German Filmmakers and Movies

The first biopic on the world-famous screen star, Romy Schneider, is being produced for television. On 23rd September she would have been 70 years old.

There is one thing that German cinema has never quite managed to do and it is now being realised by television. In a joint project involving the Berliner Phönix Film company and the German public TV channels of SWR, WDR, NDR, along with the Austrian ORF station, a film is being made on the life of the legendary star of the silver screen, Romy Schneider. It has a top-calibre cast and is being shot at actual locations in Germany, France and Austria. In 2008 she would have been 70 years old. She died aged 43 in Paris on 29th May 1982.

Early fame and escape from Germany

Romy Schneider – she embodied the radiant and the passionate, the doubting and the torn, the euphoric and the demoralised. This did not just apply to the roles she played and her acting presence whose moving intensity will always remain immortal, but also to her life in the real world.

Romy was born as Rosemarie Magdalena Albach in Vienna on 23rd September 1938. Her parents were the famous acting couple, Magda Schneider and Wolf Albach Retty. After her parents had separated, she spent most of her childhood at the Schloss Goldenstein boarding school near Salzburg. At the age of 14 she made her screen debut alongside her mother in the film Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht (When the White Lilacs Bloom Again) in 1953. Two years later came one of the early highlights of her career when she played the budding Empress of Austria, Elisabeth, in the film, Sissi. There were two follow-ups to this schmaltzy epic: Sissi – die junge Kaiserin (Sissi – The Young Empress) in 1956; Sissi – Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin, (Sissi – Fateful Years of an Empress) in 1957. They made her an international star.

Fame however also had its drawbacks. People in Germany in particular started to take an avid interest in her life. Whether it was a close relationship she was having with an acting friend or the roles she chose, the press left nothing unturned. When, at the end of the prudish 50s, she left Germany for France to join her boyfriend, Alain Delon, and decided to once and for all to get rid of the image of the sweet, naïve little girl, she was attacked furiously. In France she developed into a much sought-after performer of much more complex women’s roles. She made films with Orson Welles (The Trial, 1962) or with Luchino Visconti (Boccaccio ´70, 1962), with Claude Chabrol (Les Innocents aux mains sales, 1975) and over and over again with Claude Sautet (Les choses de la vie, 1970; Cesar et Rosalie, 1972 , to name but a few). In 1972 she once again played the role of Elisabeth for Luchino Visconti in Ludwig II. This time however she did it to finally throw off the clichéd image she had acquired by playing her three times in the sentimental trilogy. In 1976 and 1979 she was awarded the French film prize, the “César”, as best actress in the films L’Important c’est d’aimer and A Simple Story. Even in Germany, where audiences had still not forgiven her for fleeing to France, in 1977 she was awarded the German film prize, Filmband in Gold, for her role in the film of Böll’s novel, Gruppenbild mit Dame (Group Portrait with a Lady).

Her success on the screen however was not reflected in her private life – there she was not quite so lucky. After separating from Delon she entered into a difficult marriage with Harry Meyen, a director from Berlin. After the divorce she married her personal secretary, Daniel Biasini. In 1977 Harry Meyen committed suicide. In 1981 their son met with a fatal accident. In the same year her marriage to Biasini was dissolved.

Probing into a complex personality

Up to now nobody had dared to do a biopic on Romy Schneider. The only glimpse into the complexity of her personality, her pain, her battles – both with herself and against herself – had been provided by a portrait produced for television by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg called Romy – Portrait eines Gesichts (Romy – Anatomy of a Face) in 1965.

Yet again it is television that has taken on the challenge. The casting is top-quality. The role of Romy is being played by one of Germany’s most multi-talented young actresses, Jessica Schwarz . French shooting star, Guillaume Delorme, has taken on the role of Alain Delon. Romy’s mother, Magda, is played by Maresa Hörbiger, an actress from the famous Burgtheater in Vienna; Magda’s second husband, restaurant proprietor Herbert Blatzheim, who guided Romy’s career for some time, by Heinz Hönig. Thomas Kretschmann, one of Germany’s most successful actors on the Hollywood scene (e.g. The Downfall, 2004; Valkyrie, 2009) is acting the part of Harry Meyen. The film is being directed by Torsten C: Fischer who has already been awarded the German Television Prize. The screenplay was written by the accomplished research analyst, Benedikt Röskau, who, among other things, won prizes for Das Wunder von Lengede (A Light in Dark Places) in 2003 and Contergan (Side Effects) in 2007. His latest film Nordwand (North Face) raised quite a storm even before it came out in autumn 2008

Two years of preparations went into the project which is to be screened on television in early 2009. And, what is more, now it looks as if it is going have to deal with some competition. In the autumn of the same year a new cinema movie is going to be released called Eine Frau wie Romy (A Woman Like Romy) produced by Raymon Danion. The screenplay, as the story goes, was written in collaboration with Romy’s last husband, Daniel Biasini. Yvonne Catterfeld, who is mostly known in Germany for her work in soap operas and telenovelas, has been cast as Romy and apparently this has also been approved by the daughter Romy had with Biasini, Sarah. The project that is to gobble up a good 23 million, making it five times more expensive than the TV production, is being treated rather sceptically by the German press. Delicate questions are being asked like who is going to get closest to Romy, who is going to do justice to the role. Questions like these are going to be equally as difficult to answer even after both films have been finished. Romy Schneider who always lived her life on the edge – whether she wanted to or not – will always be an enigma for some people. And she is even supposed to have said once herself, “You’ll never fathom me out.”