Showing posts with label Kurt Gerron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kurt Gerron. Show all posts

Friday, September 25, 2020

Another Louise Brooks related film to watch online

Alan Boyle pointed out on the Louise Brooks Society Facebook page the recent availability of Dance with Death: The Ufa Star Sybille Schmitz (2000), a ten year old documentary about the once popular 1930s German actress who not only had a small featured role in the Louise Brooks film, The Diary of a Lost Girl, but was also the inspiration for the title character Veronika Voss in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s celebrated film of the same name. 

Sybille Schmitz and Louise Brooks in The Diary of a Lost Girl
 

Besides Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), Schmitz's other early roles include Carl Th. Dreyer's Vampyr (1932), and eventually F.P.1 (1932), where she played her first leading role. I don't speak German, but was able to watch this fascinating documentary with the closed captions turned on, as if it were subtitled.

In The Diary of a Lost Girl, Schmitz plays Elisabeth, the pregnant housekeeper who is thrown out of the house by Thymian's father. Elisabeth is soon found dead, setting in motion a chain of events with tragic consequences. As Dance with Death notes, it was Schmitz's second film role, and already her second on-screen death. The documentary also notes the dark atmosphere which seemed to hang around the actress. The Wikipedia entry on Schmitz states, "Coincidentally, the last film she made less than two years before taking her own life (1953's The House on the Coast, now considered a lost film) had Schmitz's character committing suicide as a last act of desperation. A much earlier film, Frank Wisbar's The Unknown (1936) ends with the suicide of Schmitz's character, also in a final act of desperate hopelessness.) 

Despite it's gloom, I recommend Dance with Death: The Ufa Star Sybille Schmitz. It is interesting to say the least. For example, with the rise of Nazism, the film suggests Schmitz felt a frustration with a film industry which increasingly devalued her dark features. As her Wikipedia entry states, "... her explicitly non-Aryan appearance relegated her mostly to femme-fatales or problematic foreign women." That got me wondering about Brooks' dark features and what role they may have played in her acceptance among German film goers.

Another documentary about another supporting player in The Diary of a Lost Girl is Prisoner of Paradise, the story of Kurt Gerron. In the Brooks film, Gerron plays Dr. Vitalis, who is featured in the nightclub scene where Brooks' character, Thymian, is auctioned off.

Kurt Gerron and Louise Brooks in The Diary of a Lost Girl

Prisoner of Paradise is a 2002 documentary about one of the great German actors of the 1920s and 1930s. He appeared in many films and stage productions, but today is best remembered for a key supporting role in The Blue Angel (1930), with Marlene Dietrich. After being sent to a concentration camp, Gerron was forced by his captors to direct the pro-Nazi propaganda film, The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews. In addition to exploring his life, Prisoner of Paradise details a remarkable detective story in which Gerron's film, lost for decades after World War II, was tracked down and painstakingly put back together.


Sunday, November 1, 2015

Kurt Gerron and Diary of a Lost Girl

My audio commentary for the new Kino Lorber DVD / Blu-ray of Diary of a Lost Girl has been getting very positive reviews. It has been described as "insightful" by a well regarded film historian, as "thorough and informative" by an Emmy nominee, and as "well-researched and often-fascinating" by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who knew Louise Brooks.

The most recent review, a rather thoughtful piece on amazon.com, called it "excellent" - though they did have a few complaints: "The Kino Blu-ray comes with an excellent full-length audio commentary by Thomas Gladysz, the director of the Louise Brooks Society, which is an online info archive devoted to Brooks. Unfortunately, there are many long stretches of silence during the commentary. Gladysz talks about the actors and crew, the film's artistry, the historical background, and the social climate at the time the movie was made. At one point, he recommends that we check out a  documentary on the life of one of the minor actors in the movie, Kurt Gerron (who plays the portly, friendly figure of the brothel), but didn't mention the title of the documentary. That film is the 2002 Oscar-nominated feature documentary "Prisoner of Paradise", about Gerron's life and career that were cut short by the Nazis."


I stand corrected. And I am truly glad that attention has been called to this outstanding actor and personality. Here is that documentary, which includes a clip from Diary of a Lost Girl.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Prisoner of Paradise: The story of Kurt Gerron

This weekend, I finally had the chance to see Prisoner of Paradise (2002). "The documentary tells the true story of Kurt Gerron, a successful German-Jewish actor and director, who after being sent to a concentration camp, was forced by his captors to direct the pro-Nazi propaganda film, "The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews." In addition to exploring his life, it details the remarkable detective story in which Gerron's film, lost for decades after World War II, was tracked down and painstakingly put back together." I streamed it over Netflix, and noticed it can also be streamed over Amazon.

Kurt Gerron was one of the great German actors of the 1920s and 1930s. He appeared in many films and stage productions. Today, he is best remembered for a key supporting role in The Blue Angel (1930), with Marlene Dietrich. Gerron also had a part in the 1929 Louise Brooks film, The Diary of a Lost Girl, a few scenes from which are included in Prisoner of Paradise

 I recommend Prisoner of Paradise. It is a moving documentary well worth watching.
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