Das Leben Ist Zu Lang (Life Is Too Long), Dani Levy, Germany 2010

Today, Dani Levy's new film Das Leben Ist Zu Lang (Life Is Too Long) opens nationwide across Germany.

More than one critic has already compared Levy's new film to the comedies of Woody Allen. Like Allen, Levy, too is Jewish, and so is alter ego in his new film, Alfi Seliger, played by Markus Hering. More than this, Seliger, like Allen, wears glasses.

Any questions?

In Life Is Too Long, Seliger is on a downwards spiral, professionally and personally. Levy obviously has a field day poking fun at Seliger's many mishaps while along the way, these cause Seliger to reflect on his life and its meaning.

I don't think it's presumptuous to assume that Levy's new film - besides being inspired by Allen's work - also contains some autobiographical clues about Levy's own life, although Levy's rather successful career can in no way be compared to that of the unfortunate Seliger. Levy's film, Alles auf Zucker (Go For Zucker, Germany 2005) swept the Germen Film Awards in 2006, garnering no less than six major awards. Levy's last, Mein Fuehrer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler (Germany 2007), was a succes de scandale (or would calling it a succes d'estime be more to the point ...?) for being the first - German - film to treat the subject of Hitler comically rather than in a critical and serious context, although it was later widely agreed that Levy's film was way too tame and lacked, in fact, a dash of irreverence. So as if he hadn't dared to go were no one - in his home turf, at least - had gone before.



For Life Is Too Long Levy has assembled an impressive cast, including Meret Becker, Veronica Ferres - who plays a Russian ding-dong willing to do everything for a part - Heino Ferch, and, of all people: Elke Sommer, who came out of her retirement in Beverly Hills to participate in Levy's film.

For a trailer (in German) of Life Is Too Long, please click here!

Remembered: Lilli Palmer

Lilli Palmer was born Lillie Marie Preiser in 1914 in Posen in what was then Germany. Her father was a surgeon at Berlin's Jewish hospital, her mother an actress. Against her father's wishes, Lilli would soon follow her mother's footsteps and study drama with Ilka Gruening and Lucie Hoeflich in Berlin.

As Lilli wrote in her autobiography, by the time she received her first engagement at the theatre in Darmstadt, the Nazis had already risen to power, forcing her to leave her native country. Lilli first settled in Paris, but soon after went to London where she received her first big break in Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Agent (UK 1936), in which the leading role was played by another refugee from Nazi Germany, Peter Lorre. While in London, Lilli met fellow actor Rex Harrison, whom she later married.


Lilli Palmer and Rex Harrison in a photo by Tony Frissell from 1950

Surviving the German Blitz in their house outside London, in 1945 Lilli and Rex accepted an offer from Warner Bros. to go to Hollywood. Lilli's first two American films are among her best: Cloak and Dagger, from 1946, which was directed by fellow German Fritz Lang, and Body and Soul, by Abraham Polonsky, released in 1947, in which her co-star was John Garfield.


Lilli Palmer with co-star Gary Cooper in Fritz Lang's Cloak and Dagger (USA 1946)

Although Lilli made a number of films in the US and eventually even had her own TV show, in 1954 she accepted an offer from Erik Charell to return to her native Germany to star in his film Feuerwerk (Fireworks, W-Germany 1954). Like Lilli, Charell had fled the Nazis in 1933 but unlike Lilli, he returned to Germany after the war. The film became a major success and for the first time introduced Lilli to German audiences. Following the release of Feuerwerk, Lilli turned into one of Germany's biggest stars of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. One of her most memorable films from that period is the Arthur Brauner produced remake of Leontine Sagan's lesbian-themed drama, Maedchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform, W-Germany 1958), in which Lilli plays Miss von Bernburg, the object of Romy Schneider's Manuela von Meinhardis' attraction. German feminist Alice Schwartzer famously called the screen kiss of Palmer and Schneider the "sexiest in post-war German film".


Romy Schneider and Lilli Palmer in Girls in Geza von Radvanyi's Girls in Uniform (W-Germany 1958)

It is perhaps less of an irony than an atonement of sorts that the country she was forced to leave in 1933 now turned Lilli into one of its biggest stars. Over the years, she was the recipient of numerous awards and became a regular in German talk shows. And although Lilli continued to make films in the US as well as several other countries - she was, after all, fluent in English, French and Italian - at least to German audiences Lilli is best remembered today for her work in post-war Germany where her films are still frequently shown on television.

After Lilli's painful divorce from Rex Harrison, in 1957 Lilli married the Argentinian actor Carlos Thompson. Together, they settled in Switzerland, and besides her career as an actress, Lilli took increasingly to writing and painting. Her memoirs, Change Lobsters and Dance, became an international success, but particularly so in its German translation, Dicke Lilli, gutes Kind.


Lilli seen here in 1974 talking to Helmut Schmidt, the German chancellor between 1974 and 1982

Lilli died in 1986 in Los Angeles and is buried there in the Glendale branch of the Forest Lawn Cemetery (> for more on Forest Lawn Glendale, go to the blog archives in the sidebar and search for 'City of Angeles, Final Resting Places, Forest Lawn/ Glendale). Carlos Thompson, unable to cope with the loss of his wife, killed himself in 1990 by gunshot.


Memorial plaque for Lilli Palmer on the building of Hoelderlinstrasse 11 in the Westend District of Berlin, where Lilli lived with her parents between 1917 and 1932

A Private Function, Richard Mowbray, UK 1984

Calling A Private Function a romp would not do it justice for despite its fair share of bathroom humour, far too clever and subtle in its observations is the screenplay by Alan Bennett to be dismissed as being merely a romp. However, A Private Function is indeed hilarious, but it is also full of wicked little comments and allusions to post-war misery, the British class system and its upshot, snobbery.

A Private Function is set in 1947 in rural Yorkshire at the time of the royal wedding of the future Queen Elizabeth to Prince Phillip. Michael Palin plays Gilbert Chilvers, the town's chiropodist married to Joyce - portrayed by Maggie Smith - a piano teacher who also plays the Wurlitzer at the local cinema on the side. I admit being a huge - I mean HUGE! - fan of Maggie Smith's. She probably is the only actress with the ability to make me laugh uproariously even if she was just reading out the phone book. However, Maggie Smith really is hysterical in her role as Joyce since much of A Private Function's humour derives from Joyce's social ambitions. Joyce, unlike her husband, who passively gets on with his life, intends "to take this town". As we learn somewhere along the line, Joyce's father used to own a chain of dry-cleaners and so Joyce "wants a future that lives up to her past". Never mind that looking at Joyce's mother - whose dottiness and social ineptness can't just be a result of her age - it is hard to believe that Joyce's past is little more than a product of her fantasy. But this discrepancy between Joyce's social aspirations and the Chilvers' reality gives rise to A Private Function's funniest lines, and Maggie Smith the opportunity to be at her camp best! With post-war rationing still in full swing, Gilbert, egged on by Joyce, steals a pig. With a private function to commemorate the royal wedding coming up - to which, of course, neither Joyce nor Gilbert are invited - possessing said pig, which would provide plenty of meat to feed the dinner guests, Joyce senses her opportunity to schmooze their way into the town's upper crust from which they have thus far been so blatantly excluded. Once the pig is in the Chilvers' house, that's when A Private Function is at its riotous best, although what follows may not be for the faint-hearted. Unbeknownst to the unsuspecting Joyce, who hopes that "the pig will be a clean one", the poor animal suffers from a severe case of diarrhoea for having previously been fed a rat!

But the ensuing mess in the Chilvers' house notwithstanding, in the end Joyce emerges victorious. Finding out that the pig is unlicensed, she knows she has the upper hand and that there's little the pig's rightful owners can do. These are none other than the members of the town's upper crust, among them the town doctor who so staunchly tries to prevent the Chilvers' ascent into society. But having them by the tail, Joyce rolls in the cocktail trolley, herself dressed up to the nines, and nips on a glass of sherry while proposing a deal.

And so Joyce gets her invitation to the private function after all. Never mind that they are seated next to the toilets. Though when, in the very last scene, we see Joyce dancing with the doctor, whose hand wanders slowly from her back down to her bottom, we know that come the next such function Joyce will be seated at the very front - be that with Gilbert or someone else.

Christoph Schlingensief 1960 - 2010

It has just been reported that German film and theatre director Christoph Schlingensief has died. Schlingensief had been battling lung-cancer for some time.

Besides directing numerous - often controversial - films in Germany and Africa, Schlingensief also directed operas for the Bayreuth Wagner Festival as well as the Opera Festival in Manaus, Brazil. He was also involved in an opera project in Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, where he intended to build an opera house.

He was an uncompromising artist who didn't shrink from taboo violations and whose work usually contained strong political messages which, it must be said, weren't always understood, nor did they sit well with the establishment.


Schlingensief and Tilda Swinton, seen here at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009, where Schlingensief was a member of the jury while Swinton was the jury president

In the 1980s Schlingensief dated actress Tilda Swinton. In recent years, he collaborated with countless national and international artists, Udo Kier, Margit Carstensen, and Patti Smith among them. Not that long ago Schlingensief married his long-time collaborator, costume designer Aino Laberenz, in a private ceremony in Hoppenrade Castle in Brandenburg.


Schlingensief at work in Burkina Faso

Portrait: Marisa Berenson

Marisa Berenson in 2008 at the National Board of Review Awards

Marisa Berenson starred in three iconic films from the 1970s, Death in Venice (Lucchino Visconti, 1971), Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972), and Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975). Although originally a model rather than a trained actress by profession, in all three roles Berenson more than lives up to the part. However, particularly her part in Barry Lyndon Lyndon has often been underrated by critics - as has the entire film - and her passive melancholy mistaken for a lack of acting skills, though this passive melancholy is precisely what her character, Lady Lyndon, is all about. It didn't help, that Barry Lyndon was beautifully photographed - the images by John Alcott are now legend - and that Marisa got to wear the most sumptuous 18th century costumes, as both were immediately linked to her other career as a fashion model and as a result, her acting was overlooked - unjustly so. However, it can't be denied that the ethereal aspect of her beauty was an added quality to Lady Lyndon's character, and with a face like Marisa's, it is difficult to imagine another actress playing that part.





Marisa Berenson in Barry Lyndon

On the other hand, her performance in Cabaret, in which she plays the Jewish department store heiress, Natalia Landauer, won critical acclaim and she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress at both the Golden Globes and The Baftas. In Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann's novel, Marisa's part was relatively small. Playing the wife to Dirk Bogarde's Gustav von Aschenbach, she is only seen in a flashback that is not in Mann's book. But similarly to Barry Lyndon, Marisa's melancholy beauty - which makes her the perfect tragedienne - was an added characteristic to both parts.


Marisa Berenson as Natalia Landauer in Cabaret

Marisa Berenson was born in New York City in 1947 to Robert L. Berenson, an American diplomat, and Countess Maria Luisa Yvonne Radha de Wendt de Kerlor, the daughter of fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli. Marisa grew up in the US and France, was sent to boarding school in England and is fluent in several languages. She started her modelling career in 1964 with an introduction from her maternal grandmother, Elsa Schiaparelli. Marisa's sister was the photographer Berinthia, called Berry Berenson-Perkins - the widow of actor Anthony Perkins - and was one of the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Berry was in flight 11 on her way from Boston to Los Angeles to see her son when her plane got hi-jacked and subsequently smashed into the World Trade Center.

Marisa Berenson divides her time between New York City and Paris.


Marisa Berenson, seen here with Betty Catroux - the muse of the late Yves Saint Laurent - and fashion designer Diane von Fuerstenberg


Marisa on the cover of the September issue of British Vogue, 1968


Marisa Berenson in the 1970s

Antichrist, Lars von Trier, Denmark/ Germany/ France/ Italy/ Sweden/ Poland, 2009

Apparently, director Lars von Trier cooked up this cryptic, abstruse mess of a film while conquering depression.

And it shows.

Antichrist does come across as highly personal and esoteric if incomprehensible, and I can only marvel at the European film funding bodies, willing to shell out millions to pay for what amounts to a cure for a director to combat his depression.

Really, only in Europe!

But don't get me wrong. That is not meant to be a criticism. Not at all. After all, some of the greatest works of art - be that literature, painting, or film - originated as a result of their creator's depression or emotional breakdown. Just think of the poems of Sylvia Plath, the paintings by van Gogh or the sculptures of Camille Claudel. And, who knows, a hundred years from now, there might actually be someone able to decipher and make sense of von Trier's bizarre, yet admittedly visually stunning, concoction. Though the least he should have done - or his distributor - is providing spectators with a sort of manual, elucidating on the significance behind the film's numerous inscrutable details such as The Three Beggars, which defy explanation to the casual viewer by inviting a profusion of possible interpretations. While that can be interesting in some films - leaving things open and not spelling out every single detail - it requires the viewer to be inspired to do that. It requires the viewer to care for the film's characters. And Antichrist never quite achieves that. Not with me, anyway.

What Antichrist did do, though, is calling to mind another film with a similar topic: Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now. And without intending to elaborate on the brilliance, not to mention superiority of that film, it must be said that Roeg succeeds precisely where von Trier fails. Don't Look Now is a master-class in enigmatic story-telling for Roeg, too, refrains from giving too much away. His is a film with a story that has as many interpretations as there are viewers. However, in his case it works because we care for the characters and Don't Look Now has a story to hold it together - for without it, every film falls apart. It doesn't matter how you tell the story - backwards, forward, linear or non-linear - but a story has to be there somewhere. Antichrist, on the other hand, with all its arcane suggestions and hidden meanings, which seem merely self-serving and too esoteric to be understood by anyone than von Trier himself, is a film in search of a story.

Much has been made of Antichrist's explicitness, notably the sex scenes and scenes of genital mutilation which caused quite a stir at the Cannes Film Festival last year. Again, it brings to mind Don't Look Now, which also has a sex scene which, apart from being beautifully filmed and edited, was very daring for its time. Somehow, the scene of Donald Sutherland making love with Julie Christie seems much less gratuitous than similar scenes in von Trier's film. Similarly, the scene of genital mutilation. I don't think there was a single critic accusing Ingmar Bergman of misogyny and using explicitness for explicitness' sake when Cries and Whispers came out in 1972, interestingly the same year Don't Look Now was being produced and filmed. Von Trier didn't do or show anything in Antichrist that Roeg and Bergman hadn't already done almost thirty years before.

However, they did what von Trier in his - egomania? - failed to do: They actually told a story.

Klaus Lemke

Klaus Lemke today

German film-maker Klaus Lemke is turning 70 in October, although you'd never know it, looking at his whitened teeth, his well trained body (according to his own admission he goes to the gym every day) and dressed as he is in trendy jeans and beret.

Little known abroad, his upcoming 70th birthday heralds what amounts to a rediscovery of him and his films, notably those of the late 1960s and 1970s, which was his heyday and his most active period as a film maker. That said, nowadays Lemke is still actively making films, though the intervals are getting bigger and rather than for cinematic release, his recent films are primarily made for television. But then, from the start Lemke has often worked for German television, though there would still be the occasional cinematic release. These, however, have now become increasingly rare.


Lemke (with beret) being awarded a prize by Munich's mayor Christian Uhde

More than just a rediscovery of his earlier films such as 48 Hours to Acapulco (1967) and Arabian Nights (1979), they are now accorded cult status, and for his birthday, major German TV channels are planning re-runs of his films. Moreover, a slew of German newspapers and magazines have recently run features on Lemke, including an interview he gave for the Munich-based Sueddeutsche Zeitung, arguably the most important German daily. Suddenly, the fact that he discovered German actresses like Cleo Kretschmer and Iris Berben is being widely discussed, and yes, even international socialite Ira von Fuerstenberg starred in one of Lemke's films: She played the lead in the suggestively titled My Bed is not for Sleeping (1968), and I personally can't think of any other film whose title so evokes the zeitgeist of that period. Berben got her first break in Lemke's 1968 made-for-television film Brandstifter (Arsonists), and who would have thought that in time, Berben would mutate from the sex-kitten she was then into the serious actress she is today, a major force in German film and television, not to mention an admirable as well as ardent fighter against racism and a staunch human rights activist.


Cleo Kretschmer


Iris Berben


Ira von Fuerstenberg

Why, I wonder, is it, that Lemke's films never travelled beyond the German borders? Why, at a time like the 1970s, when German films had a considerably higher presence at film festivals around the world - especially in Cannes - than they have today, was Lemke's work overlooked abroad and, it must be added, looked down on at home? My answer to that one is that even though his films certainly were in line with the contemporary zeitgeist inasmuch as they had a certain anarchic quality, they lacked the intellectual and political edge of a Fassbinder, Schloendorff or Wenders to be taken seriously abroad. Never mind that Schloendorff's then-partner, Margarethe von Trotta, also starred in Arsonists, the film that put Berben on the map. On the other hand, their often slightly soft-porn slant and their fly-by-night look equally prevented Lemke's films to be taken seriously at home. (Let's not forget that Lemke had no qualms hiring busty adult actress Dolly Dollar to star in some of his films, such as the above mentioned Arabian Nights and Honeymoon (1980). And that surely did not sit well with any aficionado of New German Cinema - be that at home or abroad). That is not to say that some of Lemke's films weren't box-office hits, because they were. And often more so than Wenders' or Fassbinder's which, while being feted at film festivals, made little or no money on their home turf.

However, with the zeitgeist having since shifted away from the prevailing serious/intellectual/political, not to say humourless, attitude of 1970s Germany to a more insouciant, post-modern view of the world, it is great to see that Lemke's work is currently being rediscovered and re-assessed. And it can only be a matter of time until some film festivals will hold retrospectives of Lemke's work and the first dissertations on him will appear in film schools around the country, although I have feeling that Lemke couldn't possibly care less. Lemke's films, which contrary to those of many other German film makers of the time, have a lah-di-da feel to them which - surprisingly, perhaps - stood the test of time. Often set in exotic locations such as Ibiza, Acapulco and similar such places that were in the process of being explored by the German Wirtschaftswunder-traveller, they are a time capsule much like, for instance, Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party is a similar time capsule in British cinema and society for the same period. Be it as it may, it is great to see that finally Lemke's work may get its due place in the history of German cinema at long last.


Select filmography of Klaus Lemke (Note: Some titles are in English in the original):

- Schmutziger Sueden (Filthy South), 2010 (TV)

- Undercover Ibiza, 2007 (TV)

- Honeymoon, 1980

- Arabian Nights, 1979

- Ein komischer Heiliger (Some Kind of Saint), 1979

- Amore, 1978

- Liebe, so schoen wie Liebe (Love, as Beautiful as Love), 1972

- Brandstifter (Arsonists), 1969 (TV)

- My Bed is not for Sleeping, 1968

- 48 Stunden bis Acapulco (48 Hours to Acapulco), 1967


Klaus Lemke with a member of the cast of his latest film, Schmutziger Sueden (Filthy South)