Frieda Grafe

Frieda Grafe (born August 20, 1934 in Mülheim (Warstein) ; † July 10, 2002 in Munich ) was a German film critic , film essayist and translator .

Life

Frieda Grafe studied philosophy, Romance languages ​​and German literature in Munich, Paris and Münster.

Count 1965 about her apprenticeship years:

“The strongest educational experience: the experience of the universities as the most important breeding ground for patriarchal thought. First serious contact with film in Paris, where I was recommended to study Murnau at the Sorbonne for a better understanding of German Expressionism. Then a systematic visit to the cinema, aided by the fact that the university is in the cinema district. "

From 1962 to 1972 she wrote film reviews and essays for the film magazine Filmkritik , since 1968 also in the period , from 1970 mainly for the Süddeutsche Zeitung . She was involved in monographs on Fritz Lang , Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and Ernst Lubitsch . She also translated books by and about Alfred Hitchcock , François Truffaut , Éric Rohmer , Jean-Luc Godard , Luis Buñuel , Jean Renoir and Pedro Almodóvar , partly together with her husband, the film historian and film critic Enno Patalas .

Grafe never depended on writing for a living. Accordingly, she could take her time and choose the topics that interested her. Her style was montage-associative and elegant. The lyrics were always very well thought out, but often also had something playful about them. She incorporated ideas from a wide variety of areas into her texts: photography, fashion, color theory, philosophy, linguistics, feminism, literature and painting. Text collections appeared during his lifetime: Im Off (1974, together with Enno Patalas), Described Film (1985).

The film tips that appeared weekly in the Süddeutsche Zeitung from 1970 to 1986 were a completely different facet of her work . These are very brief comments on the current range of films in Munich, often only one sentence per film. These texts were also published as a book. Filmtips Frieda Grafe . In 1995 she published a short essay in book form in England on the film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (German 2002 in Grafe: Filmfarben ).

Grafe lived in Munich since 1961. In 1962 she married Enno Patalas , with whom she has a son named Igor (* 1963). Frieda Grafe died on July 10, 2002 in Munich.

Grafe enjoyed enormous esteem from her fellow critics. Many call her their unattainable role model.

Favorite movies

To give an impression of Frieda Grafe's cinematic preferences, here are her 30 favorite films that she named in a survey in 1995 (original titles, in chronological order, directors in brackets):

The strong man (The Strong Man) ( Frank Capra , 1926) Her Majesty Love ( Joe May , 1930) Boudu sauvé des eaux ( Jean Renoir , 1932) Angèle ( Marcel Pagnol , 1934) It's a Gift ( Norman Z. McLeod , 1934) The Merry Widow ( Ernst Lubitsch , 1934) U Samogo Sinego Morja ( Boris Barnet , 1936) Desiré ( Sacha Guitry , 1937) Lady in the Dark ( Mitchell Leisen , 1946) Canyon Passage ( Jacques Tourneur , 1946) DOA ( Rudolph Maté , 1949) Riso amaro ( Giuseppe De Santis , 1949) Waga Koi Wa Moenu ( Kenji Mizoguchi , 1949) House by the River ( Fritz Lang , 1950) Rio Grande ( John Ford , 1950)

Summer Stock ( Charles Walters , 1950) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ( Howard Hawks , 1953) The Saga of Anathahan ( Joseph von Sternberg , 1953) Viaggio in Italia ( Roberto Rossellini , 1953) Ordet ( Carl Theodor Dreyer , 1957) Akibyori ( Yasujiro Ozu , 1960) The Bellboy ( Jerry Lewis , 1960) The Little Shop of Horrors ( Roger Corman , 1960) Une femme est une femme ( Jean-Luc Godard , 1961) The Honeypot ( Joseph L. Mankiewicz , 1967) La Région Centrale ( Michael Snow , 1971) Avanti! ( Billy Wilder , 1971) Anatomie d'un rapport ( Luc Moullet , 1976) News from Home ( Chantal Akerman , 1976) Maine-Océan ( Jacques Rozier , 1986)

(from: steadycam , No. 29, spring 1995)

Works

• Twelve-volume work edition by Frieda Grafe, published 2002–2008, Verlag Brinkmann & Bose , Berlin (publisher's homepage ). Contains the following volumes:
  1. Film colors . 2002. ISBN 3-922660-78-9 .
  2. Light from Berlin . 2003. ISBN 3-922660-81-9 .
  3. Only the cinema - 40 years with the Nouvelle Vague . 2003. ISBN 3-922660-82-7 .
  4. From the off - to the cinema in the sixties . 2003. ISBN 3-922660-84-3 .
  5. Film / History - How film writes history differently . 2004. ISBN 3-922660-86-X .
  6. Two years from my life with Gertrude Stein . 2004. ISBN 3-922660-87-8 .
  7. In close-up - author politics and beyond . 2005. ISBN 3-922660-90-8 .
  8. Gathered time . 2005. ISBN 3-922660-91-6 .
  9. Film by film . 2006. ISBN 3-922660-95-9 .
  10. Interfaces - looks / images / body / video / language / drawing / photo / film . 2006. ISBN 3-922660-96-7 .
  11. To the movies! - Munich film tips 1970–1986 . 2007. ISBN 978-3-922660-98-9 .
  12. Register . 2008. ISBN 978-3-922660-99-6 .
• Frieda Grafe, 30 films . Issue 1–3. Edited by M. Annas, A. Busch, H. Gunkel, Brinkmann & Bose , Berlin 2013 ISBN 978-3-940048-16-5 .
• "Souvenirs, Origins, Found Fiction" (English translation by Joel Scott). Harun Farocki Institute, Berlin.

literature

• Homage for Frieda Grafe in the film magazine steadycam , No. 45, spring 2003 ( homepage of the magazine )
• A diploma thesis dedicated to Frieda Grafe's writing: Wegner, Wenke (2004): Körperinn und Filmkritik - for the production of new knowledge in the texts of Frieda Grafe (1961–2002), as a French short version: Wegner, Wenke (2004): Sens du corps et critique de cinéma - à propos de la production d'un nouveau savoir dans les textes de Frieda Grafe (1961–2002). [pdf download at: http://www.wenkewegner.de ]

Web links

• Literature by and about Frieda Grafe in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ The thirty favorites of the cinema enthusiast in FAZ from April 25, 2013, page 29