Berlin Film Festspiele 1962

Although Marisa Mell was during the height of her career a very public figure in the Italian and Spanish yellow press seeing film footage of her is a rather difficult find. So it is always a treat to see her in a clip during one of her public appearences. And when that clip is even from the beginning of her career in Germany during the early years of the 60's then it is really an one of kind Marisa Mell extravaganza for every fan! 

In the movie world there are only three major movie festivals that have importance for every actor, actress, director and producer. The Academy Awards, The Cannes Film Festival and of course the Berlin Film Festspiele. In the summer of 1962, from June 22nd until July 3rd, Berlin was once again host of this festival. 

This edition would be very special. Only the previous year the East-German government decided to build a wall in Berlin to seperate East-Berlin under Russian influence from West-Berlin under American influence. That was a major shock for the people living in the city. So the focus of this edition was entirely on the cold war situation that was graduately building up between the then two major world powers. 

The city of Berlin became an island in a hostile ocean called East-Germany. From then on everything had to be transported by plane. Film actors and actresses were flown in from all over Germany and Austria or special guests from America like James Stewart

or the in Germany at that moment very popular actor Tony Curtis

who was madly in love with then only 17 year old German actress Christine Kaufmann. They would play together in the movie "Taras Bulba" in the same year and get married the next year! Their marriage would last 4 years and have two daughters. Kristine Kaufman is still very active in Germany as an movie and television actress but also as a teleshopping seller for her own cosmetic line being very successfull making her a very rich women! Marisa Mell would play together with Tony Curtis many years later in the comedy "Casanova".

So everybody who was somebody in the movie business during the early 60's was present in those summer months like Maria Schell, who had already an impressive filmography, but would gain world recognition in 1978 as Vond-Ah the mother of Christopher Reeve's Superman.

 

Hans Sönker was another very famous German actor present at the Berlin Film Festspiele. He played opposite Marisa Mell in 1960 in the German movie "Wegen Verführung Minderjärigen". At that time it was a shocking movie about a high school teacher falling in love with his female under age student while being married.

As a starlet age 23 making her first impressions in the German movie business she could not be absent from this major event. What makes this picture so special is the way Marisa Mell is dressed. The early sixties are still under the major influence of the glamorous 50's. So people, when going to a gala, dressed to the hilt, men in a traditional tuxedo and women in furs and long expensive evening gowns. As seen on this picture Marisa Mell is no exception wearing a white fur, long earrings and having her brown hair done in a very special style that she would never do again in future years. Being a struggling actress this event must have cost her quite some money to attend but it was a much needed investment for the future of her career. Once she moved to sunny Italy a few years later this way of dressing up would become a relict of the past for Marisa Mell. She would never dress up like that ever again no matter what the occassion might be.

Thanks once again to Marisa Mell archeologist André Schneider for digging up this gem!

The Dutchess

Augen wie eine Sphinx

MARISA MELL

Diese Frau ist wie für den Film geschaffen. Selbst wenn sie überhaupt keine schauspielerisches Talent besässe, hätte sie das Zeug zum grossen Star, denn ihre blosse Erscheinung fasziniert. Ideal Ihre Masse, katzenhaft elegant ihre Bewegungen,wunderschön und voller Rätsel ihr Gesicht. Aber diese Marisa Mell, die aussieht wie ein Männermordernder Vamp, wie ein moderne Version der “Lulu” oder des “Blauen Engels”, hat ihre Sphinx-Augen auf höchst bürgerliche Lebensziele ausgerichtet: Sie is seit einiger Zeit mit einem Kaufmann verlobt, möchte bald heiraten und Kinder haben. Ihre Karriere bedeutet keineswegs alles, aber dennoch hat sie ihren Beruf nie auf die leichte Schulter genommen. Marisa, am 25 februar 1939 in Neumarkt (Steiermark) als Marlies Moitzi geboren und in Graz aufgewachsen, erlernte die hohe Kunst des Schauspiels am renommierten Wiener Reinhardt-Seminar. Susi Nicoletti und Fred Liewehr waren ihre Lehrer. Direkt im Anschluss an ihr driejähriges Schauspielstudium erhielt sie ihr erstes Filmangebot für “Im Nachtlokal zum Silbermond”. Danach gab ihr der junge Regisseur Edwin Zbonek die schöne Chance, in dem anspruchvollen Film “Am Galgen hängt die Liebe” mitzuwirken, der weit besser war als sein Titel und mehrfach preisgekrönt wurde. Die Filme “Wegen Verführung Minderjähriger”, “Der Brave Soldat Swejk”, “Lebensborn”, “Ruf der Wildgänse” und “Das Rätsel der roten Orchidee” schlossen sich an. Marisas eigentlicher Durchbruch abert erfolgte in dem umschritten Rolf-Thiele-Opus “Venusberg”. Es steht allerdings zu befürchten, dass die Rolle der morbiden und liebestollen Frau, die sie darin verkörperte, sie auf eine ganze Weile in ihrem Filmfach festlegen wird. Allerdings ist Marisa intelligent genug, sich dem Film nicht mit Haut und Haaren zu verschreiben. Als sie neben Heinz Rühmann ein kleine aber attractive Rolle im “Braven Soldaten Swejk” spielte, sagte sie zu einem Reporter:”Ich glaube nicht, das das zufällige hineinrutschen in die Filmbranche mir ein paar kleinen oder grosseren Rollen auf Grund eines zufällig fotogenen Gesichts mir die Erfüllung dessen bringen kann was ich von meinem Beruf erwarte. Ich möchte mich auf der Bühne freischwimmen.”
Marisa Mell ist unter der Anschrift c/o Agentur Jovanovich, München 22, Widenmayerstrasse 23, zu erreichen.

Lolita

On November 11th, 1960, the Austrian movie “Wegen Verführung Minderjähriger” had its world premiere starring Marisa Mell as Inge, a 16 year old school girl falling in love with her 41 year old school teacher leading them both on a path of self destruction. The movie made quite some headlines at the beginning of the sixties in Europe at the dawn of the sexual revolution.
The impossible love story is a variation on a theme that became very notorious in 1955 when the Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov wrote his novel “Lolita”, now belonging to world literature. In his novel Nabokov tells the story, via his protagonist, of a middle aged man called Humbert Humbert, who becomes obsessed and sexually involved with a 12-year-old girl named Dolores Haze, also called “Lo” or “Lolita”. The name "Lolita" has since then entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious young girl. So it is not strange in the Marisa Mell movie that she as Inge reads at a certain point the Nabokov novel “Lolita” seeing herself as a real life Lolita seducing her much older teacher. Lolita got its first film adaptation in 1962, two years after the Austrian movie of 1960 and again in 1997. Since the 50’s, the name “Lolita” is associated with very young beautiful girls on the brink of their sexual awakening in a relationship with a much older man. This makes a lot of men dream of having such a relationship and was at the origin of a new kind of genre movies in Europe and especially Italy and France called what else the “Lolita” movies. Some of the best known Lolita movies are the first “Emmanuelle” by Just Jaeckin in 1974 or “Bilitis” by David Hamilton in 1977, emulating the free spirit of the 70’s.



















Not only the movies picked up the character of Lolita, the music business did also. In 2000, at the age of 16, the French artist "Alizée" had a massive hit with “Lolita” in Central and Eastern Europe, selling more than 1,2 million copies. The name “Lolita” hit again in Europe in 2007 when the French candidate “Julien Doré” took the Alizée song and made a version of his own to compete in the French version of Idols, which he won and since then became a rising star in French speaking countries.