"You'll have to remember that name, Müller," is a bon mot attributed to the theatre critic Alfred Kerr, to the effect that even with a commonplace name like Renate Müller one could rise to theatre and film stardom.
Zbigniew Cybulski was not a man of fast sports cars, he drove the Polish state railway. Like his fellow citizens, he used the rickety wagons that ran over the tracks that had been makeshiftly patched up after the war. And which therefore almost never arrived and departed on time. That's why you could take your time on the way to the station, because you could always jump on if necessary. Strangely enough, there are several films in which Cybulski jumps…
Gripping stories, the mystical and the strange, automata, horrible creatures and bizarre fantasy creatures meet saints and sinners. Anyone who loves the fantastic cannot ignore E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). He was a writer, composer, bandmaster, draughtsman and lawyer all in one. The whimsical, grotesque worlds and bizarre character creations of the Romantic form a veritable treasure trove for film: this is where horror meets thriller, fantasy meets comedy and opera meets dance. Ever since the pictures learned to move, filmmakers have…
The New Munich Group represented one of the most interesting currents in West German cinema between 1964 and 1972, not least because it swam against the mainstream, against the films that film historians commonly refer to as the "New German cinema". This designation of the so-called "Oberhausener" - and then, in the 1970s, of the "New German Cinema" - took place not least at the expense of the New Munich Group. For after a few commercially successful films (Go For…
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) would have loved the medium of cinema for sure, cinema in the sense of a "Gesamtkunstwerk" (total work of art, a life's Œuvre), with all its colour explosions, equipment excesses, sound collages and monumental wide-screen images, even if Wagner's understanding of art often has anti-modern traits. Yet the cinematograph had not yet been invented in Wagner's lifetime, and film recordings of him exist just as little as of contemporary performances of his works. All the more extensively,…
The delusion of the masses or a means of enlightenment par excellence? Since its beginnings, film has been the subject of ideological disputes and appropriations like hardly any other medium. Left-wing struggles and theories in particular play a specific role in this dispute about and in the cinema - be it as a consumable commodity in the cultural pessimistic reflections of the Frankfurt School or as a site of lively resistance in feminist and postcolonial appropriations.
Before and after 1989, the "Wall City" Berlin is one of the most dazzling metropolises in the world. But what part do media images play in this fascination? The film series Berlin Visions, analogous to the book edited by Marcus Stiglegger and Stefan Jung (Martin Schmitz Verlag, Berlin 2022), examines how feature films have made the city what it is today: a paradise for subcultures, a political stronghold, a crime scene and a party capital.
Hungarian-born director Michael Curtiz still belongs to the ranks of underrated filmmakers. Many film historians regard him at best as an accomplished director-for-hire who made 86 films for Warner Bros. alone. Yet Curtiz was not only an extremely versatile filmmaker, he also placed great value on a good script, casting, and the technical and visual aspects of his films. Michael Curtiz was nominated for an Oscar as Best Director six times alone, winning it twice: in 1939 for the short…
The starting point of this film series on agriculture in film is the recurring close-up of an open palm on which isolated grain seeds lie. It is a seemingly simple image, but lingering with it gradually reveals the full power and fragility of our existence on and with the earth. This image unites most of the films in the retrospective, which explores peasant culture and labor along several lifelines. The films deal with historical-political outlines of agro-cultural transformations, but even…
Gripping stories, the mystical and the strange, automata, horrible creatures and bizarre fantasy creatures meet saints and sinners. Anyone who…
The New Munich Group represented one of the most interesting currents in West German cinema between 1964 and 1972, not…
The delusion of the masses or a means of enlightenment par excellence? Since its beginnings, film has been the subject…
Before and after 1989, the "Wall City" Berlin is one of the most dazzling metropolises in the world. But what…
The starting point of this film series on agriculture in film is the recurring close-up of an open palm on…
Zbigniew Cybulski was not a man of fast sports cars, he drove the Polish state railway. Like his fellow citizens,…
Wir wiederholen den Film am Samstag, 25.6. um 17 Uhr!
Wir wiederholen den Film am Samstag, 25.6., um 21 Uhr!
Wir wiederholen den Film am Freitag, 17.6, um 21 Uhr!
Man kann es drehen und wenden wie man will, am Ende des Tages bleibt Hundertwassers Kunst halt doch beschissen.
Völlig surreal diesen Film, den ich so liebe und dessen einziger Letterboxd-Rezensent ich (noch) bin, heute mit verhältnismäßig großem Publikum und fachkundiger historischer Einordnung vor Vorführungsbeginn im Zeughaus-Kino zu sehen. Dann auch noch auf 35mm aus‘m Archiv – ich habe eine neue Stufe von ästhetischer Genugtuung erfahren dürfen!
vorherige, detaillierte Review hier!
Not sure what I expected from a film by Susan Sontag but I got exactly what I expected.
Two hitmen waiting to do their job, they pass their time sharing a girl, going to dance, driving around. The girl happens to be the victim's girlfriend, after having finished their job, they turn to the next girl. Photographed by Dietrich Lohmann and Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein.
"You'll have to remember that name, Müller," is a bon mot attributed to the theatre critic Alfred Kerr, to the effect that even with a commonplace name like Renate Müller one could rise to theatre and film stardom.
Born into a bourgeous family in Munich on 26 April 1906, Renate Müller attended acting school at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin from 1924 and then embarked on a theatre career. For the cinema she discovers comedy king Reinhold Schünzel in 1929, who becomes a mentor for her; seven more films follow until 1934.
In 1930, Ufa signed Müller for the major Emil Jannings production Liebling der Götter, in which she played a self-sacrificing, devoted wife. She thus starts out at Ufa with a type of woman that is clearly different from her later successful films and, like Müller's role in the national conservative blockbuster Das Flötenkonzert von Sanssouci, demonstrates why National Socialist functionaries saw her as the embodiment of an ideal image.
Renate Müller became a star with Die Privatsekretärin (1931) and her parade role as a modern, emancipated young woman as well as a patented and fun-loving "comrade". In the course of time she perfects this image of a woman, from the stenotypist in Teure Heimat (1929) to the sound engineer in Mädchen zum Heiraten (1932) and Marry Me (1932) to the driving instructor in The English Marriage (1934).
Like the protagonists in Irmgard Keun's novels Gilgi (1931) and Das kunstseidene Mädchen (1932), Müller embodies that "young-girl yearning (...) which had seemed attractive and progressive to the women of her generation." (Elisabeth Streit, Whether Viktor or Viktoria, the chemistry is right. Die gemeinsamen Filme von Adolf Wohlbrück und Renate Müller, 2020). At the same time, she became the "dream of hundreds of thousands of young men in need of marriage and love" (Der Film, 16.4.1932) and was able to win over the greatest lovers of German cinema, including Willy Fritsch, Gustav Fröhlich and above all Adolf Wohlbrück, with whom she engaged in unforgettable amorous exchanges and to whom she was also on friendly terms in private.
Beyond the glamorous film façade, however, life became more difficult and health problems began to affect Renate Müller early on. Shooting had to be postponed or cancelled again and again. The list of films in which she had to be recast is long, sometimes even during filming, as in the case of Hans Steinhoff's Freut euch des Lebens (1934); Ufa then terminated the contract.
In 1932 Müller met and fell in love with the Jewish banker's son Georg Deutsch. His family, however, rejects a liaison with a film star, as do the National Socialist rulers who reject Müller's relationship with Deutsch. After the Nazis seized power, Renate Müller was a guest several times at the film tea in the Propaganda Ministry or at private soirees in Goebbels' house; later she tried to distance herself. She kept in touch with Georg Deutsch, who was now living in exile, for several years; however, she did not emigrate, even though the pressure from the National Socialist (film) institutions grew. Müller's last film work was her participation in the propaganda film Togger (1937).
In October 1937, Renate Müller falls - probably in an alcoholic state - from a window of her villa in Dahlem; a few days later, on 7 October, she dies in hospital at the age of 31. After her death and especially in the post-war period, numerous rumours circulate: there is talk of suicide and Gestapo murder, of massive drug addiction and severe alcoholism, even of amorous entanglements with Hitler and Goebbels. The truth of these stories can hardly be ascertained today. The homage !One will have to remember this name, Müller! invites instead to the (re)discovery of a special actress, about whose appearance in the lost Schünzel comedy Der kleine Seitensprung (1931) Der Kinematograph once wrote: "She appears elegant, dashing, amiable and radiates (...) that grace which compellingly wins the audience over to her." (22.8.1931)