Frank Borzage

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Frank Borzage (1920)

Frank Borzage (born April 23, 1893 in Salt Lake City , Utah , † June 19, 1962 in Hollywood ) was an American film director . He was awarded the Oscar for best director for Das Glück in der Mansarde and Bad Girl .

Life

Borzage began his work in Hollywood as an actor in 1912. He made his first film as a director in 1913. After a few less successful films, he became known practically overnight in 1927 and became the most important director of the old Fox studios through the Seventh Heaven romance , the Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell established as a screen couple and earned them the addition America's Favorite Lovebirds . The film contained all the elements that became characteristic of his later films: the seamless mixture of sentimentality and romance, realistic elements from the lives of ordinary people and a lot of emotion. He won the first Academy Award for Best Director at the 1929 Academy Awards for this film . Only at this Academy Awards there were two directing Oscars, one for best comedy and one for best drama. Borzage is the only director who has won the Oscar for best director of a drama. At the 1932 Academy Awards , he received his second Oscar for directing Bad Girl .

In the following years, Borzage became known for his often sentimental, but never cheesy films, so that he often worked with top female stars. A Farewell to Arms from 1932 benefited from the intense portrayal of Helen Hayes and Man's Castle was a lyrical story about a young girl who accidentally becomes pregnant and finds happiness with her boyfriend in a barrack on the outskirts of town. Loretta Young and Spencer Tracy presented convincing performances and also became a couple privately. Two films with Kay Francis from 1935 exemplified the qualities of Borzage as a director. Living on Velvet , the story of a pilot with enormous guilt who is responsible for the death of his parents and his sister, and a patient woman illuminates the almost mystical nature of the relationship between the lovers who have found each other on a spiritual level that goes far goes beyond purely physical attraction. Romanticism and a lyrical-poetic narrative style help prevent the story of atonement and forgiveness from drifting into the sentimental. In Stranded from the same year, Kay Francis is shown as a hardworking woman who continues to work in her profession even after the marriage, a major exception in the films of the time.

Other actresses also benefited from working with Frank Borzage. Jean Arthur offered in ... and forever wins love from 1937 a haunting depiction of an oppressed, rich wife who finds happiness and fulfillment through love for a waiter. Margaret Sullavan gave one of her best performances under his direction in Three Comrades , loosely based on the novel Three Comrades by Erich Maria Remarque . He led Joan Crawford to excellent representations in the three joint strips Mannequin , Burning Fire of Passion and The Wonderful Rescue from 1940. A turning point in Borzage's career was The Hangman's Legacy in 1948 . The film was not the success hoped for and Borzage became increasingly alienated from Hollywood and fought a drinking problem. Only in 1955 did he start working again as a director. A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6300 Hollywood Blvd. is reminiscent of Borzage.

The film historian Hervé Dumont summed up the director's message in many of his films as follows:

“[The films] depict nothing more than the emergence of an affection, the search for authenticity, an inner career. The poet of loving intimacy is born and his material has been found: a man and a woman, both seemingly hopeless loners, outsiders, even deserters, overcome their egocentric drives in order to enhance each other in the course of several life tests - whether war, disease or poverty . They are strengthened by their love for one another. Unrestricted, emphatically non-bourgeois love, which is at the same time the object and subject of Borzage's entire filmography and, depending on the story, transcends time, space, possibly death. "

Filmography (selection)

As a director

Awards

Web links

Commons : Frank Borzage  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Hervé Dumont : Frank Borzage. The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic (Original title: Frank Borzage. Sarastro à Hollywood ). With a foreword by Martin Scorsese . McFarland, Jefferson (NC) 2006, 420 (VII) pp., ISBN 978-0-7864-2187-9 or ISBN 0-7864-2187-8
  • Frederick Lamster: Souls Made Great Through Love and Adversity. The Film Work of Frank Borzage . Scarecrow Press, Metuchen (NJ) et al. a. 1981, 230 (XI) S., ISBN 0-8108-1404-8
  • Steadycam (Cologne), No. 46 (spring 2004), dossier on Borzage.
  • Jörn Glasenapp : Hollywood's “Family Film” and the Third Reich: Reflections on Frank Borzage's melodrama “The Mortal Storm” (1940) , in: Medienwissenschaft (2003), Issue 3/4, pp. 286–303.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Articles on tcm.com
  2. ↑ "Borzage-Touch" or poetry and the velvet gloss of the pictures on nzz.ch, November 5, 2004
personal data
SURNAME Borzage, Frank
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film director
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Salt Lake City , Utah
DATE OF DEATH June 19, 1962
Place of death Hollywood