- published: 26 May 2013
- views: 51979
Franz Viktor Werfel (10 September 1890 – 26 August 1945) was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II. He is primarily known as the author of The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933, English tr. 1934, 2012), a novel based on events that took place during the Armenian Genocide of 1915, and The Song of Bernadette (1941), a novel about the life and visions of the French Catholic saint Bernadette Soubirous, which was made into a Hollywood film of the same name.
Born in Prague (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy Jewish manufacturer of gloves and leather goods, Rudolf Werfel. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner. His two sisters were Hanna (born 1896) and Marianne Amalie (born 1899). As a child, Werfel was raised by his Czech Catholic governess, Barbara Šimunková, who often took him to mass in Prague’s main cathedral. Like the children of other progressive German-speaking Jews in Prague, Werfel was educated at a Catholic school run by the Piarists, a teaching order that allowed for a rabbi to instruct Jewish students for their Bar Mitzvahs. This, along with his governess’s influence, gave Werfel an early interest (and expertise) in Catholicism, which soon branched out to other faiths, including Theosophy and Islam, such that reading his fiction, as well as his nonfiction, can be an exercise in comparative religion.
Actors: Merab Ninidze (actor), Johannes Silberschneider (actor), Josef Brandmaier (miscellaneous crew), Andreas Kispert (miscellaneous crew), Stephen Endelman (composer), Vincent Perez (actor), August Schmölzer (actor), Bruce Beresford (director), Jonathan Pryce (actor), Tim Wellburn (editor), Frank Hübner (producer), Norbert Blecha (producer), Wolfgang Hübsch (actor), Simon Verhoeven (actor), Jan Fantl (producer),
Plot: Vienna, 1902: Alma Schindler meets Gustav Mahler. She beautiful, young, plays, and composes: music is her life. She becomes Mahler's lover, then he marries her, asking that she give up composing. She has two children, works as his assistant, does his books, saves him from debt, and feels stifled. In 1910, after the death of a child, she retreats to a spa where she falls in love with Walter Gropius. Will she go with him or stay with Mahler? She conducts an affair with the tempestuous Oskar Kokoschka and is stifled in another way. Then, she marries Gropius, who proves imperious. She leaves him for Franz Werfel: he finds her compositions and insists the public hear them.
Keywords: 1890s, 1900s, adultery, archduke-franz-ferdinand, architect, art, artist, artist's-studio, baby, bare-breastsActors: Tony Calabretta (actor), Michael Rudder (actor), Alain Goulem (actor), Walter Massey (actor), Mark Antony Krupa (actor), Tom Rack (actor), Christopher Heyerdahl (actor), Maury Chaykin (actor), William Hurt (actor), Matt Craven (actor), Rémy Girard (actor), Alan Arkin (actor), Noel Burton (actor), Dorothée Berryman (actress), Vlasta Vrana (actor),
Plot: After witnessing the treatment of Jews in Nazi territory made him physically sick, cultured American gentleman Varian Fry starts en emergency rescue commission to raise funds and lobby to help intellectuals and artists, especially Jews, escape from Vichy France -where the Pétain government avoid occupation only by utter collaboration- to the US, and for lack of a better volunteer personally sets out in search of them. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt personally overcomes the reticence of the State Department. In Marseille he finds the people he specifically looked for, such as Marc Chagall, already housed by Harry Bingham, a Jewish US consulate official so he starts screening less obvious candidates and examines with Miriam Davenport and a German social democrat they pass for US clergyman Beamish how some can be rescued legally, others via a clandestine route, while colonel Joubert's State Police is at their trace...
Keywords: apostrophe-in-title, artist, character-name-in-title, nazi, refugee, two-word-title, world-war-twoActors: Leon Askin (actor), Helmut Berger (actor), Peter Kern (actor), Susi Nicoletti (actress), Susi Nicoletti (actress), Karina Ressler (editor), Paulus Manker (director), Paulus Manker (actor), Paulus Manker (writer), Albert Kitzl (actor), Albert Kitzl (actor), Albert Kitzl (actor), Sebastian Blomberg (actor), Nicole Ansari-Cox (actress), Uschi Erber (editor),
Genres: ,Actors: Leon Askin (actor), Helmut Berger (actor), Peter Kern (actor), Susi Nicoletti (actress), Susi Nicoletti (actress), Karina Ressler (editor), Paulus Manker (director), Paulus Manker (actor), Paulus Manker (writer), Albert Kitzl (actor), Albert Kitzl (actor), Albert Kitzl (actor), Sebastian Blomberg (actor), Nicole Ansari-Cox (actress), Uschi Erber (editor),
Genres: ,Actors: Tihomir Stanic (actor), Mira Cohadzic (costume designer), Zoran Milatovic (producer), Branimir Brstina (actor), Fedja Stojanovic (actor), Vladislava Milosavljevic (actress), Slobodan Radovic (director), Nebojsa Dugalic (actor), Varja Djukic (actress), Jelica Zupanc (writer), Branislav Godic (editor), Dusan Zaloznik (editor), Slobodan Ljubicic (actor), Slobodan Jovanovic (actor), Jovan Jovanovic (producer),
Genres: Drama,Actors: Erwin Steinhauer (actor), Rupert Henning (actor), Hakon Hirzenberger (director), Michaela Ronzoni (writer),
Genres: ,Actors: Hartmut Bitomsky (producer), Hanns Zischler (actor), Harun Farocki (actor), Georg Brintrup (writer), Georg Brintrup (director), Willem Menne (actor), Gisela Stein (actress), Ulrich Gregor (actor), Carlo Carlotto (editor), Hans Christoph Buch (actor), Frank Burkner (actor),
Genres: Drama,