Bruno Mondi

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Bruno Mondi (born September 30, 1903 in Schwetz , Prussia , † July 18, 1991 in Berlin ) was a German cameraman .

Life

Training as a cameraman

As a child, Bruno Mondi dreamed of being a cameraman and was a hobby photographer as a boy. In the German Bioscop , then the largest Berlin film company, which in 1911 established the studio lot in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Mondi was two and a half years in teaching. One of his sponsors was the film pioneer Guido Seeber . From him, Mondi learned the film trade from exposure to developing and copying to editing and trick shots. After completing his training, Mondi worked as a camera assistant for the company that merged into Decla-Bioskop in 1920 . One of the first productions in which he was involved was The tired death by Fritz Lang (1921). Two years later, in 1923, Mondi switched to the Zelnick-Mara-Film of the actor and producer Friedrich Zelnik as an assistant, and shortly afterwards to the actor and film entrepreneur Richard Eichberg , who had success with crime and sensational films after the First World War and for the first time in 1926 Dream couple Lilian Harvey and Willy Fritsch occupied.

Work for Richard Eichberg

At Eichberg, the cameraman Heinrich Gärtner became Mondi's role model and teacher. Gärtner and Mondi shot together in 1927 under the direction of Eichberg Highness Radieschen with Xenia Desni and Hans Brausewetter . With productions such as the Lilian Harvey film The Great Lola , Der Fürst von Pappenheim , The Serfs (all 1927), Das Girl von der Revue and Song (both 1928), Eichberg, Gärtner and Mondi became a well-rehearsed team. Mondi was the head cameraman for the first time in 1928 for the film The Great Countess based on the operetta of the same name by Walter Kollo (directed by Richard Löwenbein , cinema music by Paul Dessau ). Further films for Eichberg's society followed until the early 1930s. u. a. The daredevil and love affair , some of which were produced in the British Elstree Studios of British International Pictures , such as The Flame of Love / Hai-Tang. Der Weg zur Schande (1930) Night Birds / Der Greifer and Let's love and laugh / The Bridegroom Widow (1931).

Cooperation with Veit Harlan

Mondi himself had already become a member of the NSDAP on March 23, 1933 and adapted seamlessly to the changed political conditions. From 1935 Bruno Mondi worked with the director Veit Harlan , who started out as an extra, worked as an actor and first caused a sensation as a theater director in January 1935 ( wedding on the Panke ). Harlan at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm had great success in March 1935 with the Berlin folk play Krach in the Secret Annex. Then the ABC film production asked him to film the play with the stage cast. Apparently, the shooting in Berlin-Marienfelde only lasted eleven days. From then on, Mondi and Harlan were considered to be the guarantors of success, who were known for the careful preparation of their films and sophisticated lighting. In addition to numerous comedies and entertainment films, Mondi made some of the most important and momentous propaganda films of the National Socialists with Harlan , including the anti-Semitic production Jud Süß and the enormously elaborate color film Kolberg , which was not completed until the 12th anniversary of the seizure of power on January 30, 1945 and to this day is one of the reserved films . Mondi had to direct up to six cameras simultaneously for large-scale production. Mass scenes were filmed from the captive balloon, the ship and the Wehrmacht bucket car. In addition, the slight color fluctuations during film development due to the not yet fully developed emulsions from Mondi required a great deal of manual dexterity.

Post-war career at DEFA

Despite his opportunism during the Nazi era, Mondi was only banned from the profession for a short time and was signed by DEFA as one of its chief cameramen as early as 1946 . In 1947, directed by Georg C. Klaren, the film Wozzeck is made , which is still an expressionist masterpiece because of Mondi's work as a cameraman: “He knows every nuance of light, every breath of shadow and its gray sings as many tones as the sunflowers van Goghs spraying yellow. Nevertheless, Bruno Mondi is not a l'art pour l'Artist, he is a thinking cameraman who demands a dramaturgical justification for every change of attitude, for every movement of his beloved apparatus. "In 1948 Mondi stands for DEFA's first science fiction film, Chemistry and love behind the camera, in 1949 he made the workers' film Rotation with director Wolfgang Staudte . In the opinion of the renowned screenwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase , Mondi made the experiment of “not getting involved in any experiments” and guided the camera “very cleanly and forcefully”. Regardless of the propaganda effect of the Veit Harlan films, Mondi was considered to be one of the few recognized experts in color photography, which was still new at the time, and one of the most artistically ambitious cameramen of his generation. At DEFA he was allowed to set up a “special laboratory” for color photography and in 1950 he shot the first East German color film, The Cold Heart . Mondi is described as a "seedy" character in the research literature, but his filmography shows "how important a color film specialist was after 1945".

Cooperation with Ernst Marischka

In the 1950s he switched to German and Austrian film. Here he was primarily responsible for the recordings of several colorful productions by Ernst Marischka , in particular the popular Sissi trilogy. The young leading actress Romy Schneider felt competent advice from Mondi and wrote in her diary: “But before we started the girlhood of an empress , the cameraman spoke to my conscience again. Bruno Mondi knows something about it! We both went for a walk. Half an hour at least. ”In 1958, for the film adaptation of the novel The Embezzled Heaven by Franz Werfel , Mondi was given the unique opportunity to see Pope Pius XII's entry into the four-minute final scene . in St. Peter's Basilica. In addition to the pompous procession and the pilgrims, all the outstanding works of art in the building were shown in 36 settings. The shooting turned into a media event because of the special papal permission and the technical effort involved. Most recently he worked for television, where he recorded the series Förster Horn with Heinz Engelmann . His son Georg Mondi (* 1936) also became a cameraman and runs the Mondi film equipment rental company near the Berlin Adlershof film and television production facility.

Filmography

literature

  • Bruno Mondi: Experiences with the color film camera , in: The New Day - Daily Newspaper for Bohemia and Moravia , No. 17, 7th year, January 20, 1945
  • Conversation with Bruno Mondi, in: Tobis News , April 5, 1941
  • Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 5: L - N. Rudolf Lettinger - Lloyd Nolan. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 511.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://eichbergfilm.de/bruno-
  2. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017837/
  3. ↑ http://eichbergfilm.de/bruno-mondi/
  4. ↑ Friedemann Beyer, Gert Koshofer, Michael Krüger (eds.): UFA in color: Technology, politics and star cult between 1936 and 1945 , Munich 2010, p. 193
  5. ↑ Dagmar von Hoff and Ariane Martin: Intermedialität, Mediengeschichte, Medientransfer: on Georg Büchner's parallel projects Woyzeck and Leonce and Lena , 2008, p. 201
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Kohlhaase: Around the corner in the world - About films and friends , Berlin 2014, unpag. Ebook
  7. ↑ Susanne Marschall: Color in the cinema, Marburg 2005, p. 31
  8. ↑ Diary entry of September 7, 1954, in: Renate Seydel (Ed.): Ich, Romy. Diary of a life , Munich 2016, unpag.E-book
  9. ↑ Benjamin Städter: Metamorphosed Views: A Visual History of Church and Religion in the Federal Republic 1945–1980 , Frankfurt / Main, 2011, p. 68
personal data
SURNAME Mondi, Bruno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cameraman
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwetz , Prussia
DATE OF DEATH July 18, 1991
Place of death Berlin