MONTREAL - The other day, Volker Schl?ndorff was trying to explain to his 20-year-old daughter why he keeps revisiting the Third Reich in his movies. Best known for The Tin Drum, his adaptation of G?nther Grass?s novel that got the Oscar for best foreign-language film in 1979, the veteran German director returned to the subject of Nazis and the Second World War in 1996 with The Ogre (starring John Malkovich) and again in 2004 with The Ninth Day, about a priest at Dachau.
His latest war movie is Calm at Sea (La mer ? l?aube), a 90-minute drama he made for French TV about the reprisal murder of 48 young Communist prisoners in occupied France in October 1941. Seen by over 1.7 million people in France and Germany when it aired last spring, the telefilm is being screened at the Festival des films du monde; Schl?ndorff flew in from Berlin to present it Tuesday and give a ?master class? to fans; it screens again Wednesday and Thursday.
And there?s more Krieg to come. As Schl?ndorff revealed in a long conversation we had Monday after he and his wife, Angelica, checked into their hotel in Old Montreal, the director plans to start shooting another war drama next spring. It?s a feature film called Diplomacy, adapted from the French play by Cyril Gely, about the Germans? final days in Paris in August 1944, when army general Dietrich von Choltitz surrendered rather than disobey Hitler?s orders to dynamite the city.
?I tried to explain to my daughter why I find all this (Third Reich history) interesting, and of course the first reason is that it happened to my generation,? said Schl?ndorff, 73, who was born in Wiesbaden on March 31, 1939. ?If this had been some Roman war, or Alexander (the Great) in Asia, I might be just as interested, but since it happened to us it just hits a bit closer to home.
?The Second World War isn?t just something you can analyze historically or depict precisely. It?s also a field where you can explore extreme human situations, where you can explore evil,? Schl?ndorff continued. ?I think people?s interest in it will survive for a long, long time. And hopefully (interest in that war) won?t be replaced by another one.?
It still amazes him: ?How can the Nazis have done all that in 12 years? How was it all possible??
The moral choices people make in wartime or in a military environment have long fascinated Schl?ndorff, who began his career in France in the early 1960s as assistant director to filmmakers Louis Malle (on classics like Zazie dans le m?tro and Le feu follet), Alain Resnais (L?ann?e derni?re ? Marienbad) and Jean-Pierre Melville (L?on Morin, pr?tre). His own feature debut as a director, Young T?rless, in 1966, was set in an Austrian military academy in the early 1900s.
That film was an early benchmark of the New German Cinema movement, which he helped establish with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog and others. Schl?ndorff scored again with the 1975 terrorism drama The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (his first box-office hit, written and directed with his first wife, Margarethe von Trotta) and their 1976 follow-up, Coup de Gr?ce, about an aristocratic woman?s dalliance with Prussian soldiers in Latvia in 1919.
Schl?ndorff?s international fame peaked in 1979 with The Tin Drum, followed in 1981 by Circle of Deceit, shot in Lebanon with Bruno Ganz as a war correspondent. Schl?ndorff went on to work in Hollywood (Swann in Love, The Handmaid?s Tale, Voyager), adapted plays for TV (including Arthur Miller?s Death of a Salesman, starring Malkovich and Dustin Hoffman), staged operas (by Janacek, Henze and, most recently, Bizet), and, in a long break from filmmaking, ran the fabled Babelsberg Studio for six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In between, he completed a pet project: a three-hour interview with his idol, legendary filmmaker Billy Wilder. First aired on BBC TV in 1992, it?s included as a bonus on the new British Blu-ray of Wilder?s 1945 drama The Lost Weekend; the disc is part of Eureka! Entertainment?s Masters of Cinema series. Schl?ndorff is travelling with a copy to give to a friend in New York, which he and his wife will visit after Montreal. His next film, Montauk, a modern adaptation of the 1975 novel by Swiss writer Max Frisch, is set there.
As someone who knew both Wilder and Miller, in the mid-1980s, Schl?ndorff is often asked what he knows ?from the inside? about Marilyn Monroe, who was Miller?s wife and Wilder?s star in the classic comedy Some Like it Hot. ?It was sometimes embarassing for me, going between the TV play with Miller and meeting Wilder in Hollywood: each would take me as his confidante and I?d get both sides of the story,? Schl?ndorff recalled.
?Arthur was still very resentful and said that Billy treated her badly and was so ruthless, and that?s why she lost her baby (when shooting wrapped in late 1958). And Billy said, ?How could I know she was pregnant? She didn?t tell anybody, and I?m not a nurse. We had a deal that she had to make a movie, and had I known (she was expecting) we couldn?t have done it, because no insurance would have covered her.? It must have been a nightmarish situation for all of them.?
A short, dapper man with rimless glasses and a moustache, a weakness for smoking cigarillos (despite having run many marathons), a big jade ring he bought from a Jewish jeweller in Tehran, and a deliberate, rather professorial way of speaking that?s punctuated by wry laughter, Schl?ndorff recounted that anecdote and many others in the hour we had at his hotel. Fighting jet lag, he and his wife later showed up for a late-night Goethe Institut cocktail reception for the many other German filmmakers who are at the fest (three have films in world competition).
Schl?ndorff has been coming here for years, since the very first days of the fest in the mid-1970s, when founding president Serge Losique used to take him jogging on Mount Royal. As a francophile, he feels at home in Montreal but finds he hears more and more English in the streets every time he comes. He?s never shot a film here, though Margaret Atwood tempted him to do so for his adaptation of The Handmaid?s Tale in 1990 (he chose the leafy campus of North Carolina?s Duke University instead).
In another little-known Canadian connection, he once had an aunt who lived in Calgary (a doctor, she had to settle for a career as a nurse after she immigrated), but she?s dead now and he no longer visits. Approaching old age himself, he doesn?t lack energy ? in fact, he says he?s glad to be free of ?distractions? that keep him from making movies, whether they be low-budget ones for huge TV audiences like Calm at Sea, or big-budget ones for the cinema that are seen by ?a few thousand people? at film fests.
His best work is widely available on DVD. The premium art-house movie distributor Criterion is preparing to re-release The Tin Drum with an extra 25 minutes of footage restored, bringing the movie to its original intended length (in the script and as shot and edited) of almost two hours and 45 minutes. Criterion wants Schl?ndorff to do a new audio commentary for the film, but he?d rather do an on-camera interview; he?s never liked the ?voice of God? format of commentary tracks.
?I?m basically bored by everything except filmmaking, or working with actors, doing plays, movies, and operas; I do documentaries, as well ? anything where I can tell stories,? Schl?ndorff said.
?At my age, I?m back to the old fashion of the showbiz professional. You can send me anywhere and I can wage any battle.?
La mer ? l?aube (Calm at Sea) screens again Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. and Thursday at 2:20 p.m. at Quartier Latin, 350 Emery (just west of St. Denis St. The 90-minute telefilm is in French and German with English subtitles.Tickets: $10. Info: ffm-montreal.org
? Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Festival+Films+Monde+Coming+back/7157361/story.html
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