Gregor Rabinowitsch

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Gregor Rabinowitsch (born April 2, 1887 in Kiev ; † November 12, 1953 in Munich ) was an international film producer of Russian origin.

Life

Gregor Rabinowitsch emigrated from Russia to Paris in the 1920s . He made his first appearance as a film producer in 1924 with the film Âme d'artiste , a production for the Paris company Ciné France directed by Germaine Dulac . Three more films followed. From the remnants of the dissolved Ciné France , he founded the Ciné Alliance in 1926 together with Noë Bloch , whose first production was Alexander Volkov's famous silent film Casanova . The company made only three films and stopped working in 1928.

Rabinowitsch went to Berlin and produced a number of successful films there for Ufa , including Die Todesschleife ( Arthur Robison , with Werner Krauß and Jenny Jugo , 1928), The wonderful lie of Nina Petrowna ( Hanns Schwarz , with Brigitte Helm , 1929), Manolescu - King of impostors ( Viktor Tourjansky , with Iwan Mosjukin , Heinrich George and Brigitte Helm, 1929), The White Devil ( Alexander Wolkow , with Mosjukin and Lil Dagover ), Dolly makes a career ( Anatole Litvak , with Dolly Haas , 1930), Never again love (Anatole Litvak, with Lilian Harvey , 1930) and In the Secret Service ( Gustav Ucicky , 1931).

Even before she took office in 1933, the film producer Gregor Rabinowitsch was a particular thorn in the side of the NSDAP , as he was not only of Jewish origin , but also Russian. In the campaigns that the National Socialist press used against the “ foreign infiltration ” of the UFA , his name - next to that of Erich Pommer  - was given preference. Since the UFA leadership agreed with the National Socialists, Rabinowitsch's work became increasingly difficult. Together with Arnold Pressburger , with whom he had worked continuously since 1928, he left the UFA in order to found his own production company on January 6, 1932: Union-Tonfilm , which was renamed Cine-Allianz Tonfilm GmbH the following March and quickly conquered the young European sound film market with multi-language versions of feature films in which prominent actors such as Jan Kiepura and Marta Eggerth appeared.

Under pressure from the Reichsfilmkammer , the Cine-Allianz Tonfilm GmbH was transferred to a liquidation company in 1935. The expropriation followed on July 24, 1937. Rabinowitsch left Germany and mainly worked in Paris , where his old company Ciné-Alliance had resumed its work as early as 1934 . The two best films of this film company were made in 1938/39: Le quai des brumes (director: Marcel Carné , with Jean Gabin , Michel Simon and Michèle Morgan ) and Sans lendemain ( Max Ophüls , with Edwige Feuillère and Georges Rigaud ). Although Rabinowitsch was able to produce Robert Z. Leonard's love film Maytime for MGM in 1937 , his efforts to establish a permanent partnership with American production companies, especially with United Artists , were unsuccessful.

A legal dispute initiated by Gregor Rabinowitsch in 1950 in the Federal Republic of Germany over the Cine-Allianz Tonfilm GmbH , which had been lost through expropriation , was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, two years later in Munich he founded a production company with the same name, which of course was only able to produce one film before Rabinowitsch's death ( The Divorced Woman , Director: Georg Jacoby , with Marika Rökk and Johannes Heesters , 1953). 1979 the lawsuit of the heirs (Helene Rabinowitsch, Fred Pressburger and Nelly Mandel) was dismissed.

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Jan Distelmeyer (Red.): Allies for the film. Arnold Pressburger, Gregor Rabinowitsch and the Cine-Allianz ( A CineGraph book ). edition text + kritik, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-88377-779-X .
  • Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. Acabus-Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 403 ff.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Rabinowitsch, Gregor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION international film producer of Russian origin
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiev , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1953
Place of death Munich , Bavaria, Federal Republic of Germany