Anton Walbrook and Max Ophüls

The moment I fell for Anton Walbrook was exactly the point, when he realises as König Ludwig that he has lost his artistic paradise. The look of infinite sadness and longing in Ludwig's/Anton's eyes, which was also the look of so many people he had known, Ophüls, Dr Karl Wollf, to name just two, who fortunately had survived Nazi persecution, simply took my breath away. From that moment on I had to know who this man was.
Especially French reviewers have criticised that Ophüls showed the Bavarian king far too favourable, something they did not see was, to my mind at least, that far from telling Lola's history, he told a more recent story, that of Germany inbetween the World Wars, of the artistic freedom and liberties he enjoyed, and sadly of his and others' eventual eviction from this paradise. In its consequences quite chilling. There is also Hilde Ophüls account of Max first visit to Germany after WW2, when he cried inconsolably behind the wheel of his car when some person had remarked that he must be revisiting his native country (Heimat).

Scham

ist ein Gefühl, das heute fast nicht mehr populär - ja vielleicht sogar völlig ausgestorben ist. Wessen schämen wir uns wirklich, wo sind mittlerweile die Grenzen des darstell- und sagbaren angelangt?! Schade d'rum eigentlich, denn Max Ophüls konnte noch in den 1930ern glauben, daß eben dieses Gefühl von Schüchternheit und Scham Ausdruck von Jugendlichkeit und deswegen bewegend und reizend ist. Ach wie wunderbar ist es, sich seiner eigenen Blöße und der Blöße des anderen in einem einzigen Moment so bewußt zu sein! Aber andererseits ist das eigentliche dieses Augenblicks nur für den Betrachter angenehm, während der Schamvolle/ Beschämte selber diese Blöße lieber wieder so schnell wie möglich bedecken will. Eigentlich möchte ich niemals erwachsen werden und solches missen :-).

Blush - dank der Röte animiert

Albert Bassermann and Max Ophüls or The art of performing

"The Sublime is Now"   Barnett Newman

Once upon the time in the early 1920s in the beautiful city of Aachen, when Max Ophüls was still an actor engaged at the city's Stadttheater, there came the great Albert Bassermann. He was touring the land with a production of Gerhart Hauptmann's "Kollege Crampton" with him in the lead and local actors taking the minor parts. All Bassermann actually did was to instruct  his fellow actors how to (re-)act beforehand. Thus he told Max Ophüls : "Young man, there will be this scene when my character gets sacked in front of all the others. I will take it the hard way and you will pat me on the shoulder." Comes the performance and the beforementioned scene, Bassermann is standing there with his back(!) turned to the audience facing Ophüls. At that moment Ophüls gets struck by awe  and surprise, for there are real tears streaming down Bassermann's face and for a moment he cannot even move, when he hears a very low voice besides him: "Now, young man pat me on the shoulder!" ;-)

Bassermann as Henry Percy in Max Reinhardt's production of Henry IV Part 1