convincing adaptation of the novel of Goethe, with Pierre Richard-Willm, and two films with Edwige Feuillère, Without a future and De Mayerling in Sarajevo . Taken refuge in Hollywood at the time of the war, it is not that in 1948 qu ' it realized what is its American masterpiece: Letter of an unknown factor ( Letter from year Unknown Woman) . Before turning over to Europe, it directed two other films: Caught , and The Reckless Moment (1949).

Returned to France, it carried out a series of masterpieces: the Round (1950), the Pleasure (1952), Madam of… (1953), with its actress fetish, Danielle Darrieux, and Lola Montès (1955), which did not meet success and was malheureusementet " remonté" by the producers, in spite of his opposition and that of the " young people turcs" being born New wave.

In all his works, one finds the movements without clashes of the camera which characterize it, the complex use of the cranes and the carriages and the dollies, which influenced Stanley Kubrick or, in France, Jacques Demy (whose first film, Lola , is dedicated to that he regarded as his Master).

His/her son Marcel Ophuls (born in 1927) became an appreciated realizer of documentary films.

Catalog of films

Realizer

Scenario writer

Note: max Ophuls was scenario writer of all the films which it has réalisé.

Assistant Realizer

References

  • max Ophüls (1959), Spiel im Dasein. Eine Rückblende. MIT einem Nachwort von Hilde Ophüls und einer Einführung von Friedrich Luft, sowie achtzehn Abbildungen (autobiography), Stuttgart: Henry Goverts Verlag (posthumously published)
  • Alan Larson Williams (1977, reprinted 1980,1992), max Ophüls and the Cinema off Desired: Style and Spectacle in Furnace Films, 1948-1955, Essays one Film series, New York: Arno Close (reprint). | ISBN 0405129246
  • Susan Mr. White (1995), The Cinema off max Ophüls: Magisterial Vision and the Figure off Woman , New York: Columbia University Near. | ISBN 0231101139
  • L. To cover (1996), max Ophüls in the Hollywood Studios , Rutgers, New Jersey: Rutgers University Near. | ISBN 0813522919

External bonds

  • Judicious off cinema
  • Locarno Film Festival
  • max Ophüls Award
  • NewYork Times
  • films of max Ophüls

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