Volker Schlöndorff
Encyclopedia
Volker Schlöndorff is a Berlin
-based German
filmmaker who has worked in Germany, France and the United States. He was a prominent member of the New German Cinema
of the late 60s and early 70s, which also included Werner Herzog
, Wim Wenders
and Rainer Werner Fassbinder
.
He won an Oscar
as well as the Palme d'or
at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival
for The Tin Drum
(1979), the film version of the novel by Nobel Prize
-winning author Günter Grass
.
, where Schlöndorff won awards at school for his work in philosophy. He graduated in political science at the Sorbonne
, while at the same time studying film at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques, where he met Louis Malle
. Malle gave him his first job as his assistant director on Zazie in the Metro
, which continued with the films A Very Private Affair
, The Fire Within
and Viva Maria!
. Schlöndorff also worked as assistant director on Alain Resnais
's Last Year at Marienbad
and Jean-Pierre Melville's Léon Morin, Priest
. During this time he also made his first short film, Who Cares? about French people living in Frankfurt
in 1960. In 1963 he collaborated with filmmaker Jean-Daniel Pollet
on the 40 minute documentary Méditerranée. The film has been highly regarded since its initial release, gaining praise from Jean-Luc Godard
and consistently appearing in the popular book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
.
by Robert Musil
, the film debuted at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival
. Taking place at a semi-military Austrian boarding school, Törless witnesses the bullying of a fellow student but does nothing to prevent it besides his superior and mature intellect. He gradually begins to accept his personal responsibility for the abuse by doing nothing to stop it and runs away from the school. The comparison to pre-war Germany were obvious and the film was highly praised upon release, winning the FIPRESCI Prize
at Cannes.
The New German Cinema
movement unofficially began in 1962 with the Oberhausen Manifesto
, calling new young German filmmakers to revitalize filmmaking in Germany, much like the French New Wave
and British New Wave
of the previous few years. Although not among the initial group of filmmakers involved, Schlöndorff was quick to align himself with the group and Young Törless is considered one of the most important films of the New German Cinema
.
Schlöndorff's next film was A Degree of Murder
, a counter-culture saturated film with a musical score by Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones
. The film stars Jones' then girlfriend (and later Keith Richards
wife) Anita Pallenberg
as a young waitress who accidentally kills her boyfriend and hides the body with the help of two male friends. The film was very popular upon release amongst "swinging sixties" youths.
He then made another film that spoke to the counter culture generation, Michael Kohlhaas - Der Rebell. Set in medieval Germany, Michael Kohlhaas is a horse trader who has been cheated by a local nobleman and nearly starts a revolution to get revenge. The film starred David Warner
, Anna Karina
and Anita Pallenberg
and was made in both German and English versions.
Schlöndorff then adapted Bertolt Brecht
's first play Baal for television and cast an little-known actor named Rainer Werner Fassbinder
in the lead role, along with Margarethe von Trotta, whom he would marry the following year. Schlöndorff adapted the story of a self-destructive poet to modern day Munich and the film was shown on German TV in 1970. He then made another TV movie Sudden Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach, again starring Fassbinder. The film depicts 7 peasants in 19th Century Germany who rob the local tax collection cart but are so conditioned by their poverty that they cannot handle their new found wealth.
The Morals of Ruth Halbfass examined a group of people who have lost their sense of morals and co-starred von Trotta. Von Trotta would both star in and co-write Schlöndorff's next film, A Free Woman. The film took a feminist look at the condition of modern women in Munich. von Trotta portrays Elizabeth Junker, a recently divorced woman who must struggle to live her life independently as her husband has everything come easily to him, including the villa and son that they had shared together as a married couple. The film is loosely based on von Trotta's experiences with her divorce from her first husband.
Schlöndorff then completed the TV movie Übernachtung in Tirol in 1974, an adaptation of the Henry James
short story Les raisons de Georgina for German TV and directed his first opera in Frankfurt, a production of Leoš Janáček
's Káťa Kabanová
in 1974.
in 1975. Based on the novel of the same name by Nobel Prize winning German author Heinrich Böll
, Schlöndorff both co-wrote and co-directed the film with Margarethe von Trotta in her directorial debut. The film stars Angela Winkler
as Blum, who after falling in love and spending the night with a young army deserter becomes the victim of a corrupt police investigation and predatory tabloid newspaper, which cast her as both a terrorist and a prostitute. The newspaper is based upon the real right-wing German tabloid Bild-Zeitung
, whose publisher Axel Springer
was the inspiration for the character Werner Tötges.
West Germany was in a political hysteria over the activities of the terrorist group the Red Army Faction
, and the police and journalistic activities depicted in both the book and the film accurately portrayed that era as reminiscent of McCarthyism
in 1950s USA, including illegal police raids, phone tapping and tabloid smears. Böll himself was heavily attacked after the books publication, but both the novel and the film were hugely successful in West Germany.
After directing his second opera We Come to the River
in 1976, Schlöndorff followed The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum with the equally political Coup de Grâce in 1976. Based on a novel by French author Marguerite Yourcenar
, the film stars von Trotta (who again co-wrote the script) as Sophie von Reval, a young left-wing aristocrat who sides with the Bolshevik Revolution after being rejected by a young German soldier preparing to fight the Red Army in 1919. The film depicts the same time period and subject matter that von Trotta would later revisit in the film Rosa Luxemburg
.
A supporting actress in Coup de Grâce was Valeska Gert, a former cabaret dancer, circus performer and silent film actress who had worked with Greta Garbo
and G. W. Pabst. This lead to the documentary about her life Just for Fun, Just for Play in 1977.
Schlöndorff then contributed to the omnibus film Germany in Autumn
, in which nine German filmmakers (including Rainer Werner Fassbinder
, Alexander Kluge
, Edgar Reitz
and author Heinrich Böll
) made short films depicting the hysteria and political chaos in west Germany the German Autumn
of 1977.
Schlöndorff's next film was the most successful and ambitious of his career, and perhaps the most important film of post-war Germany: The Tin Drum
, released in 1979. The film was based on the novel
by Nobel Prize winning author Günter Grass
, who for years had rejected proposed adaptations of his book until giving Schlöndorff his approval (and assistance) to make the film.
The Tin Drum
stars David Bennent
as the protagonist Oscar Matzerath, who, after receiving a tin drum on his third birthday, makes the conscious choice to stop growing and remain a three-year-old for the rest of his life. He hurls himself down a flight of stairs so as to give the adults around him a rational explanation for his handicap, and later discovers that he has the ability to tactically shatter glass with the power of his high-pitch scream, which he evokes whenever anyone attempts to take his tin drum away from him. The film co-stars Angela Winkler
as Oscar's mother and Mario Adorf
and Daniel Olbrychski
as the German and Kashubian
(Pole) who may both be his biological fathers. The film mostly takes place from the end of World War I
to the end of World War II
(when Oscar is 20) in the city of Danzig, Poland
. Danzig is most famous for being the site of the first battle of the war at the polish Post Office
, which Oscar takes part in.
The film was widely hailed as a masterpiece and shared the Palme d'or
at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival
with Apocalypse Now
, as well as winning the 1979 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
In 1980 Schlöndorff collaborated with Stefan Aust
, Alexander Kluge
and Alexander von Eschwege on the documentary The Candidate
, a film about the political campaign of arch-conservative Franz Josef Strauss.
Schlöndorff next made The Circle of Deceit
in 1981. Based on the novel by Nicolas Born
, the film concerns the politics and moral struggles of war photographers. The film stars Bruno Ganz
and Jerzy Skolimowski
as photojournalists covering the Lebanon Civil War in Beirut in 1975.
's In Search of Lost Time
. The film was shot in France and financed by Gaumont, and stars Jeremy Irons
, Ornella Muti
, Alain Delon
and Fanny Ardant
.
Schlöndorff then went to the United States to make a TV adaptation of Arthur Miller
's Death of a Salesman
, starring Dustin Hoffman
as Willy Loman and John Malkovich
as Biff. Both actors won Emmy's for their performances and Schlöndorff was nominated for an Emmy for his direction. The film premiered on Television in 1985 and was released theatrically throughout Europe over the following years.
Schlöndorff followed this with another TV Movie in the US, A Gathering of Old Men
, based on the novel of the same name
by Ernest J. Gaines. The film stars Richard Widmark
, Holly Hunter
and Lou Gossett Jr. and concerns racial discrimination in 1970s Louisiana.
Schlöndorff returned to theatrical films with the Hollywood science fiction film The Handmaid's Tale
in 1990. Taking place in a distopia near future where most women are sterile due to pollution, Kate (Natasha Richardson
) is arrested after attempting to flee to Canada and forced to become a "Handmaid", who are prostitutes for wealthy men hoping to impregnate a female and raise the child as their own. She becomes the slave of the Commander of the Fascist/Religious Fundalmist regime (Robert Duvall
), and is forced to act as a surrogate for his wife (Faye Dunnaway). To save herself from execution, she allows the Commanders driver (Aidan Quinn
) to impregnate her and falls in love with him. The film was in competition at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival
.
This was quickly followed by The Voyager
in 1991. The film stars Sam Shepherd
as a man who survives a plane crash, then finds the love of his life (Julie Delpy
) on his next trip and begins to question the rationale of his good luck after having spent most of his life being cruel to others. The film was based on the novel by Max Frisch
and was not a success financially.
In 1992 he directed the concert film The Michael Nyman Songbook
, then made the first of his two documentaries on famous director Billy Wilder
, Billy Wilder, How Did You Do It?, in which he and German critic Hellmut Karasek interviewed Wilder about his career over the course of two weeks in 1988. It was aired on German TV in 1992, and shown on TCM
in the USA under the title Billy Wilder Speaks in 2006. Schlöndorff had been a great admirer of Wilder for many years and sought his advice during the making of The Tin Drum
In 1996 he contributed to the French TV series Lumière sur un massacre with the episode "Le parfait soldat".
Schlöndorff returned to Germany in 1996 to make The Ogre
, his most well regarded feature film since The Tin Drum
. Based on a novel by Michel Tournier
and starring John Malkovich
as the titular Abel Tiffauges, the film revisited many of the themes and time period of The Tin Drum. Tiffauges is a slow-witted French soldier who has been accused of child molestation. After being captured by the Nazis and put in an internment camp, he is made a servant at an elite German training camp and kidnaps local children, officially as a way to recruit them for the camp, but in his mind to protect them. The film was screened in competition at the 1996 Venice Film Festival and won the UNICEF award. The film was released in Germany in 1996 and gained positive reviews. On the audio commentary for The Tin Drum, Schlöndorff said that he had wanted to film a sequel to The Tin Drum
, as the film was based only on the first two thirds of the novel. But because actor David Tennent was too old to reprise the role and he did not want to recast Oscar, he considers The Ogre
to be an unofficial to his masterpiece.
Schlöndorff returned to Hollywood for the Neo-noir
Palmetto
in 1998. In a classic noir plot, the film stars Woody Harrelson
as a falsely accused journalist who was sent to jail after uncovering corruption in the local government. After getting out of jail and unable to find work, he encounters Rhea Malroux (Elizabeth Shue), a femme fatale
who propositions him to help her extort money from her millionaire husband. The film was not a financial success and has so far been Schlöndorff's last film in the US.
Schlöndorff returned to Germany to make the 2000 film The Legend of Rita
. Loosely based upon the lives of members of the Red Army Faction
who exiled to East Germany in the 1970s, the film centers around Rita, who most closely resembles real RAF member Inge Viett. Rita abandons the revolution and live in East Germany under protection of the secret service, but much risk discovery and consequences for her past crimes after German unification.
After the documentary Ein Produzent hat Seele oder er hat keine and a contribution to the omnibus film Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (both in 2002), Schlöndorff made The Ninth Day
in 2004. The film is Schlöndorff's third film to center around the World War II
and is based on the diary of Father Jean Bernard
. Ulrich Matthes
plays Father Henri Kremer, a Catholic Priest who is interred at Dachau concentration camp during the second World War. He is inexplicably released for 9 days and sent to Luxemberg. There he meets a young SS Soldier who informs him that his mission there is to convince the local bishop to cooperate with the Nazi Party, in which case he will not be sent back to Dachau. He is thus faced with the moral dilemma of betraying his faith or returning to the consentration camp.
Schlöndorff then completed the TV Movie Enigma - Eine uneingestandene Liebe in 2005. In 2006 he returned to the city of Danzig to film Strike
, a docudrama about labor strikes at the Gdańsk Shipyard
during the Polish 1970 protests
, and itself is a history of the Solidarity Movement in Poland leading up to the Fall of Communism.
Schlöndorff's latest film was Ulzhan in 2007. The film stars Philippe Torreton
as a treasure hunter on his way home who has lost his soul and Ayanat Ksenbai as Ulzhan, the woman who falls in love with him. David Bennent
also co-starred.
He formed a production company that produced both his and von Trotta's films, Bioskop.
In 1991, he was the Head of the Jury at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival
.
He served as the chief executive for the UFA
studio in Babelsberg
. Schlöndorff also teaches film and literature at the European Graduate School
in Saas-Fee
, Switzerland
, where he conducts an Intensive Summer Seminar.
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
-based German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
filmmaker who has worked in Germany, France and the United States. He was a prominent member of the New German Cinema
New German Cinema
New German cinema is a period in German cinema which lasted from the late 1960s into the 1980s. It saw the emergence of a new generation of directors...
of the late 60s and early 70s, which also included Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić , known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner...
, 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...
and 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...
.
He won an Oscar
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
as well as the Palme d'or
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and is presented to the director of the best feature film of the official competition. It was introduced in 1955 by the organising committee. From 1939 to 1954, the highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival International du...
at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival
1979 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :*Françoise Sagan *Sergio Amidei *Rodolphe-Maurice Arlaud *Luis García Berlanga *Maurice Bessy *Paul Claudon *Jules Dassin *Zsolt Kézdi-Kovács...
for The Tin Drum
The Tin Drum (film)
The Tin Drum is a 1979 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Günter Grass. It was directed and co-written by Volker Schlöndorff...
(1979), the film version of the novel by Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
-winning author Günter Grass
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author, poet, playwright, sculptor and artist.He was born in the Free City of Danzig...
.
Early Life
Volker Schlöndorff was born in Wiesbaden, Germany to the physician Dr. Georg Schlöndorff. In 1956 his family moved to ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where Schlöndorff won awards at school for his work in philosophy. He graduated in political science at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
, while at the same time studying film at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques, where he met Louis Malle
Louis Malle
Louis Malle was a French film director, screenwriter, and producer. He worked in both French cinema and Hollywood. His films include Ascenseur pour l'échafaud , Atlantic City , and Au revoir, les enfants .- Early years in France :Malle was born into a wealthy industrialist family in Thumeries,...
. Malle gave him his first job as his assistant director on Zazie in the Metro
Zazie in the Metro (film)
Zazie in the Metro is a 1960 French film directed by Louis Malle, based on the novel by Raymond Queneau.-Plot:...
, which continued with the films A Very Private Affair
A Very Private Affair
A Very Private Affair is a 1962 French film directed by Louis Malle and starring Brigitte Bardot.-Synopsis:Brigitte Bardot, the sexy French actress/bombshell of the 1960s, stars in this semi-biographical film of her life....
, The Fire Within
The Fire Within
The Fire Within is a 1963 French drama film directed by Louis Malle. It is based on the novel of the same name by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. The film stars Maurice Ronet as Alain Leroy, a recovering alcoholic at a rehabilitation clinic in Versailles who has depression...
and Viva Maria!
Viva Maria!
Viva Maria! is a 1965 comedy-adventure film starring Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau as two women named Maria who meet and become revolutionaries in the early 20th century. It also starred George Hamilton as Florès, a revolutionary leader. It was co-written and directed by Louis Malle, and...
. Schlöndorff also worked as assistant director on Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
's Last Year at Marienbad
Last Year at Marienbad
L'Année dernière à Marienbad is a 1961 French film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet....
and Jean-Pierre Melville's Léon Morin, Priest
Léon Morin, Priest
The Passionate Heart is a 1952 novel by Béatrix Beck, which won the Prix Goncourt. It was published in the UK as The Priest and in the US as The Passionate Heart ....
. During this time he also made his first short film, Who Cares? about French people living in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
in 1960. In 1963 he collaborated with filmmaker Jean-Daniel Pollet
Jean-Daniel Pollet
Jean-Daniel Pollet is a French film director and screenwriter who was most active in the 1960s and 1970s. He was associated with two approaches to filmmaking: comedies which blended burlesque and melancholic elements, and poetic films based on texts by writers such as the French poet Francis...
on the 40 minute documentary Méditerranée. The film has been highly regarded since its initial release, gaining praise from Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
and consistently appearing in the popular book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die is a film reference book edited by Steven Jay Schneider with original essays on each film contributed by over 70 film critics...
.
Early Film Career
Schlöndorff returned to Germany to make his feature film debut Young Törless. Produced by Louis Malle and based on the famous novel The Confusions of Young TörlessThe Confusions of Young Törless
The Confusions of Young Törless , the title of the novel is sometimes translated as Young Törless or Young Torless, is the literary debut of the Austrian novelist and essayist Robert Musil, first published in 1906.-Plot introduction:Musil's novel is ostensibly a Bildungsroman, a story of a young...
by Robert Musil
Robert Musil
Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...
, the film debuted at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival
1966 Cannes Film Festival
The 19th Cannes Film Festival was held on May 5-20, 1966. To honour the festival's 20th anniversary, a special prize was given.-Jury:*Sophia Loren *Marcel Achard *Vinicius de Moraes *Tetsuro Furukaki...
. Taking place at a semi-military Austrian boarding school, Törless witnesses the bullying of a fellow student but does nothing to prevent it besides his superior and mature intellect. He gradually begins to accept his personal responsibility for the abuse by doing nothing to stop it and runs away from the school. The comparison to pre-war Germany were obvious and the film was highly praised upon release, winning the FIPRESCI Prize
FIPRESCI
The International Federation of Film Critics is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the world for "the promotion and development of film culture and for the safeguarding of professional interests." It was founded in June 1930 in...
at Cannes.
The New German Cinema
New German Cinema
New German cinema is a period in German cinema which lasted from the late 1960s into the 1980s. It saw the emergence of a new generation of directors...
movement unofficially began in 1962 with the Oberhausen Manifesto
Oberhausen Manifesto
The Oberhausen Manifesto was a declaration by a group of 26 young German filmmakers at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia on February 28, 1962. The manifesto was a call to arms to establish a "new German feature film". It was initiated by Haro Senft and among...
, calling new young German filmmakers to revitalize filmmaking in Germany, much like the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
and British New Wave
British New Wave
The British New Wave is the name given to a trend in filmmaking among directors in Britain in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The label is a translation of Nouvelle Vague, the French term first applied to the films of François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard among others.There is considerable overlap...
of the previous few years. Although not among the initial group of filmmakers involved, Schlöndorff was quick to align himself with the group and Young Törless is considered one of the most important films of the New German Cinema
New German Cinema
New German cinema is a period in German cinema which lasted from the late 1960s into the 1980s. It saw the emergence of a new generation of directors...
.
Schlöndorff's next film was A Degree of Murder
A Degree of Murder
A Degree of Murder is a 1967 West German film, starring Anita Pallenberg and directed by Volker Schlöndorff. The film is widely recognised because of the soundtrack composed, produced, arranged, and played by Brian Jones , Pallenberg's boyfriend at the time...
, a counter-culture saturated film with a musical score by Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones
Brian Jones
Lewis Brian Hopkins Jones , known as Brian Jones, was an English musician and a founding member of the Rolling Stones....
. The film stars Jones' then girlfriend (and later Keith Richards
Keith Richards
Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...
wife) Anita Pallenberg
Anita Pallenberg
Anita Pallenberg is an Italian-born actress, model, and fashion designer. She was the romantic partner of Rolling Stones multi-instrumentalist and guitarist Brian Jones and later the partner of the guitarist of the same band Keith Richards, from 1967 to 1979, by whom she has two surviving...
as a young waitress who accidentally kills her boyfriend and hides the body with the help of two male friends. The film was very popular upon release amongst "swinging sixties" youths.
He then made another film that spoke to the counter culture generation, Michael Kohlhaas - Der Rebell. Set in medieval Germany, Michael Kohlhaas is a horse trader who has been cheated by a local nobleman and nearly starts a revolution to get revenge. The film starred David Warner
David Warner (actor)
David Warner is an English actor who is known for playing both romantic leads and sinister or villainous characters, both in film and animation...
, Anna Karina
Anna Karina
Anna Karina is a Danish film actress, director, and screenwriter who has spent most of her working life in France. Karina is known as a muse of the director, Jean-Luc Godard, one of the pioneers of the French New Wave...
and Anita Pallenberg
Anita Pallenberg
Anita Pallenberg is an Italian-born actress, model, and fashion designer. She was the romantic partner of Rolling Stones multi-instrumentalist and guitarist Brian Jones and later the partner of the guitarist of the same band Keith Richards, from 1967 to 1979, by whom she has two surviving...
and was made in both German and English versions.
Schlöndorff then adapted Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
's first play Baal for television and cast an little-known actor named 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...
in the lead role, along with Margarethe von Trotta, whom he would marry the following year. Schlöndorff adapted the story of a self-destructive poet to modern day Munich and the film was shown on German TV in 1970. He then made another TV movie Sudden Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach, again starring Fassbinder. The film depicts 7 peasants in 19th Century Germany who rob the local tax collection cart but are so conditioned by their poverty that they cannot handle their new found wealth.
The Morals of Ruth Halbfass examined a group of people who have lost their sense of morals and co-starred von Trotta. Von Trotta would both star in and co-write Schlöndorff's next film, A Free Woman. The film took a feminist look at the condition of modern women in Munich. von Trotta portrays Elizabeth Junker, a recently divorced woman who must struggle to live her life independently as her husband has everything come easily to him, including the villa and son that they had shared together as a married couple. The film is loosely based on von Trotta's experiences with her divorce from her first husband.
Schlöndorff then completed the TV movie Übernachtung in Tirol in 1974, an adaptation of the Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
short story Les raisons de Georgina for German TV and directed his first opera in Frankfurt, a production of Leoš Janáček
Leoš Janácek
Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...
's Káťa Kabanová
Káta Kabanová
Káťa Kabanová is an opera in three acts, with music by Leoš Janáček to a libretto by Vincenc Červinka, based on The Storm, a play by Alexander Ostrovsky. The opera was also largely inspired by Janáček's love for Kamila Stösslová...
in 1974.
International Success as a Filmmaker
Schlöndorff (and the New German Cinema movement as a whole) had his first financial hit film with The Lost Honor of Katharina BlumThe Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (film)
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum is a 1975 film adaptation by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta of the novel of the same name by Heinrich Böll...
in 1975. Based on the novel of the same name by Nobel Prize winning German author Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Theodor Böll was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.- Biography :...
, Schlöndorff both co-wrote and co-directed the film with Margarethe von Trotta in her directorial debut. The film stars Angela Winkler
Angela Winkler
Angela Winkler is a German actress.- Biography :Born in Templin, Winkler trained to be a medical technologist in Stuttgart. Interested in theater, she went to Munich, where she took acting classes with Ernst Fritz Fürbringer...
as Blum, who after falling in love and spending the night with a young army deserter becomes the victim of a corrupt police investigation and predatory tabloid newspaper, which cast her as both a terrorist and a prostitute. The newspaper is based upon the real right-wing German tabloid Bild-Zeitung
Bild-Zeitung
The Bild is a German tabloid published by Axel Springer AG. The paper is published from Monday to Saturday, while on Sundays, Bild am Sonntag is published instead, which has a different style and its own editors...
, whose publisher Axel Springer
Axel Springer
Axel Springer , was a German journalist and the founder and owner of the Axel Springer AG publishing company.-Early life:...
was the inspiration for the character Werner Tötges.
West Germany was in a political hysteria over the activities of the terrorist group the Red Army Faction
Red Army Faction
The radicalized were, like many in the New Left, influenced by:* Sociological developments, pressure within the educational system in and outside Europe and the U.S...
, and the police and journalistic activities depicted in both the book and the film accurately portrayed that era as reminiscent of McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
in 1950s USA, including illegal police raids, phone tapping and tabloid smears. Böll himself was heavily attacked after the books publication, but both the novel and the film were hugely successful in West Germany.
After directing his second opera We Come to the River
We Come to the River
We Come to the River is an opera by Hans Werner Henze to an English libretto by Edward Bond. Henze and Bond described this work as "Actions for music", rather than an opera. It was Henze's 7th opera, written originally for the Royal Opera in London, and takes as its focus the horrors of war...
in 1976, Schlöndorff followed The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum with the equally political Coup de Grâce in 1976. Based on a novel by French author Marguerite Yourcenar
Marguerite Yourcenar
Marguerite Yourcenar was a Belgian-born French novelist and essayist. Winner of the Prix Femina and the Erasmus Prize, she was the first woman elected to the Académie française, in 1980, and the seventeenth person to occupy Seat 3.-Biography:Yourcenar was born Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie...
, the film stars von Trotta (who again co-wrote the script) as Sophie von Reval, a young left-wing aristocrat who sides with the Bolshevik Revolution after being rejected by a young German soldier preparing to fight the Red Army in 1919. The film depicts the same time period and subject matter that von Trotta would later revisit in the film Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg (film)
Rosa Luxemburg is a 1986 West German drama film directed by Margarethe von Trotta. It was entered into the 1986 Cannes Film Festival where Barbara Sukowa won the award for Best Actress.-Cast:* Barbara Sukowa as Rosa Luxemburg...
.
A supporting actress in Coup de Grâce was Valeska Gert, a former cabaret dancer, circus performer and silent film actress who had worked with Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo , born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of Garbo's films were sensational hits, and all but three were profitable...
and G. W. Pabst. This lead to the documentary about her life Just for Fun, Just for Play in 1977.
Schlöndorff then contributed to the omnibus film Germany in Autumn
Germany in Autumn
Germany in Autumn is a 1978 West German omnibus film about the German Autumn. The film is composed of contributions from different filmmakers, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Edgar Reitz and Volker Schlöndorff. It was entered into the 28th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won a...
, in which nine German filmmakers (including 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...
, Alexander Kluge
Alexander Kluge
Alexander Kluge is an author and film director.-Early life, education and early career:Kluge was born in Halberstadt, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany....
, Edgar Reitz
Edgar Reitz
Edgar Reitz is a German filmmaker and Professor of Film at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe.- Early life and education :...
and author Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Theodor Böll was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.- Biography :...
) made short films depicting the hysteria and political chaos in west Germany the German Autumn
German Autumn
The German Autumn was a set of events in late 1977, associated with the kidnapping and murder of industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer, President of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations and the Federation of German Industries , by the Red Army Faction , and the hijacking of the...
of 1977.
Schlöndorff's next film was the most successful and ambitious of his career, and perhaps the most important film of post-war Germany: The Tin Drum
The Tin Drum (film)
The Tin Drum is a 1979 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Günter Grass. It was directed and co-written by Volker Schlöndorff...
, released in 1979. The film was based on the novel
The Tin Drum
The Tin Drum is a 1959 novel by Günter Grass. The novel is the first book of Grass's .- Plot summary :The story revolves around the life of Oskar Matzerath, as narrated by himself when confined in a mental hospital during the years 1952-1954...
by Nobel Prize winning author Günter Grass
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author, poet, playwright, sculptor and artist.He was born in the Free City of Danzig...
, who for years had rejected proposed adaptations of his book until giving Schlöndorff his approval (and assistance) to make the film.
The Tin Drum
The Tin Drum (film)
The Tin Drum is a 1979 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Günter Grass. It was directed and co-written by Volker Schlöndorff...
stars David Bennent
David Bennent
David Bennent is a Swiss actor.He was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. His parents are actor Heinz Bennent and former dancer Diane Mansart...
as the protagonist Oscar Matzerath, who, after receiving a tin drum on his third birthday, makes the conscious choice to stop growing and remain a three-year-old for the rest of his life. He hurls himself down a flight of stairs so as to give the adults around him a rational explanation for his handicap, and later discovers that he has the ability to tactically shatter glass with the power of his high-pitch scream, which he evokes whenever anyone attempts to take his tin drum away from him. The film co-stars Angela Winkler
Angela Winkler
Angela Winkler is a German actress.- Biography :Born in Templin, Winkler trained to be a medical technologist in Stuttgart. Interested in theater, she went to Munich, where she took acting classes with Ernst Fritz Fürbringer...
as Oscar's mother and Mario Adorf
Mario Adorf
Mario Adorf is a German film and stage actor, best known for his lead role in the 1978 film The Tin Drum.-Biography:...
and Daniel Olbrychski
Daniel Olbrychski
Daniel Olbrychski is a Polish actor best known for leading roles in several Andrzej Wajda movies and also known for playing the Russian defector and spymaster Vassily Orlov, alongside Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie in the movie Salt....
as the German and Kashubian
Kashubian
Kashubian can refer to:* Pertaining to Kashubia, a region of north-central Poland* Kashubians, an ethnic group of north-central Poland* Kashubian language-See also:*Kashubian alphabet*Kashubian Landscape Park*Kashubian studies...
(Pole) who may both be his biological fathers. The film mostly takes place from the end of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
to the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
(when Oscar is 20) in the city of Danzig, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. Danzig is most famous for being the site of the first battle of the war at the polish Post Office
Defense of the Polish Post Office in Danzig
The Defense of the Polish Post Office in Danzig was one of the first acts of World War II in Europe, as part of the Invasion of Poland....
, which Oscar takes part in.
The film was widely hailed as a masterpiece and shared the Palme d'or
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and is presented to the director of the best feature film of the official competition. It was introduced in 1955 by the organising committee. From 1939 to 1954, the highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival International du...
at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival
1979 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :*Françoise Sagan *Sergio Amidei *Rodolphe-Maurice Arlaud *Luis García Berlanga *Maurice Bessy *Paul Claudon *Jules Dassin *Zsolt Kézdi-Kovács...
with Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
, as well as winning the 1979 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
In 1980 Schlöndorff collaborated with Stefan Aust
Stefan Aust
Stefan Aust is a German journalist and was the editor-in-chief of the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel from 1994 to February 2008...
, Alexander Kluge
Alexander Kluge
Alexander Kluge is an author and film director.-Early life, education and early career:Kluge was born in Halberstadt, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany....
and Alexander von Eschwege on the documentary The Candidate
The Candidate (1980 film)
The Candidate is a 1980 West German documentary film directed by Volker Schlöndorff, Stefan Aust, Alexander Kluge and Alexander von Eschwege. It competed in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.-Appearences:* Wolf Biermann...
, a film about the political campaign of arch-conservative Franz Josef Strauss.
Schlöndorff next made The Circle of Deceit
Die Fälschung
Die Fälschung is an anti-war film directed by Volker Schlöndorff and internationally released in 1981. An international co-production, it was an adaptation of Nicolas Born's novel of the same name, which had appeared in 1979...
in 1981. Based on the novel by Nicolas Born
Nicolas Born
Nicolas Born was a German writer.Nicolas Born was - together with Rolf Dieter Brinkmann - one of the most important and most innovative German poets of his generation...
, the film concerns the politics and moral struggles of war photographers. The film stars Bruno Ganz
Bruno Ganz
Bruno Ganz is a Swiss actor, known for his roles as Damiel in Wings of Desire and Adolf Hitler in Downfall.- Early life :Bruno Ganz was born in Zürich to a Swiss mechanic father and a northern Italian mother. He had decided to pursue an acting career by the time he entered university...
and Jerzy Skolimowski
Jerzy Skolimowski
Jerzy Skolimowski is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist and actor. A graduate of the prestigious National Film School in Łódź, Skolimowski has directed more than twenty films since his 1960 début Oko wykol...
as photojournalists covering the Lebanon Civil War in Beirut in 1975.
Hollywood and Later Career
Schlöndorff's first English language film was Swann in Love, an adaptation of the first two volumes of Marcel ProustMarcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
's In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its considerable length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The novel is widely...
. The film was shot in France and financed by Gaumont, and stars Jeremy Irons
Jeremy Irons
Jeremy John Irons is an English actor. After receiving classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons began his acting career on stage in 1969, and has since appeared in many London theatre productions including The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the...
, Ornella Muti
Ornella Muti
Ornella Muti is an Italian actress. She was born in Rome as Francesca Romana Rivelli, to a Neapolitan father and Russian mother. Her maternal grandparents immigrated from Leningrad , Russia, to Estonia...
, Alain Delon
Alain Delon
Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon is a French actor. He rose quickly to stardom, and by the age of 23 was already being compared to French actors such as Gérard Philipe and Jean Marais, as well as American actor James Dean. He was even called the male Brigitte Bardot...
and Fanny Ardant
Fanny Ardant
Fanny Marguerite Judith Ardant is a French actress. She has appeared in more than fifty motion pictures since 1976. Ardant won the César Award for Best Actress in 1997 for her performance in Pédale douce.-Early life:...
.
Schlöndorff then went to the United States to make a TV adaptation of Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...
's Death of a Salesman
Death of a Salesman (1985 film)
Death of a Salesman is a 1985 CBS made for television film directed by Volker Schlöndorff, based on the 1949 play of the same name by Arthur Miller. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Kate Reid, John Malkovich, Stephen Lang and Charles Durning...
, starring Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....
as Willy Loman and John Malkovich
John Malkovich
John Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award...
as Biff. Both actors won Emmy's for their performances and Schlöndorff was nominated for an Emmy for his direction. The film premiered on Television in 1985 and was released theatrically throughout Europe over the following years.
Schlöndorff followed this with another TV Movie in the US, A Gathering of Old Men
A Gathering of Old Men (film)
A Gathering of Old Men is a 1987 American television drama film directed by Volker Schlöndorff and based on the novel of the same name. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Louis Gossett Jr...
, based on the novel of the same name
A Gathering of Old Men
A Gathering of Old Men is a novel by Ernest J. Gaines published in 1983.Set on a 1970s Louisiana cane farm, the novel addresses racial discrimination and a bond that cannot be usurped.-Plot summary:...
by Ernest J. Gaines. The film stars Richard Widmark
Richard Widmark
Richard Weedt Widmark was an American film, stage and television actor.He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film, Kiss of Death...
, Holly Hunter
Holly Hunter
Holly Hunter is an American actress. Hunter starred in The Piano for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She has also been nominated for Oscars for her roles in Broadcast News, The Firm, and Thirteen...
and Lou Gossett Jr. and concerns racial discrimination in 1970s Louisiana.
Schlöndorff returned to theatrical films with the Hollywood science fiction film The Handmaid's Tale
The Handmaid's Tale (film)
The Handmaid's Tale is a 1990 film adaptation of the Margaret Atwood novel of the same name. Directed by Volker Schlöndorff the film stars Natasha Richardson , Faye Dunaway , Robert Duvall , Aidan Quinn , and Elizabeth McGovern . The screenplay was written by Harold Pinter...
in 1990. Taking place in a distopia near future where most women are sterile due to pollution, Kate (Natasha Richardson
Natasha Richardson
Natasha Jane Richardson was an English actress of stage and screen. A member of the Redgrave family, she was the daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and director/producer Tony Richardson and the granddaughter of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson...
) is arrested after attempting to flee to Canada and forced to become a "Handmaid", who are prostitutes for wealthy men hoping to impregnate a female and raise the child as their own. She becomes the slave of the Commander of the Fascist/Religious Fundalmist regime (Robert Duvall
Robert Duvall
Robert Selden Duvall is an American actor and director. He has won an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and a BAFTA over the course of his career....
), and is forced to act as a surrogate for his wife (Faye Dunnaway). To save herself from execution, she allows the Commanders driver (Aidan Quinn
Aidan Quinn
-Early life:Quinn was born in Chicago, Illinois to Irish parents. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic and raised in Chicago and Rockford, Illinois, as well as in Dublin and Birr, County Offaly in Ireland. His mother, Teresa, was a homemaker, and his father, Michael Quinn, was a professor of...
) to impregnate her and falls in love with him. The film was in competition at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival
40th Berlin International Film Festival
The 40th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from February 9 to 20, 1990.-Jury:* Michael Ballhaus * Margaret Ménégoz * Vadim Abdrashitov* Suzana Amaral* Steven Bach* Roberto Benigni* Lívia Gyarmathy...
.
This was quickly followed by The Voyager
The Voyager
Voyager is a 1991 English language drama film directed by Volker Schlöndorff, and starring Sam Shepard, Julie Delpy, and Barbara Sukowa. Adapted from the 1957 novel Homo Faber by Max Frisch, the film is about an engineer who survives a plane crash, meets an enchanting young woman with whom he has...
in 1991. The film stars Sam Shepherd
Sam Shepherd
Sam Shepherd may refer to:*Samuel Shepherd, British barrister*Sam Shepherd , killed by Sheriff Willis V. McCallSee also:*Sam Shephard *Sam Shepard, American actor and writer...
as a man who survives a plane crash, then finds the love of his life (Julie Delpy
Julie Delpy
Julie Delpy is a French-American actress, director, screenwriter, and singer-songwriter. She studied filmmaking at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and has directed, written, and acted in more than 30 films, including Europa Europa , The Voyager , Three Colors: White , Before Sunrise...
) on his next trip and begins to question the rationale of his good luck after having spent most of his life being cruel to others. The film was based on the novel by Max Frisch
Max Frisch
Max Rudolf Frisch was a Swiss playwright and novelist, regarded as highly representative of German-language literature after World War II. In his creative works Frisch paid particular attention to issues relating to problems of human identity, individuality, responsibility, morality and political...
and was not a success financially.
In 1992 he directed the concert film The Michael Nyman Songbook
The Michael Nyman Songbook
The Michael Nyman Songbook is a collection of art songs by Michael Nyman based on texts by Paul Celan, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, William Shakespeare and Arthur Rimbaud. It was recorded as an album with Ute Lemper in 1991, and again as a concert film in 1992, under the direction of Volker...
, then made the first of his two documentaries on famous director 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...
, Billy Wilder, How Did You Do It?, in which he and German critic Hellmut Karasek interviewed Wilder about his career over the course of two weeks in 1988. It was aired on German TV in 1992, and shown on TCM
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
in the USA under the title Billy Wilder Speaks in 2006. Schlöndorff had been a great admirer of Wilder for many years and sought his advice during the making of The Tin Drum
The Tin Drum (film)
The Tin Drum is a 1979 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Günter Grass. It was directed and co-written by Volker Schlöndorff...
In 1996 he contributed to the French TV series Lumière sur un massacre with the episode "Le parfait soldat".
Schlöndorff returned to Germany in 1996 to make The Ogre
The Ogre (film)
The score is composed by Michael Nyman and features strictly brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments by members of the Michael Nyman Band. The music was rerecorded by Wingates Band, with the woodwind parts transcribed for brass, on the 2006 album, Nyman Brass.-Track listing:#Knights at School...
, his most well regarded feature film since The Tin Drum
The Tin Drum (film)
The Tin Drum is a 1979 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Günter Grass. It was directed and co-written by Volker Schlöndorff...
. Based on a novel by Michel Tournier
Michel Tournier
Michel Tournier is a French writer.His works are highly considered and have won important awards such as the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française in 1967 for Friday, or, The Other Island and the Prix Goncourt for The Erl-King in 1970...
and starring John Malkovich
John Malkovich
John Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award...
as the titular Abel Tiffauges, the film revisited many of the themes and time period of The Tin Drum. Tiffauges is a slow-witted French soldier who has been accused of child molestation. After being captured by the Nazis and put in an internment camp, he is made a servant at an elite German training camp and kidnaps local children, officially as a way to recruit them for the camp, but in his mind to protect them. The film was screened in competition at the 1996 Venice Film Festival and won the UNICEF award. The film was released in Germany in 1996 and gained positive reviews. On the audio commentary for The Tin Drum, Schlöndorff said that he had wanted to film a sequel to The Tin Drum
The Tin Drum (film)
The Tin Drum is a 1979 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Günter Grass. It was directed and co-written by Volker Schlöndorff...
, as the film was based only on the first two thirds of the novel. But because actor David Tennent was too old to reprise the role and he did not want to recast Oscar, he considers The Ogre
The Ogre (film)
The score is composed by Michael Nyman and features strictly brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments by members of the Michael Nyman Band. The music was rerecorded by Wingates Band, with the woodwind parts transcribed for brass, on the 2006 album, Nyman Brass.-Track listing:#Knights at School...
to be an unofficial to his masterpiece.
Schlöndorff returned to Hollywood for the Neo-noir
Neo-noir
Neo-noir is a style often seen in modern motion pictures and other forms that prominently utilize elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements or media that were absent in films noir of the 1940s and 1950s.-History:The term Film Noir was coined by...
Palmetto
Palmetto (film)
Palmetto is a 1998 neo-noir film directed by Volker Schlöndorff with a screenplay by E. Max Frye. It is based on the novel Just Another Sucker by James Hadley Chase.-Plot summary:...
in 1998. In a classic noir plot, the film stars Woody Harrelson
Woody Harrelson
Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson is an American actor.Harrelson's breakthrough role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd...
as a falsely accused journalist who was sent to jail after uncovering corruption in the local government. After getting out of jail and unable to find work, he encounters Rhea Malroux (Elizabeth Shue), a femme fatale
Femme fatale
A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetype of literature and art...
who propositions him to help her extort money from her millionaire husband. The film was not a financial success and has so far been Schlöndorff's last film in the US.
Schlöndorff returned to Germany to make the 2000 film The Legend of Rita
The Legend of Rita
The Legend of Rita is a 2000 German film about fictionalised exiled West German radical left Red Army Faction members, though the fictional characters all have close parallels to several real-life RAF members...
. Loosely based upon the lives of members of the Red Army Faction
Red Army Faction
The radicalized were, like many in the New Left, influenced by:* Sociological developments, pressure within the educational system in and outside Europe and the U.S...
who exiled to East Germany in the 1970s, the film centers around Rita, who most closely resembles real RAF member Inge Viett. Rita abandons the revolution and live in East Germany under protection of the secret service, but much risk discovery and consequences for her past crimes after German unification.
After the documentary Ein Produzent hat Seele oder er hat keine and a contribution to the omnibus film Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (both in 2002), Schlöndorff made The Ninth Day
The Ninth Day
The Ninth Day is a German film, made in 2004 and directed by Volker Schlöndorff. It was released by Kino International.The film is about a Catholic priest from Luxembourg who is imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp, but released for nine days. The story is based on a portion of Pfarrerblock...
in 2004. The film is Schlöndorff's third film to center around the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and is based on the diary of Father Jean Bernard
Father Jean Bernard
Father Jean Bernard was a Catholic priest from Luxembourg who was imprisoned from May 1941 to August 1942 in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau...
. Ulrich Matthes
Ulrich Matthes
Ulrich Matthes is a German actor.-Life and work:Ulrich Matthes was born in Berlin. He studied acting in the early 1980s in Berlin under Else Bongers. In the 2004 movie Downfall he plays Joseph Goebbels. In the 2004 movie The Ninth Day, he plays Fr. Henri Kremer, a Catholic priest imprisoned at...
plays Father Henri Kremer, a Catholic Priest who is interred at Dachau concentration camp during the second World War. He is inexplicably released for 9 days and sent to Luxemberg. There he meets a young SS Soldier who informs him that his mission there is to convince the local bishop to cooperate with the Nazi Party, in which case he will not be sent back to Dachau. He is thus faced with the moral dilemma of betraying his faith or returning to the consentration camp.
Schlöndorff then completed the TV Movie Enigma - Eine uneingestandene Liebe in 2005. In 2006 he returned to the city of Danzig to film Strike
Strike (2006 film)
Strike is a Polish language film produced by a mainly German group, released in 2006 and directed by Volker Schlöndorff. The film is broadly a docudrama...
, a docudrama about labor strikes at the Gdańsk Shipyard
Gdansk Shipyard
Gdańsk Shipyard is a large Polish shipyard, located in the city of Gdańsk. The yard gained international fame when Solidarity was founded there in September 1980...
during the Polish 1970 protests
Polish 1970 protests
The Polish 1970 protests were protests that occurred in northern Poland in December 1970. The protests were sparked by a sudden increase of prices of food and other everyday items...
, and itself is a history of the Solidarity Movement in Poland leading up to the Fall of Communism.
Schlöndorff's latest film was Ulzhan in 2007. The film stars Philippe Torreton
Philippe Torreton
Philippe Torreton is a French actor.-Biography:Born in Rouen, to a teacher mother, and fireman father, Torreton grew up in a suburb of the city...
as a treasure hunter on his way home who has lost his soul and Ayanat Ksenbai as Ulzhan, the woman who falls in love with him. David Bennent
David Bennent
David Bennent is a Swiss actor.He was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. His parents are actor Heinz Bennent and former dancer Diane Mansart...
also co-starred.
Personal Life
He was married to fellow film director Margarethe von Trotta from 1971 to 1991 and helped raise her son from her first marriage. He is currently married to Angelika Schlöndorff, and the couple has one daughter.He formed a production company that produced both his and von Trotta's films, Bioskop.
In 1991, he was the Head of the Jury at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival
41st Berlin International Film Festival
The 41st annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from February 15 to 26, 1991.-Jury:* Volker Schlöndorff * Chantal Akerman* Laurie Anderson* José Luis Borau* Judith Godrèche* Yuri Klepikov* Renate Krößner* Gillo Pontecorvo...
.
He served as the chief executive for the UFA
Universum 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...
studio in Babelsberg
Potsdam-Babelsberg
Babelsberg is the largest district of the Brandenburg capital Potsdam in Germany. The affluent neighbourhood named after a small hill on the Havel river is famous for Babelsberg Palace and Park, part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as for Studio...
. Schlöndorff also teaches film and literature at the European Graduate School
European Graduate School
The European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland is a privately funded graduate school founded by the non-profit European Foundation of Interdisciplinary Studies. Its German name is Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien...
in Saas-Fee
Saas-Fee
Saas-Fee is the main village in the Saastal, or the Saas Valley, and is a municipality in the district of Visp in the canton of Valais in Switzerland...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, where he conducts an Intensive Summer Seminar.
Features
- 1966 Young Törless
- 1967 A Degree of MurderA Degree of MurderA Degree of Murder is a 1967 West German film, starring Anita Pallenberg and directed by Volker Schlöndorff. The film is widely recognised because of the soundtrack composed, produced, arranged, and played by Brian Jones , Pallenberg's boyfriend at the time...
- 1969 Michael Kohlhaas - Der Rebell
- 1971 The Morals of Ruth Halbfass
- 1972 A Free Woman
- 1975 The Lost Honor of Katharina BlumThe Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (film)The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum is a 1975 film adaptation by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta of the novel of the same name by Heinrich Böll...
- 1976 Coup de Grâce
- 1979 The Tin DrumThe Tin Drum (film)The Tin Drum is a 1979 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Günter Grass. It was directed and co-written by Volker Schlöndorff...
- 1981 The Circle of DeceitDie FälschungDie Fälschung is an anti-war film directed by Volker Schlöndorff and internationally released in 1981. An international co-production, it was an adaptation of Nicolas Born's novel of the same name, which had appeared in 1979...
- 1984 Swann in Love
- 1990 The Handmaid's TaleThe Handmaid's Tale (film)The Handmaid's Tale is a 1990 film adaptation of the Margaret Atwood novel of the same name. Directed by Volker Schlöndorff the film stars Natasha Richardson , Faye Dunaway , Robert Duvall , Aidan Quinn , and Elizabeth McGovern . The screenplay was written by Harold Pinter...
- 1991 Voyager
- 1996 The OgreThe Ogre (film)The score is composed by Michael Nyman and features strictly brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments by members of the Michael Nyman Band. The music was rerecorded by Wingates Band, with the woodwind parts transcribed for brass, on the 2006 album, Nyman Brass.-Track listing:#Knights at School...
- 1998 Palmetto
- 2000 The Legend of RitaThe Legend of RitaThe Legend of Rita is a 2000 German film about fictionalised exiled West German radical left Red Army Faction members, though the fictional characters all have close parallels to several real-life RAF members...
- 2004 The Ninth DayThe Ninth DayThe Ninth Day is a German film, made in 2004 and directed by Volker Schlöndorff. It was released by Kino International.The film is about a Catholic priest from Luxembourg who is imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp, but released for nine days. The story is based on a portion of Pfarrerblock...
- 2006 StrikeStrike (2006 film)Strike is a Polish language film produced by a mainly German group, released in 2006 and directed by Volker Schlöndorff. The film is broadly a docudrama...
- 2007 Ulzhan
TV Movies
- 1970 Baal
- 1970 Sudden Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach
- 1974 Übernachtung in Tirol
- 1985 Death of a SalesmanDeath of a Salesman (1985 film)Death of a Salesman is a 1985 CBS made for television film directed by Volker Schlöndorff, based on the 1949 play of the same name by Arthur Miller. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Kate Reid, John Malkovich, Stephen Lang and Charles Durning...
- 1987 A Gathering of Old MenA Gathering of Old Men (film)A Gathering of Old Men is a 1987 American television drama film directed by Volker Schlöndorff and based on the novel of the same name. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Louis Gossett Jr...
- 2005 Enigma - Eine uneingestandene Liebe
Documentaries and Shorts
- 1960 Who cares? (short)
- 1963 Méditerranée (documentary)
- 1967 Der Paukenspieler (segment "Unheimlicher Moment, Ein")
- 1975 The Novels of Henry James (TV series, episode "Les raisons de Georgina")
- 1977 Just for Fun, Just for Play (documentary)
- 1978 Germany in AutumnGermany in AutumnGermany in Autumn is a 1978 West German omnibus film about the German Autumn. The film is composed of contributions from different filmmakers, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Edgar Reitz and Volker Schlöndorff. It was entered into the 28th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won a...
(segment "Die verschobene Antigone") - 1980 The CandidateThe Candidate (1980 film)The Candidate is a 1980 West German documentary film directed by Volker Schlöndorff, Stefan Aust, Alexander Kluge and Alexander von Eschwege. It competed in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.-Appearences:* Wolf Biermann...
(documentary) - 1983 War and Peace (short)
- 1992 Billy Wilder, How Did You Do It? (documentary, aka Billy Wilder Speaks)
- 1992 The Michael Nyman SongbookThe Michael Nyman SongbookThe Michael Nyman Songbook is a collection of art songs by Michael Nyman based on texts by Paul Celan, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, William Shakespeare and Arthur Rimbaud. It was recorded as an album with Ute Lemper in 1991, and again as a concert film in 1992, under the direction of Volker...
(documentary) - 1996 Lumière sur un massacre (TV series, episode "Le parfait soldat")
- 2002 Ein Produzent hat Seele oder er hat keine
- 2002 Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (segment "The Enlightenment")
Awards
- 1978 Special Recognition award (shared) at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival28th Berlin International Film FestivalThe 28th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from February 22 to March 5, 1978. This was the first year the festival was held in February.-Jury:* Patricia Highsmith * Sergio Leone* Theodoros Angelopoulos* Jacques Rozier...
for Germany in AutumnGermany in AutumnGermany in Autumn is a 1978 West German omnibus film about the German Autumn. The film is composed of contributions from different filmmakers, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Edgar Reitz and Volker Schlöndorff. It was entered into the 28th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won a... - 1979 Palme d'OrPalme d'OrThe Palme d'Or is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and is presented to the director of the best feature film of the official competition. It was introduced in 1955 by the organising committee. From 1939 to 1954, the highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival International du...
Cannes Film Festival The Tin Drum - 1980 Academy AwardsAcademy AwardsAn Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
Best Foreign Language Film The Tin Drum - 2004 Bavarian Film AwardsBayerischer FilmpreisThe Bavarian Film Awards have been awarded annually since 1979 by the State Government of Bavaria in Germany for “exceptional achievement in German filmmaking.” Along with the German Film Awards, these are the most highly regarded awards for filmmaking achievement in Germany.The Bavarian Film...
Honorary Award http://www.bayern.de/Anlage19170/PreistraegerdesBayerischenFilmpreises-Pierrot.pdf - 2009 CamerimageCamerimageThe International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography CAMERIMAGE is a festival dedicated to cinematography and its creators cinematographers.The first seven events were held in Toruń, Poland. The next ten events were held in Łódź...
Lifetime Achievement Award
External links
- Volker Schlöndorff Faculty Website @ European Graduate SchoolEuropean Graduate SchoolThe European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland is a privately funded graduate school founded by the non-profit European Foundation of Interdisciplinary Studies. Its German name is Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien...
]. Biography and bibliography. - Volker Schlöndorff's Cinématon - A 4 minutes online portrait by Gérard Courant