Otto Kreisler

Otto Kreisler (born November 1, 1889 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † late 1970 in London , United Kingdom ) was a Jewish- Austrian film director and film producer .

Live and act

Kreisler had started as a theater actor shortly before the First World War and in 1915/16 he worked alongside Liane Haid in the two-nudes short film Sommeridylle by the directors Jakob Fleck and Luise Kolm . The company Wiener Kunstfilm , which produced this film, then hired him as a screenwriter. In this role, this company had Kreisler stage an ambitious, full-length version of Ibsen's Ghosts in the last winter of the war in 1917/18 , Kreisler's first film director. A year later he was also able to realize Hebbel's tragedy Maria Magdalena with Thea Rosenquist from Lübeck in the lead role.

In the period that followed, Kreisler concentrated primarily on Jewish issues. Rosenquist also received the title role in his production of Grillparzer's drama Die Jüdin von Toledo , which Kreisler produced with his production company Helios-Film, which he founded in the same year (1919) . In the following year, Kreisler's most ambitious productions were created in quick succession. With Theodor Herzl, the standard bearer of the Jewish people , he staged a large-scale (five acts plus prologue and epilogue) life picture of the eponymous founder of Zionism for the Helios . In the summer of the same year (1920) he directed the first major film portrait of Mozart for the same company under the title Mozart's Life, Love and Sorrows, with Josef Zetenius in the title role and Dora Kaiser as Constanze Weber . Both films opened in 1921. Kreisler's short biography cycle ended with another, ambitious film biography, this time about the Bavarian King Ludwig II . This film was made in the second half of 1921 at Lake Starnberg and Lake Chiemsee and had Olaf Fjord in the title role and again Thea Rosenquist in a female lead. Ludwig II ran into Vienna on March 24, 1922. The high costs of these sometimes very complex productions could hardly be brought in and brought Kreisler into financial trouble.

So he had to take a break for two and a half years and was only able to realize two major productions with Helios-Film , which he had staged by other directors. Kreisler limited himself to the activity of artistic management. The daughter of the wife of Larsac , a melodrama set in the aristocratic milieu, which Kreisler had filmed in Vienna, Venice , Paris and Versailles , was created under the direction of its discoverers Fleck and Kolm, the composer's biography of 1925 A Waltz by Strauss under Max Neufeld's . For this film, Kreisler's last documented work, he was able to hire a large number of well-known actors, including Max Neufeld's brother Eugen , Iván Petrovich , Fred Louis Lerch , Charlotte Ander , Robert Valberg , Armin Seydelmann , Max Nekut , Ferdinand Maierhofer , Otto Schmöle , Georg Kundert , whose last film this was to be, and the German dancer Anita Berber , who was also shown here for the last time on the screen.

Little is known about Otto Kreisler's further life. He later emigrated to Great Britain , where he was hardly active in cinematography. Kreisler died in London in the last quarter of 1970.

Movies

• 1916: Summer idyll (actor)
• 1917: The Soldier of Maria (short film, screenplay)
• 1918: Ghosts (director, screenplay)
• 1919: Maria Magdalena (director)
• 1919: The Jewess of Toledo (direction, production)
• 1919: Mephistos carnival mood (direction, production)
• 1919: Spring Awakening (Director, Production)
• 1920: Mozart's life, love and suffering (direction, production)
• 1921: Theodor Herzl, the standard bearer of the Jewish people (direction, production)
• 1921: Miss Hobbs (direction, production)
• 1921: Das Judenmädel (short film, direction, production)
• 1921: The dead wedding guest (artistic management, co-production)
• 1922: Ludwig II. (Direction, production)
• 1924: The daughter of Mrs. von Larsac (artistic management, production)
• 1925: A waltz by Strauss (artistic directors, production)
• 1953: Small Town Story (Production)

literature

• 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. 587.

Web links

• Otto Kreisler in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Otto Kreisler at filmportal.de