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Exceptional actor. 77.
I only saw the other day he was in Boys From Brazil.
From guardian obit, Ganz was born in Zurich, apparently, the son of a Swiss mechanic and his northern Italian wife. As a teenager he attended drama school and later worked as a bookseller, as well as training to be a paramedic.
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Posted: |
Feb 23, 2019 - 2:16 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In 1976, Jeanne Moreau wrote, directed, and starred in the drama LUMIERE. The film focuses on "Sarah" (Moreau), an actress nearing 40, who has invited the woman who has been her best friend for 16 years and two younger women to her vacation retreat in Provence. There, discussing their loves and lives, Sarah recalls what happened a year ago in Paris. Bruno Ganz plays poet "Heinrich Grun," with whom Sarah has an affair. Astor Piazzolla's score was released on a Carossello Records LP in Italy, but has not been re-issued on CD.
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Posted: |
Feb 24, 2019 - 1:25 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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THE AMERICAN FRIEND was a noirish tale freely adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s thriller “Ripley’s Game." J. Hoberman remarked in The New York Times that "“The American Friend,” may rival “Taxi Driver” in its rhapsodic visual panache but, although violent, it is less brutal and more melancholy. (Some sequences suggest the visual equivalent to a Kraftwerk ballad on the sad beauty of neon lights.)" The 1977 film was made in three countries (and three languages).
Failing to enlist John Cassavetes, director Wim Wenders cast Dennis Hopper, the great Hollywood outcast of his generation, as a shady art dealer, a cowboy in Germany, who, almost on a whim, embroils an honest Hamburg picture framer,"Jonathan Zimmermann" (Bruno Ganz), in an organized crime hit.
Ganz worked in a frame shop for weeks to prepare for his role as a picture framer. He carried a real gun during a scene in which he assassinates a man in a train station, because, oddly enough, the filmmakers could not afford a prop gun.
Hopper and Ganz did not initially get along, and got into a fistfight on the set. After a night of drinking, the two returned to the set with their differences settled.
Seven minutes of Jürgen Knieper's score was released on a Milan compilation CD in 1989.
Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper in THE AMERICAN FRIEND
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Posted: |
Feb 25, 2019 - 12:55 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In the 1993 sequel to his 1987 international arthouse success WINGS OF DESIRE, co-writer-director Wim Wenders revisits a totally changed Berlin as he reunites with his stars Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander, who reprise their roles as angels "Damiel" and "Cassiel" visiting earth, as well as Solveig Dommartin as the trapeze artist and Peter Falk as The Filmstar. FARAWAY, SO CLOSE won the Grand Prix du Jury and was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.
Wenders once again imagines and explores an intelligently playful fantasy world where a group of angels roam the streets of the German capital of Berlin, lurking unseen in the subways, alleys and remotest corners. This time, the fopcus of the film is Cassiel (Otto Sander). He and "Raphaela" (Nastassja Kinski) are chief among the angels who are observing the earth’s inhabitants, listening to their thoughts but forbidden to alter their destinies. Cassiel examines the human condition and recognizes how lost people have become, but he grows despondent over his fate as an observer.
He again meets his former angel friend Damiel (Ganz), now a mortal pizza maker living with his trapeze artist wife "Marion" (Solveig Dommartin). He also meets a single mother and her daughter, an elderly chauffeur, a private eye, a shady businessman (Horst Buchholz) and a gangster. Willem Dafoe plays a character named "Emit Flesti," which is "Time Itself" spelled backwards.
Again, as before, it is filmed in black and white and color, but this time by cinematographer Jürgen Jürges. The screenplay is by Wenders, Richard Reitinger and Ulrich Zieger. Even though Wenders cut nearly an hour out of the film to get it to its release running time, at 144 minutes it plays at a daunting epic length.
SBK/Electrola released a CD of songs, with score cues by Laurent Petitgand.
Bruno Ganz and Willem Dafoe in FARAWAY, SO CLOSE
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Posted: |
Feb 25, 2019 - 1:20 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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LUTHER was set during the early sixteenth century, when idealistic German monk Martin Luther (Joseph Fiennes), disgusted by the materialism in the church, begins the dialogue that will lead to the Protestant Reformation. Bruno Ganz played the real-life Johann von Staupitz, a Catholic theologian, university preacher, and Vicar General of the Augustinian friars in Germany, who supervised Martin Luther during a critical period in his spiritual life. Luther himself remarked, "If it had not been for Dr. Staupitz, I should have sunk in hell."
This was Sir Peter Ustinov's final theatrical film before his death on March 28, 2004, at the age of eighty-two. He played Frederick the Wise in the film. Frederick III, also known as Frederick the Wise, was Elector of Saxony and worldly protector of Martin Luther.
Eric Till directed the 2003 film. Richard Harvey's score was released by Altus Records in the U.S. and BMG in Germany.
Bruno Ganz and Joseph Fiennes in LUTHER
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Posted: |
Feb 25, 2019 - 2:12 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Bruno Ganz had the best of his late career roles playing Adolf Hitler in DOWNFALL, which focused on the Nazi dictator's final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII. Ganz studied Parkinson's disease patients in a Swiss hospital to prepare for his role as Hitler.
Also helping Ganz in preparing for the role was the unique, only known recording of Adolf Hitler when he held a private conversation with Field Marshal Gustaf Mannerheim of Finland. At that time, Mannerheim was a World War II ally of Germany against the Soviet Union. Hitler unexpectedly showed up to congratulate Mannerheim on his 75th birthday on June 4, 1942. Finnish intelligence agents secretly made the recording in a train car, as Hitler did not allow recordings nor photographs to be taken in private. Some eleven minutes of the recording feature relaxed, normal-tone talk in which Hitler generally describe his views about the war. One of two copies of the tape was discovered in 1992 and has since been studied by scientists and historians. Ganz practiced Hitler's distinct Austrian accent with the help of a young actor from Hitler's area in Upper Austria.
After the film's release, Ganz stated that, at first, he did not want the role of Hitler. After viewing the film THE LAST TEN DAYS (1955) and Albin Skoda's portrayal of Hitler, however, Ganz realized the role could be played with some depth, and accepted the part. Ganz was nominated for German and European Best Actor Awards and won Best Actor Awards from Bavaria and the London Critics Circle.
Oliver Hirschbiegel directed the 2004 film. Stephan Zacharias' score was released only in Germany, by Colosseum.
Bruno Ganz in DOWNFALL
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