Alfred Vohrer

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Director Alfred Vohrer ( 2nd from right) with Joachim Fuchsberger (left), Horst Tappert (2nd from left), Hilde Brand and Konrad Georg (right); 1969

Alfred Adolf Vohrer (born December 29, 1914 in Stuttgart , † February 3, 1986 in Munich ) was a German film director and screenwriter .

Life

Beginnings

Alfred Vohrer attended secondary school in his hometown and then took acting and singing lessons. In the 1930s he became a member of the Württemberg State Theater in Stuttgart . During the Second World War , Vohrer was drafted and lost his right arm in Russia in 1941. He then volunteered at Ufa , where he worked as an assistant director for Harald Braun and Alfred Braun until the end of the war .

In the first years after the war, the German film industry was very weak, so Vohrer initially worked for radio . From 1946 to 1948 he was senior director at Radio Stuttgart until he returned to film work in 1949, albeit almost unnoticed and without the audience's knowledge. He became a dubbing director at MPEA and later joined the dubbing company Ultra-Film GmbH as a partner with Josef Wolf . In the following years Vohrer was responsible for the synchronization of almost 1000 films, including numerous classics such as Die Faust im Nacken ( On The Waterfront , USA 1954) or Die Brücke am Kwai ( The Bridge on the River Kwai , GB / USA 1957).

In 1956, Ultra-Film planned its first film project, Damned to Life , whose script came from Vohrer. However, the project was rejected.

In 1958, the same film company produced the film Dirty Angel , with which Vohrer made his directorial debut, in the course of the successful thugs and youth problem films . Another three films in this genre followed, with Vohrer's work particularly convincing in crimes after school .

The problem film Till the Money You Divorce ... (1960) was more average, but brought Vohrer together for the first time with the Berlin producer Artur Brauner .

Director at Rialto Film

For Vohrer's final breakthrough, a former production manager Brauner was responsible, who had meanwhile become production manager of the German Rialto Film : Horst Wendlandt . This hired Vohrer for the Edgar Wallace film Die toten Augen von London (1961), which developed into the biggest success of the already established series. Vohrer was also chosen as director for the Rialto's first color film, Our House in Cameroon .

In 1962 Alfred Vohrer made two Edgar Wallace films, there were 14 in total, including Das Gasthaus an der Thames (1962), Der Zinker (1963), Der Hexer (1964), Neues vom Hexer (1965) and Die Blaue Hand (1967) ). Vohrer became the busiest director at Wallace and Rialto.

In Wendlandt's Karl May series , too , Vohrer was to become the lead director and, in 1962, to direct Der Schatz im Silbersee . The Constantin Film , which gave the Edgar Wallace and Karl May series in order, consisted in the latter but in their contract director Harald Reinl . In 1964, however, Vohrer was given the opportunity to make a film from the Western series with the film Unter Vultures . The comparatively action-oriented film developed into the greatest international success of all Karl May films. Vohrer's second May film, Old Surehand Part 1 (1965), was discontinued. The one at the now successful spaghetti western -oriented Winnetou and his friend Old Fire Hand (1966) ended up being the last Karl May movie Rialto.

By the end of 1968 Vohrer had made a total of 19 films for the Rialto, but in the meantime also worked for other production companies. So in 1963 the crime thriller An Alibi breaks as a production of the Sascha film industry in Vienna . The social comedy Long Legs - Long Fingers was made in 1966 at Artur Brauner's CCC film .

Vohrer 1965: "Whether a film is successful or not is decided for my terms at the box office - regardless of whether it is artistically valuable or whether it is artistically not valuable."

Switch to Roxy Film

When the level of Edgar Wallace productions sank significantly at the end of the 1960s and the audience success waned, Vohrer switched to Roxy-Film in Munich under Luggi Waldleitner . It was there that the crime thrillers Seven Days Deadline and Perrak as well as the sex comedies Herzblatt or Wie tell ich's my daughter? and The yellow house on Pinnasberg .

From 1971 Vohrer was able to build on the success of earlier years with six film adaptations of Johannes Mario Simmel's novels . In addition, the Puschkin film and the rain blurs every trace as well as the Erich Kästner adaptation Three Men in the Snow .

The Konsalik adaptation Who likes to die under palm trees for the TV-13 production and the two Ganghofer adaptations Der Edelweißkönig and Das Schweigen im Walde for the CTV-72 production also met with great audiences, but were panned by the film critics . His film Everyone dies for himself , however, received more critical acclaim. From the second half of the 1970s onwards, however, public interest in the cinema had sunk significantly, so that Vohrer worked exclusively for television from 1976 onwards.

watch TV

Alfred Vohrer has worked for the Derrick series since 1975 . From 1977 he also shot for the series Der Alte , for which he was also responsible as an author four times. He was one of the busiest directors on the two series.

In the 1980s, numerous episode films of various genres were added. White and blue stories with Gustl Bayrhammer , Hessian stories with Günter Strack and Krumme Touren with Manfred Krug had high ratings, so that ZDF couldn't get past Vohrer when it produced the prestige series Das Traumschiff and Die Schwarzwaldklinik . He also shot other episodes of Derrick .

death

Alfred Vohrer, who had lived with his partner Herbert in Berlin-Dahlem since the mid-1950s, died on February 3, 1986 in Munich. His body was discovered by an assistant director who wanted to visit Vohrer at his hotel because he had not appeared on time for the filming of a new episode of The Old One . He found his final resting place in the Dahlem forest cemetery in Berlin, in field 008-170.

Filmography

Assistant director

  • 1942: Between Heaven and Earth (Direction: Harald Braun )
  • 1942: love me! (Director: Harald Braun)
  • 1944: Eyes of Love (Between Night and Morning) (Director: Alfred Braun ; Premiere: 1951)
  • 1944: Nora (Director: Harald Braun)
  • 1944: Dreaming (Director: Harald Braun)
  • 1945: The silent guest (Director: Harald Braun)
  • 1945: The Puppeteer (Director: Alfred Braun; unfinished)

Dialogue direction (selection)

(sorted by first performance in Germany)

Director

Radio plays

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. for example Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in the lexicon "Films on TV" (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , pp. 181 and 732
personal data
SURNAME Vohrer, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vohrer, Alfred Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German film director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH 3rd February 1986
Place of death Munich