Holger-Madsen

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Holger-Madsen (born April 11, 1878 in Copenhagen , † November 30, 1943 there ) was a Danish actor, film director, screenwriter and cinema manager. Along with August Blom and Benjamin Christensen , he was one of the artistically important directors of the Nordisk film company in the heyday of Danish film . From 1911 he wrote his name with a hyphen .

Life

Madsen became a stage actor in 1896 and performed on Danish provincial stages for years. From 1905 he was active on the Copenhagen stages, until 1912 at the Casino-Teatret and then for two years at the Dagmar-Teatret. In 1914 he ended his stage career.

From 1908 Madsen also starred in films. Under Viggo Larsen as Sherlock Holmes , he performed as Dr. Watson in a detective film series that was created as a Danish reaction to the successful French series by the director Victorin Jasset about the detective Nick Carter . He worked for various Danish production companies and in 1912 took over his first film direction based on his own script. In 1913 he was employed by Nordisk Film and worked there until 1920. Holger-Madsen initially shot everything from comedy to tragedy, but developed peculiarities in terms of content and style over time and specialized in spiritual subjects. He relied on the visual attractiveness of his films, which were achieved through innovative camera settings and exposures by his cameraman Marius Clausen. In 1913, Nordisk made several ambitious film adaptations. Holger-Madsen co-directed a film adaptation of the Arthur Schnitzler play Liebelei with August Blom. His film Opiumsdrømmen , produced in 1914, became the first Danish film to receive a total ban from the censors. Evangeliemandens Liv (1914) is considered to be the most important work in his religiously motivated films . Valdemar Psilander plays the main role of a man disappointed in life who becomes a Christian and as a preacher of the poor cares for the outcasts.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, Holger-Madsen began filming Die Waffen Nieder! ( Ned med vaabnene! ) A pacifist film based on the novel of the same name by Bertha von Suttner , which should have premiered at a planned World Peace Congress in Vienna in September of that year. Due to the political events, however, this film was only released a year later in 1915 and was not very popular due to the still rampant enthusiasm for the war. In Germany its performance was banned until the end of the war. Today it is considered to be one of the first anti-war films . The script for Put Your Arms Down! wrote Carl Theodor Dreyer , who by 1918 created five more templates for Holger-Madsen's films. With Pax Æterna (1917), Holger-Madsen advocated pacifist ideas for the second time during the great war. Also in 1917 he directed Das Himmelsschiff , a space adventure and early exponent of the science fiction film genre - a scientist flies in a rocket to Mars and meets a peaceful civilization there. Since Mars is also a Roman god of war, the reference to the ongoing war is also evident in this film. In 1919 Holger-Madsen made Asta Nielsen's fourth and last Danish film The Torch Bearer .

When the sales market for Danish productions collapsed after the war, Holger-Madsen went to Germany like many of his colleagues. He got his first job in 1921 with Joe May as an actor and co-director of the film Tobias Buntschuh - The Drama of a Lonely One . By 1929 he made a total of 13 German films, which, however, had only moderate success. In 1930 Holger-Madsen returned to Denmark. Until the mid-1930s he got a role in a film there from time to time - including a Fy & Bi film . However, he was rarely given a director, most recently he shot Sol over Danmark in 1936 .

In 1937 Madsen received a cinema license and ran a small cinema (Enghave Bio) in Copenhagen until his death. He was married to Rigmor Holger-Madsen, who wrote two scripts for director Lau Lauritzen in the late 1910s .

Filmography (selection)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holger-Madsen in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  2. ↑ Kevin Brownlow : Kino Europa, Part I (six-part documentary about European silent films)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Holger-Madsen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Madsen, Holger (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish actor, film director, screenwriter and cinema manager
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Copenhagen
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1943
Place of death Copenhagen