Marcel Ophüls
Marcel Ophüls [ ɔfʏls ] ( born November 1, 1927 in Frankfurt am Main, formerly Marcel Ophüls Wall ) is an Oscar- award-winning French film director and documentary filmmaker.
Biography
Ophuls is the son of film director Max Ophuls and the actress Hilde Wall. He spent part of his youth on the run from the Nazis in France and the United States.
After studying at the University of California and at the Sorbonne in Paris Ophuls worked as an assistant director, among others by John Huston ( " Moulin Rouge " ) and Anatole Litvak ( "Un acte d' amour "). Between 1956 and 1959 he was a radio and television editor at Southwest Radio in Baden -Baden. In 1957 he made his first short films. After his return to Paris in 1960 realized Ophüls the German contribution to the international omnibus film " L' Amour à vingt ans" (1961 /62). With the support of François Truffaut in 1963, he directed the feature film " Peau de banane " with Jeanne Moreau and Jean -Paul Belmondo, 1964, he directed the Eddie Constantine comedy " Place your bets, Mesdames ".
From the mid- sixties Ophüls made their name as a documentary filmmaker. He sat down again and again with the Nazi past apart, such as in Munich or Peace in Our Time (1967 ), The Memory of Justice (1976) and Hôtel Terminus: Time and life of Klaus Barbie (1988). The film The house next door - chronicle of a French city in the war (1969 ) with the main character, Christian de la Mazière made in France for a turning point in the conflict with the Vichy regime.
On the documentary days of November through the fall of the Wall in Berlin and the following months, you can study Ophüls ' way of working well. He used to film clips of television reports on the fall of the Wall on November 9, 1989. People that drew in his interest, he sought after a long search on in their own environment and talked with them about what they are at that time and in the meantime had experienced. Same time, the filmmakers talked with politicians and writers about how they perceived the unrest and upheaval and interpret today. It is a film composed of multi-layered stories and pictures. Ophuls wants to represent politics and everyday life in context.
" The look of a documentary film-maker must take into account both the mood of the people, as well as one's own convictions ... I still believe that the 9th of November was a festival of freedom. Also, I am not a Marxist, and therefore has for me, the concept of personal freedom does not necessarily have anything to do with the economy. The fact that hard times come to East Germany and the people are afraid of unemployment, is indeed in the movie felt. In a way, he's already a comedy. But a black! "
In July 2010, the German Historical Museum in Berlin organized ( Zeughauskino ) a comprehensive retrospective of films by Marcel Ophuls.