Brigitte Horney Movies
A replacement, in many respects, for the Hollywood-bound Marlene Dietrich, beautiful and slightly exotic-looking Brigitte Horney was the daughter of noted psychiatrist Else Danielsen and grew up in some opulence in the Berlin suburb of Dahlem. A friendship with theater magnate Max Reinhardt led in 1930 to a role as a sales clerk in Robert Siodmak's Billy Wilder-scripted Abschied (1930) but Horney refused further film work in favor of the stage. (She was for more than a decade engaged by Berlin's Volksbühne theater.) Most fortuitously, however, she accepted the starring role of a waterfront girl in the highly popular Liebe, Tod und Teufel (Love, Death and the Devil, 1934), and a new star was born. Horney, in her inimitable husky voice, sang Theo Mackeben's leitmotif "So Oder ist das Leben " and critics and audiences alike compared her favorably to Dietrich.Although her mother had escaped to New York, Horney opportunistically remained in the Third Reich, performing with the Volksbühne and starring in such popular Nazi-era films as Savoy-Hotel 217 (1936) and Das Mädchen von Fanö (The Girl From the Isle of Fanö, 1941). In 1943, she played Catherine the Great in one of the great debacles of the age, the gigantic super-production The Adventures of Münchhausen. Despite the fact that the news from the Eastern front was grim, no expense was spared and the Hollywood-style production later became a blot on the resumé of all concerned. With the suicide deaths of former costar Joachim Gottschalk and his Jewish wife, a traumatized Brigitte Horney began preparing for the inevitable and although she soldiered on in her own way -- filming Gustav Ucicky's prophetically titled Am Ende der Welt (The End of the World, 1944) while bombs were literally dropping around her -- she finally fled to Switzerland in early 1945. There were a couple of stage returns in the immediate postwar era, including a Swiss production of Jean-Paul Sartre's Les Mains Sales (1949), and she resettled in the United States in 1950. But Brigitte Horney was not forgotten and she returned to Germany for such television productions as Sartre's No Exit and the highly popular soap opera The Guldenburgs, on which she played the matriarch. In addition, she earned a supporting role in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Veronika Voss (1981), a Sunset Boulevard pastiche probably based on the life of one of her contemporaries, the haunting Sybille Schmitz.
Although she never completely rivaled Marlene Dietrich's strange allure -- Nazi film production would not allow such self-indulgence -- Brigitte Horney was, in retrospect, much closer the real thing than the better remembered Dietrich successor, the equally husky-voiced Zarah Leander. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1983
This film of a glitzy showbiz world by director Peter Keglevic in his first feature-length effort recounts the saga of a married torch singer whose numerous lovers are meant to steady her nerves and a saxophone player who loves her but cannot get his own act together. Singing and cinematography are pluses. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Friedrich Karl Praetorius, Krystyna Janda, (more)
- 1982
- R
Originally Die Sehnsucht de Veronika Voss, this Rainer Werner Fassbinder spin on Sunset Boulevard stars Rosel Zech as film actress Veronika Voss. Once the toast of Germany, Veronika had allegedly been an intimate of Joseph Gobbels. But the Third Reich is dead...and Veronika may as well be. Playing to an increasingly diminishing fan following, Veronika turns to drugs to cushion her against the cruelties of life. Her self-destruction is accelerated by her "Doctor Feelgood" Annemaire Duringer, who plys Veronika with morphine in order to gain control of the actress's money and property. Well-meaning sportswriter Hilmar Thate tries to save Veronika from herself, sacrificing his own personal happiness -- and the life of his girlfriend Cornelia Froeboess -- in the process. Allegedly an amalgam of several true stories, Veronika Voss is the last of Fassbinder's "postwar trilogy" (the first two were The Marriage of Maria Braun and Lola). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rosel Zech, Hilmar Thate, (more)
- 1980
- R
In a true story beginning in the year before the outbreak of WW II in France, Charlotte (Birgit Doll), a young woman sent to the safety of her grandfathers in the south of France by her Jewish family in Germany, starts to paint pictures that recall some of the terrors she has already known in Germany before leaving. The movie slips back and forth between the memories her paintings conjure up, and her life in France. At first, back in Germany, Charlotte was convinced that her own optimistic, romantic outlook would save her from all harm. But then that self-deception fades a little as her father, a doctor, is picked up by the Gestapo. Even though her father's release is finally secured by Charlotte's step-mother (an opera singer), the situation steadily deteriorates until her parents send her away in the hope that she will be better off in France. Once there, the harsh reality intrudes so much on her life that not even her paintings can afford her any solace. Her despair becomes stronger as the Nazi atrocities begin to multiply, affording her little real hope of survival. An epilogue to the movie tells the audience the fate of the real Charlotte, since the movie ends before that time. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Birgit Doll, Derek Jacobi, (more)
- 1969
- PG
A Scotland Yard inspector is called on to investigate a series of unsolved robberies in The Trygon Factor. Inspector Cooper-Smith (Stewart Granger) ends up at the country manor of a respectable English family. Livia Emberday (Cathleen Nesbitt) is the mistress of the house who has turned to crime to help bolster the finances of the once-monied family. With help from a group of bogus nuns, stolen goods end up in the warehouse of Hamlyn (Robert Morley), supposedly a respectable businessman. This 1966 feature also stars Susan Hampshire as Trudy, the daughter of the manor who is unaware of the criminal enterprise under her very nose. There are plenty of twists in the storyline of this often complex mystery feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stewart Granger, Susan Hampshire, (more)
- 1965
Barbara (Ghita Norby) is a pretty young secretary who at age 25 decides to find a man to marry in this light romantic comedy. She has many male admirers, but all seem to want to fool around and entertain no thoughts of marriage. Barbara brings her problem to a matrimonial agency that provides her with another slew of suitors. Little does she know that her co-worker and shy superior at work Dr. Pleskau (Walter Giller) carries a torch for her and wants her to be his flame. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Walter Giller, Monika Dahlberg, (more)
In a rather confusing and slow-paced manner, this wartime drama about a real-life dilemma is meant to highlight the dedication of Colonel Alois Podhajsky (Robert Taylor), the instructor at a prestigious Vienna equestrian school. The colonel is in charge of the safety and health of the royal Lipizzaner horses and he has a serious problem. He has not been able to secure German permission to leave for a safe haven with the horses and, at the same time, he has to get them together with the Lipizzaner mares in order to continue the species. The trouble is that the mares are in the hands of the enemy. And so the colonel sets out to get the horses through a German checkpoint, and convince General Patton (John Larch) to help him with his mission. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Taylor, Lilli Palmer, (more)
- 1960
This is a well-wrought, World War II drama with a pacifist message, centered on the sinking of the German cruise ship "Wilhelm Gustloff" in the Baltic Sea on January 31, 1945. The luxury liner had just taken on 6,000 refugees from the area of eastern Prussia, under invasion by Russian forces and soon to change hands in the war. Most of the refugees were women and children and only 928 survived the Russian submarine attack. Although the sinking of the ship is the most dramatic sequence in this film by director Frank Wisbar, the refugees and their lot are also explored at length. In one sequence, a Jewish refugee is discovered and brutally brought under arrest, bringing the larger issues of the conflict back into focus for a moment. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sonja Ziemann, Gunnar Moeller, (more)
- 1960
Based on a novel by Trygve Gulbranssen about a feud reminiscent of the Hatfields and McCoys, this conventional drama in a rural setting is aptly directed by Gustav Ucicky and stars Mai-Britt Nilsson as Adelheid, a woman sought after by young Dag (Hans Nielsen). Although the everyday concerns and problems of peasant farmers are a prominent part of the story, the focus lies in the machinations of some unfriendly neighbors. Even when the large rift between neighbors looks like it can be healed over, there is one disagreeable woman who specializes in squelching any deals. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maj-Britt Nilsson, Brigitte Horney, (more)
- 1957
All the money in the world cannot provide the security the rich industrialist in this drama seems to crave. Although wealthy and powerful, the man is terribly afraid of losing his beauteous wife to another. His fears rule his private life; to keep her safe, the man begins holding her prisoner. This does not do much for the wife, and the rich man ends up losing her completely. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1954
In this German drama, a mediocre actress is quite happy to have a steady stream of bit movie roles. Unfortunately, an egocentric director sees her and vows to make her a star whether she wants to be one or not. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1954
Curt Jurgens was still billing himself as Curd Juergens when he starred in the German "reality" drama Gefangene der Liche (Prisoner of Love). Though top billed, Jurgens' role is subordinate to the one played by Annemarie Dueringer, cast as a woman who has just endured eight horrible years in a Siberian prison camp. Returning to her husband (played by Jurgens), Annemarie finds she can no longer truly communicate with the man, nor does he seem sufficiently sympathetic to her suffering. Future director Bernhard Wicki appears as the "other man" in the story, who seems capable of providing the affection and reassurance that Jurgens cannot. Also in the cast is Brigitte Horney as a woman doctor who helps Annemarie make the transition from bondage to freedom. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bernhard Wicki
This 1943 film, produced at the UFA studios in West Germany, was refurbished by Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation to mark the 50th anniversary of that studio. The Nazi director of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, wanted a big internationally acceptable production to celebrate the studio's 25th anniversary, and the Münchausen story was chosen. It was thought suitable for Germans of the time, because of the ridiculous light in which it shows other nationalities. Baron von Münchausen (1720-97) was an eccentric figure in European history, whose tall tales about his adventures rival anything to be found in the legends of Paul Bunyan, or of the classical figure of Odysseus; they are similar in tone to the stories in Gulliver's Travels. The Baron's tales have been favored reading by the young-at-heart for centuries. This film recounts some of the episodes from the Baron's "autobiographical" stories, which are set in the world of the eighteenth century. In the story, the Baron's 1940s descendant narrates some of the Baron's famous tales; it gradually becomes clear that the original Baron attained immortality, and that his modern descendant is actually the original Baron. The American-born director Terry Gilliam made another film based on these tales in 1988, also titled The Adventures of Baron Münchausen. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hans Albers, Brigitte Horney, (more)
- 1939
Der Gouverneur is based on The Flag, a play by Otto Emmerich Groh. German film favorite Brigitte Horney stars as Maria, the wife of straight-arrow, corruption-fighting General Werkonen (Willy Birgel). Though she admires and respects her husband, Maria is not in love with Werkonen, and before long is embroiled in an affair with the general's adjutant, Lt. Runeberg (Ernest von Klipstein). When Werkonen finds out what's been going on, the stage is set for a spectacular -- but futile -- gesture of self-sacrifice. The film was directed by Russia's Victor Tourjansky, who remained in Germany throughout WWII, seemingly impervious to the country's many political upheavals. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brigitte Horney, Willy Birgel, (more)
- 1939
This 1939 German film tells the story of the conflicts involving T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) from the point of view of his opponents. It was not released before World War Two broke out, and was banned by the Allied victors from being shown because it was classified as "war propaganda." It resurfaced during the 1989 Berlin Film Festival, and it has since become clear that this is simply a well-made war-action drama, and does not bear the taint of any strong anti-British propaganda at all. The story concerns a German officer (Joachim Gottschalk) who, after fighting a losing battle with Lawrence's forces, manages to evade his foes by hiding in the desert and, with much difficulty, leads his contingent of survivors to safety. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brigitte Horney, Hans Nielsen, (more)
- 1938
Der Katzensteig (The Catwalk) is based on a novel by Herman (Sunrise) Sudermann. The story is set during the Napoleonic wars, when all of Prussia succumbed to the armies of the Little Corporal. Werner (Hannes Stelzer), the hero, must endure ostracization because of his father's pro-French sentiments. The only person who cares about Werner is Regine (Brigitte Horney), herself under a cloud for purported collaboration and promiscuity. Werner clears his family's name by fighting heroically against Napoleon, but still must pay a terrible personal price when he returns home. Der Katzensteig is a remake of the same-named 1927 silent film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Willi Schur
