Victor Trivas

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Victor Trivas (born Viktor Alexandrowitsch Triwas, Russian Виктор Александрович Тривас ; born July 9, 1896 in Saint Petersburg , † April 12, 1970 in New York ) was a film director, screenwriter and set designer of Russian origin.

Life

Trivas studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown. His involvement in World War I and the revolution that followed prevented him from completing his degree. After the war he went to Moscow and worked in small theaters, including decorating the Alexander Granovsky theater . In 1920 he was imprisoned for a month on suspicion of subversive activity. In 1925 he left the Soviet Union with his wife and went to Berlin. There he began as a scriptwriter for the film Die Dame aus Berlin (1925). Together with Otto Hunte he worked on the equipment for the film Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney (1927) by Georg Wilhelm Pabst . In addition to filming, he also designed for the theater.

In 1930 Trivas made his directorial debut with the silent film Riot of the Blood . As for this film, he was also co-author of Alexander Granowski's Das Lied vom Leben (1931) and Fyodor Ozeps The Murderer Dimitri Karamasoff (1931). Trivas' second directorial work was the anti-war film No Man's Land (1931). Five men meet in a trench: a German ( Ernst Busch ), a French, an English, a Jew and a black artist (played by the dancer Louis Douglas ), who are spoken in their respective languages ​​by the internationally active artist - during the War is raging around them - to come to the realization of the absurdity of war. The discussion raises the following questions: Who owns the Rhine? Who owns Paris? Who are the colonies useful to? and who does the world belong to? The film that came before Kuhle Wampe or: Who Owns the World? originated, ends with the Eisler song The Secret Parade , sung by Ernst Busch. As a result, it was banned on April 22, 1933 by the film inspection agency , which had meanwhile been oriented towards fascist ideology .

In 1932 Trivas went to Paris, where his third film Dans les Rues (1933), again with the music of Hanns Eisler, was made. Then he started working again for the theater together with other Russian emigrants. In 1939, together with Leo Mittler , he wrote the script for Raymond Bernard's film Les Ôtages , a production by Seymour Nebenzahl , who emigrated from Germany , and once again addressed the war. Trivas then left France via Marseille for the USA , where he arrived in 1941.

There he did not succeed in continuing his career as a director, but he was able to work as a screenwriter. In 1944 he was involved in the script of the pro-Soviet film Song of Russia with Leo Mittler and Guy Endore , which later made him suspect as a communist during the “McCarthy era”. His model for Orson Welles ' The Stranger / The Stranger (1946) earned him an Oscar nomination and became his most successful work in America. In 1947 Victor Trivas was naturalized in the USA.

In 1954 he came to Germany as a writer for a few years and shot his last film in 1959, the horror strip The Naked and Satan with Horst Frank and Michel Simon .

Filmography (selection)

actor
script
Literary template

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. P. 510 f., ACABUS-Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8
  • Jeanpaul Goergen: Two interviews with Victor Trivas, 1934. In: Filmblatt. 1. Vol., No. 2, 1996, ISSN  1433-2051 , pp. 14-19.
  • –MAERZ– (Axel Estein): “Top-heavy - The Naked and Satan.” In: Splatting Image, # 4, August 1990

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Trivas, Victor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Тривас, Виктор Александрович (Russian); Triwas, Viktor Alexandrovich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-American film director, screenwriter and production designer
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1970
Place of death new York