Erwin C. Dietrich

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Erwin C. Dietrich (born October 4, 1930 in Glarus ; † March 15, 2018 in Zurich ) was a Swiss screenwriter , film producer , production manager , director and actor and one of the most important representatives of European exploitation films .

life and work

Dietrich originally wanted to be an actor. He broke off the start of training as a theater actor and realigned himself. From 1955 he produced films, initially with his company Urania-Film , such as The Lord with the Black Melon and The Model Husband , which proved to be great successes. When the “ Wallace crime novels ” became popular in Germany , Dietrich brought Die Nylonschlinge or Der Würger vom Tower , cast with German actors like Dietmar Schönherr , to the cinemas.

In the mid-1960s the cinema scene became sexually more permissive, a trend that Dietrich followed. An early example is the film St. Pauli between Night and Morning , which he produced and which represented a combination of a common crime story and eroticism. His first directorial work from 1968, the film adaptation of the novel of the same name, Die Niece der Frau Oberst , was a commercial success. By 1980, more than 45 other directing and screenwriting works followed, mostly under the pseudonyms "Michael Thomas" or "Manfred Gregor". Dietrich produced these films with his newly founded "Elite-Film" (later "Ascot Film GmbH"). Most of Dietrich's films were made in his studios in Rümlang outside Zurich.

The highlights of Dietrich's work are above all the films with Ingrid Steeger and Brigitte Lahaie . Dietrich often referred to his 1980 remake of Die Nichten der Frau Oberst , also with Lahaie, as his favorite film. Dietrich produced a total of 17 films with the Spanish director Jess Franco .

Films like love letters from a Portuguese nun or Jack the Ripper with Klaus Kinski gained worldwide recognition, also from colleagues and fans like Joe Dante or Quentin Tarantino , who called Dietrich the “Swiss Roger Corman ”.

Dietrich's “Avis” film rental company, with which he brought over 400 films of various genres to the cinemas, also flourished. But the cineast Dietrich no longer wanted to be identified only with erotic and "exploitation". The film he co-produced The Story of Piera by Marco Ferreri with Isabelle Huppert and Marcello Mastroianni was not as commercially successful as other of his productions, but it had artistic success at festivals around the world. Hanna Schygulla received the “ Golden Palm ” in Cannes for her performance .

The 1980 with the Golden Screen excellent action movie come the wild geese , he along with Euan Lloyd produced, earned him an international reputation. In 1978 the film had four million viewers in the Federal Republic of Germany alone, probably also because of actors such as Richard Harris , Roger Moore , Richard Burton and Hardy Krüger, who were popular at the time .

In the course of this success Dietrich produced other films of this format such as Flucht nach Athena or Die Seewölfeommen . The success of these films convinced Dietrich in the mid-1980s, together with his business partner Peter Baumgartner, to produce three more action adventures filmed in the Philippines: the mercenary trilogy Secret Code: Wild Geese , Leopard Command and The Commander with Klaus Kinski , Ernest Borgnine and others or Lee van Cleef in leading roles.

In parallel to his work as a screenwriter, director and producer, Dietrich opened the first multiplex cinema in Switzerland, the Capitol cinema in Zurich and later the Cinemax cinema on Zurich's Escher-Wyss-Platz .

At the beginning of the 1990s, after the dance film Dance Academy II and the two comedies A Swiss named Nötzli and Der doppelte Nötzli and a total of more than 100 productions, Dietrich withdrew from the active production business and devoted himself to the film distributor "Ascot-Elite". The management of this company is now the responsibility of his two children. Dietrich recently devoted himself to the digital restoration of his cinematic heritage.

Erwin C. Dietrich wrote numerous scripts under the pseudonym Manfred Gregor (not to be confused with the author Gregor Dorfmeister , who used the same pseudonym) and often directed under the pseudonyms Irvin C. Dietrich , Wolfgang Frank , Manfred Gregor , Michael Thomas and Fred Williams .

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Benedikt Eppenberger, Daniel Stapfer: Girls, Machos and Monets. The incredible story of the Swiss cinema entrepreneur Erwin C. Dietrich. With a foreword by Jess Franco . Sharp boots, Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-033-00960-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rico Bandle: Das Schweizer Filmwunder In: Die Weltwoche from November 4, 2011.
  2. ^ Benedikt Eppenberger: He lured nudists to the cinema with nudist slapstick. In: Tages-Anzeiger from March 25, 2018.
  3. ↑ Der Spiegel No. 14 of March 31, 2018, p. 125.
  4. ↑ a b c d Benedikt Eppenberger, Daniel Stapfer: Girls, Machos and Moneten: the incredible story of the Swiss cinema entrepreneur Erwin C. Dietrich , Verlag Scharfe Stiefel, Zurich, Bern, 2006
personal data
SURNAME Dietrich, Erwin C.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss film producer
DATE OF BIRTH 4th October 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Glarus
DATE OF DEATH 15th March 2018
Place of death Zurich