Bavaria Film Studios
Encyclopedia
The Bavaria Film in Geiselgasteig, a district of Munich's
suburb Grünwald, Bavaria
belongs to one of Europe's biggest and most famous film production companies.
and acquired a large estate (ca. 356.000 m²) in Geiselgasteig for the studios. In 1932 the major shareholder Wilhelm Kraus founded the Bavaria Film. In 1938 the Bavaria Film was nationalised but privatised again in 1956.
Alfred Hitchcock
made his first film, The Pleasure Garden
, in Geiselgasteig in 1925. The studios have been used by numerous famous directors, such as Max Ophüls
(Lola Montez, 1954), Stanley Kubrick
(Paths of Glory
, 1957), John Huston
(Freud: The Secret Passion, 1960), Robert Siodmak
(L'Affaire Nina B, 1960), Billy Wilder
(One, Two, Three
, 1961), John Sturges
(The Great Escape
, 1963), Robert Wise
(The Sound of Music
, 1965), Mel Stuart
(Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
, (1971), Bob Fosse
(Cabaret
, 1972), Ingmar Bergman
(The Serpent's Egg
, 1977), Robert Aldrich
(Twilight's Last Gleaming
, 1977), Wolfgang Petersen
(Enemy Mine
, 1985), Claude Chabrol
and Wim Wenders
.
The Studios in Geiselgasteig are the reason why Munich has become a famous site of crime in TV fiction (in opposite to real life), with detectives like Derrick
, The Old Fox
, and Der Kommissar investigating. Also Monty Python
worked in Geiselgasteig in 1971 and 1972 for Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus
, the specials for German and Austrian television.
The Bavaria Film GmbH is a film production company well known for their television films, such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder
's Berlin Alexanderplatz
(1980) and Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot (1981), both also shown theatrically.
Other production companies have produced films in the Bavaria studios, including Constantin Film
, for Petersen's The Neverending Story
(1984) and Tom Tykwer
's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
(2006).
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
suburb Grünwald, Bavaria
Grünwald, Bavaria
Grünwald is a municipality in the district of Munich, in Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the right bank of the Isar, 12 km southwest of Munich...
belongs to one of Europe's biggest and most famous film production companies.
History
The studios were founded already in 1919 by the film producer Peter Ostermayr, who established the Münchner Lichtspielkunst AG (Emelka) in competition to the UFAUniversum Film AG
Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945...
and acquired a large estate (ca. 356.000 m²) in Geiselgasteig for the studios. In 1932 the major shareholder Wilhelm Kraus founded the Bavaria Film. In 1938 the Bavaria Film was nationalised but privatised again in 1956.
Films shot at Bavaria Film Studios
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
made his first film, The Pleasure Garden
The Pleasure Garden (film)
The Pleasure Garden is a 1925 British silent film, and the debut feature of Alfred Hitchcock.-Production:Michael Balcon allowed Hitchcock to direct the film when Graham Cutts, a jealous executive at Gainsborough Pictures, would not allow him to work on The Rat. The story concerns two chorus girls...
, in Geiselgasteig in 1925. The studios have been used by numerous famous directors, such as Max Ophüls
Max Ophüls
Maximillian Oppenheimer — known as Max Ophüls — was an influential German-born film director who worked in Germany , France , the United States , and France again...
(Lola Montez, 1954), Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
(Paths of Glory
Paths of Glory
Paths of Glory is a 1957 American anti-war film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb. Set during World War I, the film stars Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, the commanding officer of French soldiers who refused to continue a suicidal attack...
, 1957), John Huston
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
(Freud: The Secret Passion, 1960), Robert Siodmak
Robert Siodmak
Robert Siodmak was a German born American film director. He is best remembered as a thriller specialist and for the series of Hollywood film noirs he made in the 1940s.-Early life:...
(L'Affaire Nina B, 1960), Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
(One, Two, Three
One, Two, Three
One, Two, Three is a 1961 American comedy film directed by Billy Wilder and written by him and I.A.L. Diamond. It is based on the 1929 Hungarian one-act play Egy, kettö, három by Ferenc Molnár, with a "plot borrowed partly from" Ninotchka, a 1939 film co-written by Wilder...
, 1961), John Sturges
John Sturges
John Eliot Sturges was an American film director. His movies include Bad Day at Black Rock , Gunfight at the O.K. Corral , The Magnificent Seven , The Great Escape and Ice Station Zebra .-Career:He started his career in Hollywood as an editor in 1932...
(The Great Escape
The Great Escape (film)
The Great Escape is a 1963 American film about an escape by Allied prisoners of war from a German POW camp during World War II, starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough...
, 1963), Robert Wise
Robert Wise
Robert Earl Wise was an American sound effects editor, film editor, film producer and director...
(The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music (film)
Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical film directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The film is based on the Broadway musical The Sound of Music, with songs written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and with the musical...
, 1965), Mel Stuart
Mel Stuart
Mel Stuart is an American film director and producer.Stuart directed the fantasy-musical Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory...
(Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is a 1971 musical film adaptation of the 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, directed by Mel Stuart, and starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. The film tells the story of Charlie Bucket as he receives a golden ticket and visits Willy...
, (1971), Bob Fosse
Bob Fosse
Robert Louis “Bob” Fosse was an American actor, dancer, musical theater choreographer, director, screenwriter, film editor and film director. He won an unprecedented eight Tony Awards for choreography, as well as one for direction...
(Cabaret
Cabaret (film)
Cabaret is a 1972 musical film directed by Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Grey. The film is set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in 1931, under the ominous presence of the growing National Socialist Party....
, 1972), Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
(The Serpent's Egg
The Serpent's Egg (film)
The Serpent's Egg is a 1977 United States / West German co-produced film directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring David Carradine as Abel Rosenberg, which is set in 1920s Berlin. This was Bergman's one and only Hollywood film...
, 1977), Robert Aldrich
Robert Aldrich
Robert Aldrich was an American film director, writer and producer, notable for such films as Kiss Me Deadly , The Big Knife , What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? , Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte , The Flight of the Phoenix , The Dirty Dozen , and The Longest Yard .-Biography:Robert...
(Twilight's Last Gleaming
Twilight's Last Gleaming
Twilight's Last Gleaming is a 1977 film directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark.Loosely based on a 1971 novel, Viper Three by Walter Wager, it tells the story of Lawrence Dell, a renegade USAF general, who escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo...
, 1977), Wolfgang Petersen
Wolfgang Petersen
Wolfgang Petersen is a German film director and screenwriter. His films include The NeverEnding Story, Enemy Mine, Outbreak, In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm, Troy, and Poseidon...
(Enemy Mine
Enemy Mine (film)
Enemy Mine is a 1985 science fiction film based on the story of the same title by Barry B. Longyear. It was produced by 20th Century Fox, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and starred Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr...
, 1985), Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s...
and Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...
.
The Studios in Geiselgasteig are the reason why Munich has become a famous site of crime in TV fiction (in opposite to real life), with detectives like Derrick
Derrick (TV series)
Derrick is a German TV series produced by Telenova Film und Fernsehproduktion in association with ZDF, ORF and SRG between 1974 and 1998 about Detective Chief Inspector Stephan Derrick and his loyal assistant Inspector Harry Klein , who solve murder cases in Munich and surroundings Derrick is a...
, The Old Fox
The Old Fox
The Old Fox is a German television series created in 1976, but first on the air in 1977, now running for over three decades....
, and Der Kommissar investigating. Also Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...
worked in Geiselgasteig in 1971 and 1972 for Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus
Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus
Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus consisted of two 45-minute Monty Python German television comedy specials produced by WDR for West German television...
, the specials for German and Austrian television.
The Bavaria Film GmbH is a film production company well known for their television films, such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Rainer Werner Maria Fassbinder was a German movie director, screenwriter and actor. He is considered one of the most important representatives of the New German Cinema.He maintained a frenetic pace in film-making...
's Berlin Alexanderplatz
Berlin Alexanderplatz (television)
Berlin Alexanderplatz, originally broadcast in 1980, is a 14-part television film adapted and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from the Alfred Döblin novel of the same name, and stars Günter Lamprecht, Hanna Schygulla, Barbara Sukowa, Elisabeth Trissenaar and Gottfried John...
(1980) and Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot (1981), both also shown theatrically.
Other production companies have produced films in the Bavaria studios, including Constantin Film
Constantin Film
- History :Constantin Film Distribution GmbH was founded by Waldfried Barthel and Preben Philipsen on April 1, 1950 in Frankfurt, Germany. On December 21, 1964, the name of the company was changed to Constantin Film GmbH....
, for Petersen's The Neverending Story
The NeverEnding Story (film)
The NeverEnding Story is a 1984 German-American epic fantasy film based on the novel of the same name written by Michael Ende. The film was directed and co-written by Wolfgang Petersen and starred Barret Oliver, Noah Hathaway and Tami Stronach. At the time of its release, it was the most...
(1984) and Tom Tykwer
Tom Tykwer
Tom Tykwer is a German film director, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing Run Lola Run , Heaven , Perfume: The Story of a Murderer , and The International ....
's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (film)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a 2006 German thriller film directed by Tom Tykwer and written by Andrew Birkin, Bernd Eichinger and Tykwer. It is based on the 1985 novel Perfume by Patrick Süskind. Set in 18th century France, the film tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille , an olfactory...
(2006).