Anton Walbrook: A Life of Masks and Mirrors

ISBN-13: 9781789977103 / Angielski / Miękka / 2020 / 438 str.

James Downs

Opis

After leaving Nazi Germany in 1936, the actor now known as Anton Walbrook settled in Britain, where he starred in lavish biopics of Queen Victoria as well as Dangerous Moonlight and Gaslight. Despite great popularity and a prolific career, Walbrook's persona had an aura of mystery. This is the first full-length biography of the star.

Recenzje

«James Downs presents a fascinating and meticulously researched biography of a charming and darkly beguiling star who deserves our attention. It is enriched by archival evidence and images that illuminate Walbrook's work as well as his equally intriguing, but carefully sequestered, private life; all refracted through his experience of exile.» (Professor Michael Williams, University of Southampton)

«It is often difficult to separate the elements of personal life and dramatic performance that create the star persona, but that of the stage and screen actor Anton Walbrook presents a unique and fascinating challenge. In his richly researched biography, James Downs brings a scholar's authority and a fan's enthusiasm to his subject, illuminating not only the career of one of British cinema's most reserved stars, but the political and production background of his stage, screen and television performances in the UK and Germany.» (Mandy Merck, author of Cinema's Melodramatic Celebrity: Film, Fame and Personal Worth (BFI 2020))

Spis treści

List of Illustrations - Introduction and Acknowledgements - Wohlbrück - Circuses, Cloisters and Barbed Wire: Early Years, 1896-1919 - 'I suppose one doesn't count as a human being without a uniform.' Stage, Silence and Sound, 1920-1932 - 'You underestimate the lion.' Stardom and Society, 1933-1934 - 'Sentimental Dreamer ... one cannot change one's own skin.' Filmmaking under the New Regime, 1934-1935 - 'Will take the next ship ... Useless to stop us.' Leaving Germany for Hollywood, 1935-1936 - Walbrook - 'How can one live happily in a country that's so difficult to get to?' The Exile Arrives in England, 1937-1938 - 'I want to know more about the man!' British Stage and Screen, 1939-1940 - 'You call us brothers.' Europe, the USA and International Relations, 1941-1942 - 'This is not a Gentleman's War.' Playing 'the Good German', 1943-1945 - 'Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by ...' War, Peace and Postwar Identities, 1946-1949 - Life as Movement - 'We're in the past. I adore the past.' Circles and Roundabouts, 1950-1951 - 'Everybody's wearing masks.' Myths of Mitteleuropa, 1952-1955 - 'Have you never thought of staying? Of resting? Settling down for a while?' Saints and Sinners, 1955-1957 - 'The last chapter of my life has been written: a self-parody, naturally, with an ending like a third-rate kitsch operetta.' First Steps on the Small Screen, 1958-1966 - Song at Twilight: Final Performance, Death and Legacy - Appendices - Filmography - Theatre Performances - Discography - Bibliography - Index.

O autorze

Dr James Downs is an archivist in the University of Exeter's Special Collections Department, also home to the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, where he previously worked for almost a decade. He has written and presented conference papers about Walbrook on several occasions as well as being interviewed at the actor's grave for the «Life and Death in Hampstead Sound Trail» and curating the 2013 exhibition «Anton Walbrook - Star and Enigma.» In addition to teaching film adaptation and cataloguing archival material relating to other German émigrés, he has written two books and over thirty articles on a range of topics relating to the history of film and photography, visual culture and religious history, and since 2018 he has been the editor of the magazine Photographica World.