Ernst von Theumer senior

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Ernst Ritter von Theumer senior (born September 5, 1926 in Vienna , Austria ) is an Austrian cameraman , film producer , film director and screenwriter for German and international film.

Life

The von Theumer family can be traced back to the year 1780. Theumer's father was already called Ernst Ritter von Theumer (1899–1946). His wife Anna, née Schneck, gave birth to three children - Viktor von Theumer (born 1922), Edith von Theumer (born 1923) and, as the youngest, Ernst. He settled in Munich shortly after the end of the Second World War and began working for local companies as a cameraman for documentary film recordings ("Schöne Alpenland") and as a camera assistant for feature films ( Where the old woods rustle , 1956, White Elderberry , 1957). Occasionally, as with Der Forster vom Silberwald und Heimatland , he contributed nature and animal shots to feature films.

At the end of the same decade, Ernst Ritter von Theumer founded his first own production company. In 1959 he began producing the film Adventure on the Bosporus (working title), which was also directed by the Rififi star Carl Möhner . Obviously there were major problems finding a distributor, so that the film, in which Theumer also ran the camera and which already had typical features of many later Theumer productions, did not reach cinemas until 1962 under the slightly different title Inshalla, Razzia am Bosporus . The criticism punished this and the majority of the following Theumer productions with disregard or even displeasure. About the debut Inshalla , for example, it was said: “Unspeakably primitive adventures of a German drug commissioner in Turkey, interrupted by weird dance recordings ”.

Theumer's oeuvre in the 1960s, when he worked both as a producer (his company film production Ernst von Theumer and Tefi-Filmproduktion Ernst Ritter von Theumer) as well as a director, was determined by artistically completely unambitious, action-packed and cold-blooded B-entertainment films and had sensational ones Titles such as There is still room in Hell , Camp of the Damned , Murder in Rio , The Red-haired Satan and Perry Rhodan - SOS from space . From the middle of the same decade, when Theumer mostly worked with international partners, he also directed several films in the same category that were happy to shoot and beat, such as Sharp shots in Jamaica and I, the nun and the bastards . Theumer rarely produced these productions under his own name, but instead used “American”-sounding pseudonyms such as “Richard Jackson” that suggested international flair. Most recently, in the 1980s, von Theumer and his small Munich production company TAT-Filmproduktion GmbH once again concentrated on the production of highly speculative sex and crime stories set in an “exotic” milieu. The online edition of the Lexicon of International Films , for example, complained about Jungle Warriors - your path through hell : “A largely low-tension adventure film with brutal effects and misogynistic clichés that was staged for the final shooting orgy.” About Theumer’s no less gritty late work Rage to Kill says there: "An extremely simple-minded adventure film that unabashedly jumps from cliché to cliché, enriched with the usual slaughter."

With the actress Monika Teuber , once his discovery ( May they rest in peace ), he founded the Cineteleteam in 1978, and they produced, among other things, Die Totenschmecker and Primel makes your house crazy . In 1980 Theumer founded TAT Filmproduktion together with Teuber and Gerd Ackermans, which brought out films such as Chained Heat, Red Heat, Jungle Warriors and Silent Night . In 1994, together with Monika Teuber, he produced the literary adaptation Jamilja for their own company Triangle Film , which was shown at the St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Casablanca and Marrakech film festivals. Ernst Ritter von Theumer then ended his film career and retired into private life.

His son is the producer of the same name, Ernst Ritter von Theumer (* 1949), who came into the film business through his father and has been working quite successfully as a television producer since the 1980s.

Filmography (selection)

as a film producer, unless otherwise stated

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ according to the film archive Kay Less
  2. ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Internationale Films, Volume 4, p. 1821. Reinbek near Hamburg 1987
personal data
SURNAME Theumer, Ernst von senior
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Theumer, Ernst Ritter von senior (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian film producer
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria