Bruno Ganz
(Zurich, 1941) Swiss actor with a long career and renowned international experience.Considered one of the most emblematic Central European actors, he has worked assiduously with the most representative directors of the so-called "auteur cinema", such as Wim Wenders, Theodoros Angelopulos or Alain Tanner.
Bruno Ganz
Bruno Ganz was born in Zurich, Switzerland, on March 21, 1941.After successfully passing his matura (the university entrance test), he performed military service in Switzerland and began his theater studies at the Bühnestudio in his hometown.In 1962 he moved to Germany to expand his knowledge in dramatic art.Thanks to the excellent work of his teachers Peter Zadek and Kurt Hübner, he quickly stood out for his acting skills and began his career as an actor on the stage.
During the 1960s he worked in various productions for Swiss and German televisions (generally versions of theatrical productions).In 1967 he met the director Peter Stein, with whom five years later he co-founded the Schaubuehne company in Berlin, today an example of boldness and independence of judgment.In Schaubuehne, he met other greats of the Central European scene, such as the actors Jutta Lampe, Edith Clever and Otto Sander (his "angelic colleague" in Heaven over Berlin , by Wim Wenders) or the set designers Klaus Michael Grüber and Luc Bondy.
In 1972 he joined the cast of the world premiere of Thomas Bernhard's play Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige (The Ignorant and the Insane), under the direction of Claus Peymann and in the framework of the Salzburg Festival.The result was a barrage of praise, both from critics and the public as well as from the writer himself: the usually irascible Bernhard went so far as to explicitly save "the great Bruno Ganz" in the diatribe contained in the novel Wittgenstein's Nephew , in which he lashed out at actors who had performed his plays in Austria and Germany.In 1973, the specialized magazine Theater Heute awarded him the distinction for Outstanding Actor of the Year.
Although curiously at the age of nineteen he appeared in two films by Karl Suter ( Der Herr mit der schwarzen Melone and Chikita ), it wasn't until 1975 that his career as a film actor truly began.This happened when the great French director Éric Rohmer asked him to work in The Marchioness of O .To properly prepare the shoot, Ganz decided to leave the Bühnestudio, an attitude that Rohmer rewarded by granting him one of the most memorable entries on the European cinema scene of the decade.This historic film would receive the Jury Prize at the Cannes International Film Festival and launched Ganz as one of the most sought-after European actors of the next decade.
True to arthouse cinema
The writer Peter Handke made his text The Left-Handed Woman to the cinema, with the participation of Ganz.The actor would be considered, from then on, a firm connoisseur of the Handkian universe, as he would very well demonstrate on other occasions a posteriori.In 1977 Wim Wenders called him to star, alongside Dennis Hopper, in his very particular adaptation of The American Friend: Ripley's Game , the novel by Patricia Highsmith.Well received at Cannes, director Franklin S.Schaffner liked it so much that he invited Ganz to shoot Children of Brazil , the actor's first American production.Not surprisingly, one of the most notable qualities of Bruno Ganz has always been his ability to work in several languages.
Austrian director Werner Herzog also claimed his presence in Nosferatu (1979 ), a decadent remake of the homonymous film by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, in which the histrionic Klaus Kinski played the leading role of the vampire.Herzog knew how to intuit that Ganz, in contrast to the "demonic" Kinski, had all the gifts to embody candor, innocence and moral rectitude.Certainly many of his film and theater roles have contributed to maintaining this image.
The 1980s opened with two notable film projects.On the one hand, Circle of deceptions , by Volker Schlöndorff, together with Hanna Schygulla, and on the other In the white city , by the Swiss Alain Tanner.For some, This is Ganz's best work; in it he gives life to a sailor who decides to abandon his previous life to stop in Lisbon to contemplate how time, and his own life, pass before his eyes without him wanting to make any gesture to intervene.Despite his activity on the big screen, Ganz never abandoned his work on stage or on television sets.
Despite this dynamic of work, it was not until 1987 that many viewers learned about the work of Bruno Ganz.And it is that the success and the controversy harvested by the film The sky over Berlin even generated a sweetened Hollywood remake with Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage as protagonists.The film, again under the direction of Wim Wenders, was a joint project with another old Ganz acquaintance, Peter Handke, who wrote a poetic and vigorous screenplay.Ganz knew how to endow with enormous humanity and transcendence the story of the angel Damiel, who renounces immortality to know the human and mortal experience of falling in love with an aerialist.
Bruno Ganz In The Sky Over Berlin (1987)
In the 1990s Ganz continued to alternate his activity on stage with filming for the most eminent names in European cinema.It is in this context that his interpretations are placed in films such as So far, so close (1992), second part of The sky over Berlin ; The absence (1993), again with Handke, and, above all, Eternity and a day (1998), by Theodoros Angelopulos (Palme d'Or in Cannes), This work brought together two of the most respected figures in auteur cinema.
In 1996 Ganz received a surprising award, the Iffland-Ring, which was awarded to him as "greatest living personality German-speaking theater ", an award that was joined a year later by the award given by the Barcelona International Television Festival for his work on the telefilm Anwalt Abel-Ein Richter in Angst , by Josef Rödl, in which he played a judge, Dr.Crusius, hated by his colleagues.
In 2000, Ganz met again with Peter Stein, who after ten years achieved the representation of the integral of Faust .The role of Goethe's mythical hero fell to the Swiss actor, strenuous work if one takes into account that the duration of the assembly reached thirteen hours.In that same year, his participation in Pain, tulipes et comédie , by Silvio Soldini, earned him a David di Donatello in Italy, as well as the award for best actor in Switzerland.
However, the name of Bruno Ganz transcended the realm of auteur cinema to enter that of the most lively controversy when in 2004 (after shooting under Jonathan Demme The Messenger of Fear ) agreed to play the role of Adolf Hitler in Oliver Hirschbiegel's film The Sinking (Der Untergang).The peculiar approach of the film, based partially on the memoirs of the former secretary of the dictator, Traudl Junge, offered an unprecedented vision of Hitler, enhancing the hypothetical "human aspect" of the person responsible for the annihilation of millions of people during World War II..A subject of lively discussion in all the countries in which it was released, the film generated, and continues to generate, heated disputes.
Like Hitler in The Sinking (2004)
Wim Wenders himself, a personal friend of Bruno Ganz, became one of the most prominent spokesmen for the critical sector with the film's partiality.Regarding the amorality of his position, Ganz stated: "When I heard those kinds of comments for the first time I was offended, because what I did was a kind of documentary as far as I'm concerned." Unknowing of other cinematic versions of Hitler's story (although "a decided admirer of Charlie Chaplin's portrait in The Great Dictator "), Ganz based his characterization on archival films of the Führer in person.
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