Frederic Zelnik
Friedrich Zelnik | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 29 November 1950 London, England | (aged 65)
Occupation(s) | director producer actor |
Frederic Zelnik (17 May 1885 - 29 November 1950) was one of the most important producers-directors of the German silent cinema. He also appeared on screen as an actor.
Early life and career
Friedrich Zelnik was born in a Jewish family in Czernowitz, today in Ukraine, at the time the capital of the Duchy of Bukovina in the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Czernowitz has been then largely populated by Jews and has been after Wilno the most an important city for the Jewish culture in Eastern Europe. After the studies in Vienna, Friedrich Zelnik worked as an actor in theaters in Nürnberg, Aachen, Worms, Prague and finally Berlin - in the theaters Theater an der Königsgrätzer Straße, Berliner Theater, Komödienhaus.
In 1914 Friedrich Zelnik began acting in films, and after 1915 producing and directing movies while still appearing in roles as an actor in other director's films. In 1918 he married a young Polish ballet dancer turned film actress named Lya Mara and promoted her to stardom by producing and directing movies for her. In 1920 he established a film production firm Zelnik-Mara-Film GmbH.
Popular, operetta style costume films like The Blue Danube, The Bohemian Dancer, Dancing Vienna, Mariett Dances Today brought Lya Mara and Zelnik enormous success in Germany and beyond. Several of his collaborators, such as cameraman Frederik Fuglsang and production designer André Andrejew are perceived today as important artists of the German silent cinema.
Upon the introduction of sound film, Friedrich Zelnik became the first director in Europe to postsynchronize a movie, The Crimson Circle (1929), using the DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process. In 1930, Zelnik travelled to Hollywood, California and upon his return directed his first full sound film, a new version of his silent success The Bohemian Dancer.
After Hitler took power in 1933, Zelnik and Lya Mara left Germany for London. In the following years, Zelnik continued to direct and produce movies in Great Britain and The Netherlands. He also changed his name to Frederic Zelnik and took British citizenship.
Friederich Zelnik died in 1950 in London.
Selected filmography
Director
- Charlotte Corday (1919)
- Anna Karenina (1920)
- Count Varenne's Lover (1921)
- The Girl from Piccadilly (1921)
- Count Festenberg (1922)
- Napoleon's Daughter (1922)
- The Mistress of the King (1922)
- Lyda Ssanin (1923)
- Irene of Gold (1923)
- The Girl from Capri (1924)
- The Mistress of Monbijou (1924)
- By Order of Pompadour (1924)
- Athletes (1925)
- Letters Which Never Reached Him (1925)
- Women You Rarely Greet (1925)
- The Venus of Montmartre (1925)
- The Bohemian Dancer (1926)
- The Mill at Sanssouci (1926)
- The Violet Eater (1926)
- The Blue Danube (1926)
- Fadette (1926)
- The Weavers (1927)
- Dancing Vienna (1927)
- The Gypsy Baron (1927)
- Mariett Dances Today (1928)
- Mary Lou (1928)
- My Heart is a Jazz Band (1929)
- The Crimson Circle (1929)
- The Forester's Daughter (1931)
- Everyone Asks for Erika (1932)
- The Dancer of Sanssouci (1932)
- Happy (1933)
- The Emperor's Waltz (1933)
- Southern Roses (1936)
- The Lilac Domino (1937)
- Daddy Long Legs (1938)
- Tomorrow It Will Be Better (1939)
- I Killed the Count (1939)
Producer
- The Lost Paradise (1917)
- The Yellow Diplomat (1920)
- The Bank Crash of Unter den Linden (1926)
References
- Hans-Michael Bock (Ed.): The Concise CineGraph. Encyclopedia of German Cinema. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books 2009, p. 548-549
External links
- 1885 births
- 1950 deaths
- People from Chernivtsi
- People from the Duchy of Bukovina
- Bukovina Jews
- German people of Austrian-Jewish descent
- German people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent
- Silent film directors
- German film directors
- German male film actors
- German male silent film actors
- 20th-century German male actors
- German-language film directors