October 2008
5 posts
Anton's mother
Thanks to a tip from its author (thanks Christian) a great biog at filmportal.de, when put through an internet translation mangle (my German is still schlechte) seems to confirm an interesting bit of information about AW.
Many websites describe him as ‘half-Jewish’ which as I understood it implied that his father was Jewish, his mother not - although the concept of matrilineal descent...
Guilt!
Guilt is a big part of my Anton appreciation - it’s rather strange. I feel like a bit of a fraud half the time. I am a very neglectful webmaster - not updating the site for years; I haven’t even seen all the AW films that are available at reasonable prices (I’ve got La Ronde and Queen of Spades waiting to be watched right now); and I couldn’t hand-on-heart say that AW was absolutely my number-one...
Some scattergun connections made during lunchtime
Here’s an interview with AW that’s long been on the great Powell and Pressburger site. Here’s a Wikipedia entry about Grock, the clown who was “a pupil” of Walbrook’s father (also Adolph), according to AW in the interview. So the clown fraternity will need to be investigated…and I’m not keen on clowns.
And in this interview he mentions “Ida...
“With little doubt the first feature film of any kind shown on high-definition...”
– http://www.bvws.org.uk/405alive/faq/prog_oldest_prewar.html
Gaslight screening at the Barbican cinema
Turning up the wick on the Gaslight man - Times Online
I went to see Dickinson’s Gaslight last night, and it was enourmous fun. The film is finely - some would say over - wrought melodrama, with Anton Walbrook pinching his lips, arching his eyebrows and curling his vowels to great effect. His villainy is so fox-like and grand it could be seen as over-the-top - his face goes from boiling...