Géza from Cziffra

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Géza von Cziffra [ ˈgeːzɒ fɔn ˈʦifrɒ ] (born December 19, 1900 in Arad in the Banat region , Kingdom of Hungary , Austria-Hungary today Romania , † April 28, 1989 in Dießen am Ammersee ) was a Hungarian film director and screenwriter . He directed films such as Dog Days (1944), The Man Who Seeks Himself (1950), Geld aus der Luft (1954), The False Adam (1955) and Bandits of the Autobahn (1955).

Life

Cziffra attended a Jesuit boarding school and from 1914 to 1918 a naval and cadet school. He then moved to Budapest , where he worked as a newspaper editor, and in 1920 to Vienna .

In 1922 Cziffra worked as a trainee in the Sascha film industry and directed the film Gulliver's Travels , which was largely made with puppets . In 1923 he went to Berlin and wrote for the Berliner Tageblatt and Die Welt am Abend . He has written short stories, film articles and glosses on Hungarian justice and politics for Die Weltbühne . It was in this environment that he met Karl Gustav Vollmoeller , an important poet and film pioneer of the time . In his autobiography Buy yourself a colorful balloon , Cziffra writes:

“There was only one well-known author who was interested in the sound film: Karl Vollmoeller ... in the twenties he was one of the most dazzling figures in the literary and social world of Berlin ... he wrote novels and films, including today's film everyone knows: The Blue Angel … In Vollmoeller's apartment I met the sculptor Renée Sintenis , the Bauhaus boss Walter Gropius , the art dealer Alfred Flechtheim , the communist publisher Wieland Herzfelde ; the visual artist George Grosz , Oskar Kokoschka , Ernst Barlach ; Fritz Lang … Erich Mendelsohn … Princess Mechtilde Lichnowsky ; the Jewish Police President Bernhard Weiß and the Crown Prince . "

- Géza by Cziffra 1975

It was Vollmoeller with his enormous contacts who paved Cziffra's way into the film studios and made important encounters possible for him, for example with Max Liebermann and Albert Einstein .

At that time, Cziffra was involved in various scripts and from 1932 to 1933 was the owner of the cabaret in the Palmenhaus on Kurfürstendamm . After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, he returned to Budapest in April 1933, where he directed or co-directed several films for the local Hunnia-Film.

In 1936 he returned to Berlin, where he initially worked primarily as a screenwriter and assistant director. He also published several plays for the stage. In 1941 he went back to Vienna. After rehearsing some scenes in his play Das immortliche Antlitz , he made his breakthrough as a director with the extremely successful revue film The White Dream in 1943 under the artistic direction of Karl Hartl .

In 1945 he shot the film Leuchtende Schatten in the then German-occupied city of Prague . The SS -Sturmbannführer Eweler , member of the SD and brother of the actress Ruth Eweler , was intended as a criminal police adviser . After a while Eweler was expelled from Cziffra for excessive criticism of the studio. Shortly afterwards, Cziffra was arrested and taken to the Gestapo headquarters in the Pecec Palace in Prague. He was accused of having eaten several times in the Czech restaurant "Neumann" without brands. Cziffra was eventually transported to the Pankrác remand prison in Prague and sentenced to six months in prison, which he was due to begin on February 12. According to his own statements, Cziffra could only avoid being transported to Theresienstadt by manipulating documents. Shortly before the end of the war, Cziffra was released from custody on April 19.

In 1945 Cziffra founded the first Austrian film production company after the Second World War , Cziffra-Film , which existed until 1949 in Vienna with an American license . In 1952 he was a co-founder of Arion-Film GmbH in Hamburg .

He mainly made entertainment and music films in which well-known German and Austrian actors such as Peter Alexander , Rudolf Platte , Senta Berger and Hubert von Meyerinck participated. Musicians like Bill Ramsey or Bully Buhlan made the films mostly musical revues with a homeland character. Cziffra's work had a major impact on German-Austrian entertainment films of the 1950s and early 1960s. As a scriptwriter, he often used pseudonyms ( Peter Trenck , Albert Anthony , John Ferguson , Thomas Harrer , Richard Anden , Enrico Anden and Horace Parker ).

He was temporarily married to the actress Ursula Justin and was last married for the fifth time in 1958. Cziffra was buried in the municipal crematorium on the Ostfriedhof in Munich (Urn Hall D - G3).

His written estate is in the archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Filmography

Fonts

  • It was a lavish ball night, novel, with 16 images from the Ufafilm of the same name , Ufa, Berlin 1939, DNB 572656246 .
    • It was a glittering ball night. A moral history of German film . Herbig, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-7766-1341-6 .
  • Anita and the devil. Musical comedy in 5 pictures, music: Theo Mackeben, Crescendo Theaterverlag, Berlin 1940, DNB 57265622X .
  • Tanja and her forty men. A novel . Wancura, Vienna 1957, DNB 450857433
  • Buy yourself a colorful balloon. Memories of gods and demigods . Herbig, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-7766-0708-4 .
  • It was always the women ... An intimate contemporary story . Herbig, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-7766-0784-X .
  • The best of my collection of jokes and anecdotes from the movie . Heyne, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-453-00739-5 .
  • Hanussen. Clairvoyant of the devil. The truth about the Reichstag fire . Herbig, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-7766-0879-X .
  • Tango. A novel by a Berlin family . Herbig, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7766-0946-X .
  • The cow in the coffee house. The roaring twenties in anecdotes . Herbig, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-7766-1147-2 .
  • The Holy Drinker (via Joseph Roth ). Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1983, ISBN 3-404-10215-0 .
  • In the waiting room of fame. Encounters with famous personalities such as Bert Brecht, Albert Einstein, Erich Kästner and others. a. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1985, ISBN 3-404-10660-1 (= Bastei Lübbe General Series, Volume 10660).
  • Dr Martin Ottler, follower. Roman Lambda Edition, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-925495-25-8 (= Lambda-Dossier , No. 3).
  • Not a lie. Memories of my century of autobiography . Herbig, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-7766-1500-1 .

Awards

reception

The Süddeutsche Zeitung described von Cziffra in 1989 as the "greatest [...] among the revue film directors of German post-war films ".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Géza from Chiffra: Buy yourself a colorful balloon. Memories of gods and demigods . Herbig, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-7766-0708-4 , pp. 162-164.
  2. ^ Geza-von-Cziffra-Archiv Inventory overview on the website of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin.
  3. ^ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): 1980: Interview with Géza von Cziffra | DW | 11/24/2014. Retrieved on August 7, 2020 (German).
personal data
SURNAME Cziffra, Géza from
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Peter Trenck; Albert Anthony; John Ferguson; Thomas Harrer; Richard Andes; Horace Parker
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian film director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH December 19, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Arad , Kingdom of Hungary , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1989
Place of death Dießen am Ammersee