Monpti (1957)

Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz were one of the most beloved 'Traumpaare' (dream couples) of the German cinema of the 1950s. Their most successful film together was the romantic drama Monpti/Love from Paris (Helmut Käutner, 1957), situated in, oui!, Paris.


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam, no. 1012. Photo: Ufa. Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2268. Photo: NDF / Herzog / Vogelmann; NDF / Herzog / Brünjes. Publicity stills for Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957) with Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz.


Dutch postcard by Int. Filmpers, Amsterdam, no. 1221. Photo: Cont Press / Heinz Fremke. Caption: Special picture made at the premiere of Monpti. A film based on the novel 'Monpti' issued in 15 languages in a total edition of 2.000.000 copies. Author: Gabor von Vasary.


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam, no. 1027. Photo: Ufa. Publicity still for Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957) with Romy Schneider. Sadly, a former owner of this postcard cut the sides off.


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam (Licency holder for Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin-Tempelhof), no. 1003. Photo: Ufa. Publicity still for Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).

A cat and mouse play-like erotic relationship 

Monpti/Love from Paris (Helmut Käutner, 1957) is a cheerful, yet melancholic love story set in Paris that ends tragically.

Horst Buchholz plays a young, starving art student from Budapest who meets Anne-Claire (Romy Schneider), a pretty, French girl on a bench in the Luxembourg park in Paris.

Anne-Claire is a 17-year old seamstress, who pretends to be of rich family in order to crash society. In reality, she is poor and orphaned. She falls in love with the Hungarian artist whom she calls Monpti (short for Mon petit – My little one).

She tells him that she comes from a wealthy family and has a private chauffeur, and even takes Monpti to a family church funeral and points out all her relatives, even telling which ones are not on speaking terms.

A cat and mouse play-like erotic relationship starts. Monpti has no time for women of wealth. Sensing a challenge, Anne-Claire pursues Monpti, keeping her true identity a secret. But when he learns the truth, he hits her in the open street, takes a cab, and drives away.

What starts as a light-hearted romp unexpectedly deepens into tragedy.Anne-Claire tries to follow him but runs into a car. In the background of many scenes we have seen the couple who overrun Anne-Claire, and their shallow emotions were recurrently contrasted with the genuine love of the young couple.

Monpti sees Anne-Claire one last time, lying in the hospital. Monpti promises he will marry her, but Anne-Claire dies a little while later from her injuries. In a dream, Monpti sees her in a wedding dress.


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam, no. 1016. Photo: Ufa. Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam, no. 1019. Photo: Ufa. Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam. Photo: Ufa. Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam. Photo: Ufa. Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam, no. 1022. Photo: Ufa. Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam, no. 1024. Photo: Ufa. Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam, no. 1025. Photo: Ufa. Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).

The turning point for Romy Schneider

In 1957, Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz were Germany's biggest film stars. They had teamed up the year before in Robinson Soll nicht sterben/The Girl and the Legend (Josef von Báky, 1957) which dealt with author Daniel Defoe's childhood. Horst Buchholz had also been the hero of the German version of Julien Duvivier's Marianne de Ma Jeunesse/Marianne of My Youth (1955).


The young and fascinating Romy grew in popularity in the wake of the Sissi saga. Monpti (English-language title Love From Paris) was the first time she had left the costume- and Heimatfilms. Monpti became the turning point which explained her further evolution. It was not yet Orson Welles or Luchino Visconti but it was a step in the right direction.

Montpi was directed by Helmut Käutner and produced by Harald Braun. It was filmed in the Bavaria Filmstudios and on location in Paris. The scenes often take place in the Luxembourg gardens in the Latin Quarter. The cinematographer was Heinz Pehlke, who used different techniques to convey the mood of the film, including using a concealed camera to capture the sights and sounds of Paris.

Helmut Käutner was influenced by the French director Julien Duvivier whose Sous le ciel de Paris/Under the Sky of Paris (1951) and other films revolved around the whims of fate, with a voice over. Monpti is narrated by a wry, all-knowing Bistro customer, who functions as a sort of keyhole peeper in a cabaret-like farce. The old Bistro customer is played by director Käutner himself.

Marcin Kukuczka at IMDb: "MONPTI is a nice underrated film about simplicity, youthful joy, pure affection that all young people may get through when they only want to. It's also a wonderful insight into a change introduced in cinema. Highly recommended!"

J.J. Gittes at IMDb: "The film is completely dazzling, and as some say this is Käutner's biggest coup de main, though I'm not so sure myself, I definitely cannot disagree. Monpti left me a bit dumbfounded, gasping for air, as it's as fast as seemingly innocent while going through the motions in a nether-land somewhere between Andrzej Zulawski's Possession (1981) and Ernst Marischka's Sissi (1955). Definitely one-of-its-kind, this is a testament to the 50s as a disjointed decade stuck between the 40s and 60s, on a planet of its own. "


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 3168. Photo: Filmex N.V. Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 3175. Photo: Filmex N.V. Romy Schneider in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 3177. Photo: Filmex N.V. Romy Schneider in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 3179. Photo: Filmex N.V. Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


West-German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3674. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann / NDF / Herzog Film. Mara Lane in Monpti/Love from Paris (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


German postcard by Ufa. Photo: Vogelmann / NDF / Herzog-film. Olive Moorefield in Monpti (Helmut Käutner, 1957).


Director and actor Helmut Käutner. German postcard by Photo-Kitt, München, no. 504. Photo: Kurt Julius / Camera Film.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

Die Halbstarken (1956)

Most of the German films of the 1950s were musical comedies, sentimental dramas or Heimatfilms. An exception was the teen drama Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956) which brought dark alleys, petticoats, leather jackets, American cars, teenage sex and crime to the screen. Germany's first look on juvenile delinquency gave also a rare realistic view of life in a German city during the Wirschaftswunder era, the years of the economic miracle. The film became a cult hit all over Europe and two new stars were born, Horst Buchholz as the charismatic gang leader and Karin Baal as his 15-year old femme fatale.


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2329. Photo: Interwest / Union / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken (1956).


Austrian postcard by Lichtbild-Vertrieb Paula Weizmann, Wien, no. F 7. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956).

Hard, raw and realistic

Young author Will Tremper did not like the sentimental films that were made in Germany and Austria during the 1950s. While German film makers produced cheesy Heimatfilms and family comedies, Hollywood presented energetic teen dramas as The Wild One (Laslo Benedek, 1953) with Marlon Brando, The Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks, 1955) and Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955), featuring James Dean.

In that vein, Tremper and director Georg Tressler decided to make a film that would become a classic of German post-war cinema.

With the exception of lead actor Horst Buchholz, they chose non-professionals to play the young gang members. Remarkable is also that the jukebox doesn't play the then new and hot rock & roll, but jazz music. Composer Martin Böttcher made the Soundtrack with Mister Martins Band.

The result was a sensation. According to Hal Erickson at AllMovie, the young actors are "exuding a raw energy that many 'pros' could not emulate.

For Volker Scheunert at IMDb, Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956) is his favourite German film of the 1950s: "This one is hard, raw and realistic, omitting any false sentimentality or romanticism."


Horst Buchholz. German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden Westf., no. 2171. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956).


Karin Baal. German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf. Photo: Interwest / Union / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken (1956).


Christian Doermer. German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden-Westf., no. 140.

Dreaming of a Buick Cabriolet

Die Halbstarken - what can be translated as The Hooligans - was shot on location in West Berlin in 1955 and 1956.

Horst Buchholz plays 19-year old Freddy Borchert, who has been thrown out of his home by his overly strict father (Paul Wagner) and the charismatic but tough teenager has to survive on the streets of West-Berlin.

In an indoor swimming pool he meets his younger brother Jan (Christian Doermer). Freddy pretends to have a good job but he has risen to the head of a youth gang and leads a life of crime.

Jan knows that his parents need the huge sum of 3,000 Deutschmarks to pay their debts, and asks his brother if he could help them. Freddy says yes for his mother’s sake. He is preparing his 'biggest coup' ever: a mail car robbery that would not only allow him to help his parents but to fulfil his dream - buying a Buick Cabriolet.

But the robbery goes wrong. In order to reassert himself as the leader of the pack and to prove to his girlfriend Sissy (Karin Baal) that he is a man, Freddy breaks into the a villa of a wealthy man. Surprised by the owner, the situation escalates.


Horst Buchholz. German postcard by Franz-Josef Rüdel, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1858. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956).


Horst Buchholz. German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden Westf., no. 2204. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956).

A soda-sucking Lolita

At his blog Pause Rewind Obsess, Tim Lucas writes: "in his fourth credited screen appearance, Buchholz actually pulls off something comparable to what John Travolta achieved in Saturday Night Fever. He is positively magnetic in his dramatic scenes, which lets us believe the power he exudes over his mates, but he explodes onscreen - as they say - when he jitterbugs with his girlfriend (future krimi queen Karin Baal) at a local bar."

Karin Baal was chosen out 300 girls, who had joined a talent search for the part. Tim Lucas: "Playing a 15 year old girl, she looks and acts sophisticated beyond her years, but was in fact only 15 (sic, she was 16) in real life; never was she more photogenic or captivating than she is here. A soda-sucking Lolita who matures on our watch into a manipulative, trigger-pulling femme fatale, Baal's Sissy Bohl is an unforgettable character."

For the German release some of the voices of the young and inexperienced performers had been dubbed. Brigitte Grothum for instance dubbed for Karin Baal and Lutz Moik for Kalle Gaffkus.

In 1957 Die Halbstarken could be seen in a dubbed version, titled Teenage Wolfpack - in Britain and the US as well. The tagline was "Think of a law, they've broken it. Think of a crime, they've committed it." The American distributor billed Horst Buchholz as 'Henry Bookholt', and Karin Baal as 'Karen' Baal to help disguise the foreign origin of the film.

Director Georg Tressler was awarded the Filmband in Silber (Silver Filmband) as best new director in 1957. After Die Halbstarken, he made many films and TV productions until the 1990s. Will Tremper continued as a screenwriter and director of nonconformist films. He passed away in 1998.

While Horst Buchholz became an international Star and died in 2003, Karin Baal and Christian Doermer have made their own careers in German Film and Television.


Karin Baal and Horst Buchholz. German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2202. Photo: Interwest / Union / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken (1956).


Horst Buchholz. German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 140. Photo: Union Film / Kiehl. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpck (1956).


Karin Baal. German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2096. Photo: Interwest / Union. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken (1956).


Hansjoachim Ketzlin. German postcard by Labaphot. Photo: Interwest / Union / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken (Georg Tressler, 1956). Ketzlin played Willi. During the 1970s, he returned to the cinema as an actor in soft sex films. He also produced three films, including the mediocre thriller Das Amulett des Todes/Cold Blood (Ralf Gregan, Günter Vaessen, 1975) starring Rutger Hauer before his Hollywood breakthrough.

Sources: Volker Scheunert (IMDb), Tim Lucas (Pause Rewind Obsess), Wikipedia (German), Filmportal.de, and IMDb.

Horst Buchholz

Horst ‘Hotte’ Buchholz (1933-2003) was the James Dean of the German Cinema. He was often type casted as a rebellious teenager in the late 1950s. Horst appeared in over sixty films between 1952 and 2002 and is now best remembered as the Mexican gunfighter Chico in The Magnificent Seven (1960).


German postcard by Franz-Josef Rüdel, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1858. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956).


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden Westf., no. 2204. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956).

Biker-Gang Leader

Horst Werner Buchholz was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1933. His father was a German shoemaker, while his mother was born to Danish parents. At the end of the war he found himself in a foster home in Czechoslovakia.

Back in Berlin he landed his first stage role at 15 in a theatre version of the German children's classic Emil und die Detective (Emil and the Detectives). In the next years he established himself in the theatre and on the radio. After some dubbing work he expanded into film in 1952.

He had a supporting part in Marianne, meine Jugendliebe/Marianne My Teenage Love (Julien Duvivier, 1955) starring Marianne Hold, and he won a Best Actor award at Cannes for his lead in Himmel ohne Sterne/Sky Without Stars (Helmut Käutner, 1955).

His star making role was the biker-gang leader Freddy in Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956) with Karin Baal. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "With the exception of Buchholz, most of the young toughs in the film are nonprofessionals, exuding a raw energy that many 'pros' could not emulate. Most of Die Halbstarken was lensed on location in genuine gang-ridden urban neighborhoods."

Another major film was Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull/Confessions of Felix Krull (Kurt Hoffmann, 1957) based on the novel by Thomas Mann. The film, and its young star, received international acclaim.


French postcard by St. Anne, Marseille. Photo: Sam Lévin.


German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/92. Photo: Sam Lévin.


German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/93. Photo: Sam Lévin.


With Myriam Bru. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/94. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Gandhi's Assassin

 
Horst Buchholz began appearing in foreign films from 1959 on. He was a villain in the British thriller Tiger Bay (J. Lee Thompson, 1959).

That same year he made his Broadway debut with Cherie. In Hollywood, he followed that with the western The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960), the dramatic romance Fanny (Joshua Logan, 1961) and the Berlin-set comedy One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder, 1961), but then his star started to fade.

As an international star he played Gandhi's assassin in Nine Hours to Rama (Mark Robson, 1963), and Marco Polo in La fabuleuse aventure de Marco Polo/Marco the Magnificent (Denys de la Patelliere, 1965), but his particular moment was over.

He took the parts as they came and appeared in comedies, horror films and war dramas, in films and on television, both in the US and in Europe.


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden Westf., no. 2171. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (1956).


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2329. Photo: Interwest / Union / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (1956).


German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1941. Photo: NDF / Herzog-Film/ Ringpress - Vogelmann. Publicity still for Robinson soll nicht sterben/The Legend of Robinson Crusoe (Josef von Báky, 1957).


German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 140. Photo: Union Film / Kiehl.


Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo, no. 7468. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for Fanny (1962).

Puzzles

Since 1985, Horst Buchholz mostly appeared in European films such as I skrzypce przestaly grac/And the Violins Stopped Playing (Alexander Ramati, 1988) in which a group of gypsies flee Nazi persecutors, and the fantasy film In weiter Ferne, so nah!/Faraway, So Close! (Wim Wenders, 1993).

His last important role was in the Oscar-winning La vita è bella/Life Is Beautiful (Roberto Begnini, 1997). He played the doctor whose obsession with puzzles blinds him to his ability to help Roberto Benigni in the concentration camp.

Thanks to his gift for languages, Buchholz was able to dub himself in the foreign releases of the film.


With Romy Schneider. German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F 85. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann / NDF.


German postcard by W.S.-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F4. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann / NDF.


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.h., Minden (Westf.), no. F 21. Retail price: 25 Pf. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann.


German postcard by Ufa (Universal-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-147. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Klaus Collignon / Ufa.


German postcard by Ufa (Universal-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-31. Sent by mail in 1963. Photo: Bavaria Film.

Out of the Closet

In 2000, Horst Buchholz came out of the closet in the German magazine Bunte as having 'bisexual tendencies'.

His final feature film was the fantasy Detective Lovelorn und die Rache des Pharao/Detective Lovelorn and the revenge of the pharaoh (Thomas Frick, 2002).

In 2003, Horst Buchholz died in intensive care in Berlin of pneumonia while recovering from a broken thighbone. He was 69.

He was married to French actress Myriam Bru, with whom he had two children, Christoph and Beatrice. His son Christopher Buchholz directed the documentary Horst Buchholz... mein Papa/Horst Buchholz... My Dad (Christoph Buchholz, Sandra Hacker, 2005), which deals with his father's life and their relationship.


German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2912. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Film. Publicity still for Tiger Bay (J. Lee Thompson, 1959).


German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg. Photo: Sam Lévin.


German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg. Photo: Constantin. Publicity still for Estambul 65/That Man in Istanbul (Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi, 1965).


German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg, no. 4766. Photo: Vogelmann / Constantin. Publicity still for Cervantes (Vincent Sherman, 1967).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie). Bob Stage (IMDb), Wikipedia, Filmreference.com, AllMovie and IMDb.