What drives this “Mr. Karl,” as the founder of “Menschen für Menschen” in Ethiopia is known, deep down? “I’m still an actor, only now I’m playing myself!” says the charity champion in private. The film tells the story of an extraordinary acting career and the courage to take a new direction in life.
In more than 40 films, shot between Munich, Vienna, Tokyo, Tahiti, and Hollywood, Karlheinz Böhm has himself illustrated biographical milestones and moments from his life. His performances reach remarkable comic heights—for example, when he arrives by helicopter to invite his dance partner to a waltz in A Castle in Tyrol, or when he meets his third wife, Barbara Lass, in front of the camera while filming Rififi in Tokyo. For Walt Disney, he takes on the role of Beethoven; for Vincente Minnelli, he invokes the “Riders of the Apocalypse” as a meticulous Nazi officer; and for Wolfgang Glück, he delves into the charged eroticism of Schnitzler’s Dream Story. Böhm was a typical child of Germany’s wartime and post-war generations, raised in a wealthy but difficult family. Throughout his life, his controversial father, the celebrated conductor Karl Böhm, remained the towering figure against whom his own abilities seemed destined to fall short—until one Saturday in 1981 changed his life forever.
Austrian documentary filmmaker Kurt Mayer, renowned for his sensitive portraits of people, gives voice for the first time to Böhm’s friends, colleagues, and loved ones, including his second wife, Gudula Blau, and his daughters. A passionate fighter against poverty in Africa, Böhm was, in private, a thoughtful and self-critical man whose contradictions make his story all the more moving and affecting.
A film by Kurt Mayer.
Credits
Documentary
90 min.
35 mm
Written and directed by: Kurt Mayer
Research: Peter Dollinger
Producers: Dieter Pochlatko, Arno Ortmair, Margit Chuchra
Production Managers: Rosmarie Lackner, Jörg Zaremba
Cinematography: Helmut Wimmer, Andreas Amsüss
Sound: Joe Knauer, Walter Fiklocki
Music: Veronika Hlawatsch
Editing: Britta Nahler
and others
Production year: 2007
Premiere: March 12, 2008
A co-production of EPO-Film and Film-Line
In cooperation with mm-production, MediaFonds and ZDF
Supported by ÖFI, Province of Salzburg, ORF, Cine Styria, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern
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