Walter Kolm-Veltée

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Paul Huf and Walter Kolm-Veltée (r.) (1951)

Walter Kolm-Veltée (born December 27, 1910 in Vienna ; † March 8, 1999 in Vienna ) was an Austrian film director , screenwriter , film producer and lecturer .

Live and act

The son of the Austrian film pioneer Gustav Anton Kolm and his wife, the director Luise Kolm , grew up in film circles and was chosen by his parents, the founders of the Viennese art film , when he was just seven years old in the late phase of the First World War for the role of the little title hero in the Short film Walter's birthday present brought in front of the camera.

Walter Kolm began his professional career ten years later, in 1927, as a camera assistant. A little later he went to the German production company Tobis-Tonbild-Syndikat , where he was made familiar with all aspects of film production. As a result of the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 Kolm-Veltée returned to Vienna home and tried there for the first time as a director. Although he was officially the director of Schnulze Liebe bei Hof , his mother Luise Kolm and her second husband Jakob Julius Fleck had actually directed the film.

Subsequently, Kolm-Veltée found no more employment in the domestic film and moved to Prague, where he was able to direct a few emigrant films (all of which were shot in German). Since these films hardly made any money due to their limited market - in Adolf Hitler's Germany they were not allowed to be shown for obvious reasons - Walter Kolm-Veltée was no longer able to work as a director from the mid-1930s.

After the Second World War he re-founded Wiener Kunstfilm and produced a number of cultural and documentary films with it. Kolm-Veltée's feature film debut after 1945 was also to become his most important and best-known work: Eroica was a solemn homage to the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven, with the eponymous symphony as a guide to the story. After the great success of this production, he produced the puppet films Marienlegende and Der goldene Brunnen , presented in Cannes in 1951, as well as the Beethoven short film Prometheus , which was shown at the 1952 Berlin Film Festival .

In the following year, Kolm-Veltée tried another musician biography. But Franz Schubert - A Life in Two Sentences was nowhere near as accepted as Eroica four years earlier. His lavish adaptation of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni under the film title Don Juan also disappointed artistically and exposed Kolm-Veltées' considerable weaknesses in his staging. As a result of this failure, the Viennese concentrated on his teaching activities and taught young film talent as a professor at the Academy for Music and Performing Arts .

Shortly before his death in spring 1999, Walter Kolm-Veltée, one of the last survivors from the childhood days of Austrian cinematography, gave information about the development of the film industry in Vienna in a television documentary.

Filmography (as a director)

  • 1917: Walter's birthday present (short film, actors only)
  • 1933: My love is a hunter ( love at court , co-director)
  • 1934: The poacher from Egerland ( V cizim reviru )
  • 1935: Csardas
  • 1949: Eroica (also co-script, production)
  • 1950: Marienlegende (puppet short film, production only)
  • 1950: The golden fountain (puppet short film, production only)
  • 1951/52: Prometheus (short film, also screenplay, production)
  • 1953: Franz Schubert - A life in two sentences ( Franz Schubert ; also co-screenplay)
  • 1954: Don Juan (also co-script)
  • 1956: On becoming the form (short documentary, only artistic direction)
  • 1956: The game can begin (short documentary, only artistic direction)
  • 1956: Franz Schubert (short documentary, only artistic direction)
  • 1956: Austria, your heart is Vienna, 2 parts (short documentary, only artistic direction)
  • 1957: Men are not angels either ( Wiener Luft , director of an episode)
  • 1958: Kora and the seven sins ( Panoptikum 59 , also screenplay and production)

literature

  • Ludwig Gesek (Ed.): Small Lexicon of Austrian Films . Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1959, ( Filmkunst 159, 22/30, ISSN  0015-1599 ), p. 29.
  • Johann Caspar Glenzdorf: Glenzdorf's international film lexicon. Biographical manual for the entire film industry. Volume 2: Hed – Peis. Prominent-Filmverlag, Bad Münder 1961, DNB 451560744 , p. 878.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kolm-Veltée, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian film director, screenwriter, film producer and lecturer
DATE OF BIRTH December 27, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 1999
Place of death Vienna