Fritz Freisler

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Fritz Freisler (born January 21, 1881 in Trübau , Bohemia , Austria-Hungary ; † July 2, 1955 in Vienna , Austria ) was an Austrian actor , film director and screenwriter . As a director, he was an essential representative of Austrian pre-expressionist film.

Life

He attended the commercial academy in Prague and then went to Vienna at the turn of the century to receive artistic training from the castle actor Albert Heine . He made his debut as an actor at the age of 22 at the Münchner Volkstheater , where he stayed until 1907. He then moved to Görlitz for a season before he was committed to Bielefeld in 1908 . It was there that Freisler also made his directorial debut. After a stopover in Mannheim he went to Berlin in 1910 at the Neue Volkstheater . He stayed there for several years and also got to know the German film pioneer Oskar Messter , who inspired him to film.

He directed his first films at the beginning of the First World War . In keeping with the times, there were propaganda films such as Ein Wiedersehen in Feindesland , Der Nörgler and the Sascha-Film Wien im Krieg . However, he soon switched to staging melodramas , with which he was able to celebrate major successes - several times with Fritz Kortner as the main actor. Along with Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz, he was one of the representatives of pre-expressionist film - the Austrian forerunner of German film expressionism . In this regard, he staged, among other things, the large-scale production The Mandarin with Harry Walden and Carl Götz as the main actors as well as The Other I with Fritz Kortner and Magda Sonja , The Letter of a Dead and The Night Camp of Mischli-Mischloch .

In 1923 he directed two films with the actress and dancer Anita Berber : Wisps of the Depth and Dances of Horror and Vice - the latter a documentation of her exuberant lifestyle, which ultimately led to her untimely death in 1930.

He mainly worked in Vienna, but also repeatedly in Berlin. There he directed, among other things, The King of Center Forward (1927) one of the first " football films ". With the beginning of the sound film era around 1930, Freisler ended his career because he could not assert himself. The last film he was involved in was Petersburg Nights. Waltz on the Neva which was filmed in 1934. However, it is not certain whether he only worked on the script or whether he (also) directed the film.

Filmography

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personal data
SURNAME Freisler, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian actor, film director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Trübau , Bohemia , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH 2nd July 1955
Place of death Vienna , Austria