Marcel Ophüls

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Marcel Ophüls [ ˈɔfʏls ] (born November 1, 1927 in Frankfurt am Main ; formerly Marcel Wall-Ophüls ) is an Oscar- winning German - French director and documentary filmmaker .

biography

Ophüls is the son of the film director Max Ophüls and the actress Hilde Wall . He spent part of his youth fleeing the Nazis in France and the USA. As a US soldier , he was involved in the occupation of Japan .

After studying at Occidental College in California, USA and at the Sorbonne in Paris, Ophüls worked as an assistant director a. a. by John Huston ( Moulin Rouge ) and Anatole Litvak ( Un acte d'amour ). Between 1956 and 1959 he was radio and television editor at Südwestfunk in Baden-Baden. In 1957 he made his first short films. After his return to Paris in 1960, Ophüls made the German contribution to the international episode film L'Amour à vingt ans (1961/62). With the support of François Truffaut , he directed the feature film Peau de banane with Jeanne Moreau and Jean-Paul Belmondo in 1963, and in 1964 he directed the Eddie Constantine comedy Faites vos jeux, mesdames .

From the mid-sixties, Ophüls made a name for himself primarily as a documentary filmmaker. He repeatedly dealt with the National Socialist past, for example in Munich or Peace in our Time (1967), The Memory of Justice (1976) and Hôtel Terminus: Time and Life of Klaus Barbie (1988). The film The House Next Door - Chronicle of a French Town at War (1969) with the main character Christian de la Mazière marked a turning point in the dispute with the Vichy regime in France .

On the documentary November days about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the following months you can study Ophüls' way of working. For the film he used excerpts from television reports about the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. After long research, he went to the people who aroused his interest in their own surroundings and talked to them about what they were then and what they were doing Had experienced in the meantime. At the same time, the filmmaker talked to politicians and writers about how they perceived the unrest and upheaval and how it is interpreted today. It is a film made up of multi-layered stories and images. Ophüls wants to present politics and everyday life in their context.

“A documentary filmmaker's gaze has to take into account both the mood of the people and one's own convictions ... I still believe that November 9th was a festival of freedom. Besides, I'm not a Marxist , so for me the concept of personal freedom doesn't necessarily have anything to do with economics . The fact that difficult times are coming in East Germany and that people are afraid of unemployment can also be felt in the film. In a way, it's a comedy. But a black one! "

- Marcel Ophüls

In July 2010, the German Historical Museum Berlin ( Zeughauskino ) organized an extensive retrospective with films by Marcel Ophüls.

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Contradictions and other declarations of love. Texts on cinema and politics . Edited by Ralph Eue and Constantin Wulff. Vorwerk 8, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-930916-12-6
  • Heiner Gassen (Red.): Marcel Ophüls - mercenary documentary film (& Alain Resnais - "I want to go home" & Jean Renoir - "La Marseillaise"). With memorabilia, souvenirs and polemics from MO Revue pour le Cinema Français CICIM No. 29 , translator Karola Bartsch. Center d'Information Cinématographique de l'Institut Français de Munich CICIM & Münchner Filmzentrum, Munich 1990 ISSN  0938-233X (in German. Background information on the most important films by Ophüls). With a detailed catalog of works (film, television and radio) pp. 95–103
  • Pia Bowinkelmann: Shadow World . The extermination of the Jews depicted in the French documentary . Offizin, Hannover 2008, ISBN 3-930345-62-5 (from MO: "The house next door. Chronicle of a French town during the war"; other filmmakers themed there: Frédéric Rossif & Madeleine Chapsal: "Le Temps du ghetto" 1961; Resnais : Night and Fog ; Lanzmann: Shoah and Claude Chabrol : "L'œil de Vichy" 1993)

Honourings and prices

Movie

  • A traveler - Marcel Ophüls. Documentary, France, 2012, 105 min., Script and direction: Marcel Ophüls, Vincent Jaglin, production: The Factory, arte France, first broadcast: May 28, 2013 on arte, synopsis by ARD . Cinematic memoir.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.ndr.de/ndrkultur/epg/Meines-Vaters-Sohn,sendung343954.html ( Memento from February 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ November Days / November Days. In: Deutsches Historisches Museum , accessed on June 8, 2013
  3. ^ A traveler - Marcel Ophüls.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.arte.tv   In: arte , May 28, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Ophüls, Marcel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wall-Ophüls, Marcel (previous name); Ophuls, Marcel; Wall, Marcel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French film director
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main