Background
Schlöndorff, Volker was born on March 31, 1939 in Wiesbaden, Germany. Son of Georg S. and Ilse Loycke Schlöndorff.
Schlöndorff, Volker was born on March 31, 1939 in Wiesbaden, Germany. Son of Georg S. and Ilse Loycke Schlöndorff.
Degree in Economics; Degree in Political Science. Degree in Film Studies, Institute Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques.
Schlöndorff returned to Germany to make his feature film debut Young Törless. Produced by Louis Malle and based on the famous novel The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil, the film debuted at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival. Taking place at a semi-military Austrian boarding school, Törless witnesses the bullying of a fellow student but does nothing to prevent it despite his superior and mature intellect. He gradually begins to accept his personal responsibility for the abuse by doing nothing to stop it and runs away from the school. The comparison to pre-war Germany were obvious and the film was highly praised upon release, winning the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes.
The New German Cinema movement unofficially began in 1962 with the Oberhausen Manifesto, calling new young German filmmakers to revitalize filmmaking in Germany, much like the French New Wave and British New Wave of the previous few years. Although not among the initial group of filmmakers involved, Schlöndorff was quick to align himself with the group and Young Törless is considered one of the most important films of the New German Cinema.
Schlöndorff's next film was A Degree of Murder, a counter-culture saturated film with a musical score by Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones. The film stars Jones' then girlfriend (and later Keith Richards wife) Anita Pallenberg as a young waitress who accidentally kills her boyfriend and hides the body with the help of two male friends. The film was very popular upon release amongst "swinging sixties" youths.
He then made another film that spoke to the counter culture generation, Michael Kohlhaas - Der Rebell. Set in medieval Germany, Michael Kohlhaas is a horse trader who has been cheated by a local nobleman and nearly starts a revolution to get revenge. The film starred David Warner, Anna Karina and Anita Pallenberg and was made in both German and English versions.
Schlöndorff (and the New German Cinema movement as a whole) had his first financial hit film with The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum in 1975. Based on the novel of the same name by Nobel Prize winning German author Heinrich Böll, Schlöndorff both co-wrote and co-directed the film with Margarethe von Trotta in her directorial debut. The film stars Angela Winkler as Blum, who after falling in love and spending the night with a young army deserter becomes the victim of a corrupt police investigation and predatory tabloid newspaper, which cast her as both a terrorist and a prostitute. The newspaper is based upon the real right-wing German tabloid Bild-Zeitung, whose publisher Axel Springer was the inspiration for the character Werner Tötges.
West Germany was in a political hysteria over the activities of the terrorist group the Red Army Faction, and the police and journalistic activities depicted in both the book and the film accurately portrayed that era as reminiscent of McCarthyism in 1950s USA, including illegal police raids, phone tapping and tabloid smears. Böll himself was heavily attacked after the books publication, but both the novel and the film were hugely successful in West Germany.
After directing his second opera We Come to the River in 1976, Schlöndorff followed The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum with the equally political Coup de Grâce in 1976. Based on a novel by French author Marguerite Yourcenar, the film stars von Trotta (who again co-wrote the script) as Sophie von Reval, a young left-wing aristocrat who sides with the Bolshevik Revolution after being rejected by a young German soldier preparing to fight the Red Army in 1919. The film depicts the same time period and subject matter that von Trotta would later revisit in the film Rosa Luxemburg.
A supporting actress in Coup de Grâce was Valeska Gert, a former cabaret dancer, circus performer and silent film actress who had worked with Greta Garbo and G. W. Pabst. This led to the documentary about her life Just for Fun, Just for Play in 1977.
Schlöndorff then contributed to the omnibus film Germany in Autumn, in which nine German filmmakers (including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz and author Heinrich Böll) made short films depicting the hysteria and political chaos in west Germany the German Autumn of 1977.
Schlöndorff's next film was the most successful and ambitious of his career, and perhaps the most important film of post-war Germany: The Tin Drum, released in 1979. The film was based on the novel by Nobel Prize winning author Günter Grass, who for years had rejected proposed adaptations of his book until giving Schlöndorff his approval (and assistance) to make the film.
Schlöndorff's first English language film was Swann in Love (1984), an adaptation of the first two volumes of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. The film was shot in France and financed by Gaumont, and stars Jeremy Irons, Ornella Muti, Alain Delon and Fanny Ardant.
Schlöndorff then went to the United States to make a TV adaptation of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, starring Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman and John Malkovich as Biff. Both actors won Emmy's for their performances and Schlöndorff was nominated for an Emmy for his direction. The film premiered on Television in 1985 and was released theatrically throughout Europe over the following years.
Schlöndorff followed this with another TV Movie in the US, A Gathering of Old Men, based on the novel of the same name by Ernest J. Gaines. The film stars Richard Widmark, Holly Hunter and Lou Gossett Jr. and concerns racial discrimination in 1970s Louisiana.
Schlöndorff returned to theatrical films with the Hollywood science fiction film The Handmaid's Tale in 1990. The film's story takes place in a dystopia near future where most women are sterile due to pollution. Kate (Natasha Richardson) is arrested after attempting to flee to Canada and forced to become a "Handmaid". Handmaids are fertile women who are enslaved by the state and put in the households of wealthy men - who have "ceremonial" sex with them in the hope of conceiving a child. She becomes the Handmaid of the Commander (Robert Duvall), Fred, who is married to Serena Joy (Faye Dunaway). To save herself from execution, Kate - renamed "Offred," since she now is attached to Fred's household - allows the Commander's driver (Aidan Quinn) to impregnate her and falls in love with him. The film was in competition at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival.
This was quickly followed by Voyager in 1991. The film stars Sam Shepard as a man who survives a plane crash, then finds the love of his life (Julie Delpy) on his next trip and begins to question the rationale of his good luck after having spent most of his life being cruel to others. The film was based on the novel Homo Faber by Max Frisch and was not a success financially.
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Member of West German Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association Center.
Schlöndorff was married to fellow film director Margarethe von Trotta from 1971 to 1991 and helped raise her son from her first marriage. He is currently married to Angelika Schlöndorff, and the couple has one daughter.
He formed a production company that produced both his and von Trotta's films, Bioskop.
In 1991, he was the Head of the Jury at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival.
Schlöndorff also teaches film and literature at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he conducts an Intensive Summer Seminar.