Oskar Werner

If the camera caught him just right Oskar Werner could be boyishly good-looking in a quiet, guarded sort of way.  His soulful eyes and gentle manner won him roles as sensitive, troubled men,  He rather intrigued me for some time because he was aloof, if not sometimes coldly remote, often morose and oh so temperamental.

Born in Vienna in 1922, he was once considered Austria's greatest contemporary actor, often mentioned in the same breath as Laurence Olivier.  His many performances as Hamlet were praised as the classic ones of the modern German-language stage.  Eventually he would appear in over 100 plays in Germany and was always considered far more a stage actor than a movie performer.

An only child, his father left the family when Oskar was six.  His mother supported the two of them by working in a hat factory.  He spent a great deal of time with his grandmother who told colorful tales of the Burgtheater, the Austrian equivalent of England's Old Vic.  It took no time at all for him to develop an interest in acting and soon he was taking part in school plays.  By age 11 he decided he would become an actor.

When he turned 18, he joined the Burgtheater (the youngest actor to do so) and was soon playing youthful romantic roles.  An uncle got him some walk-ons in a few Austrian and German war films.  The same year he joined the theater he was unhappily drafted into the German army.  As a pacifist and strong opponent of Nazism, he acted like a nutcase and the military decided he was unfit for combat so he spent a year or so peeling potatoes and cleaning latrines.

In 1944 he secretly married Elizabeth Kallina, a half-Jewish actress.  By the end of the year he deserted the military and fled with his wife and newborn daughter to the Vienna woods where they hid from everyone, particularly the Germans and Russians.

After the war was over, Werner returned to the Burgtheater and appeared in scores of plays for several years.  In 1948 he was featured more prominently in the movies than he was earlier.  All were Austrian-German enterprises and largely unseen in the States.  He also began directing for the stage.

American director Anatole Litvak spotted him in one of his movies and brought his name up to those at 20th Century Fox for a possible role in a new film.  Werner was apparently excited that it could come with a studio contract.  He appeared eager for the exposure that appearing in American films would provide.

All this moving to America talk produced an interesting result in the Werner marriage.  In 1950 Kallina divorced him rather than begin a new chapter in their lives.  One assumes alcoholism played a role in their marriage and divorce because Werner could put away copious amount of drink.  He was 32 at the time and had already been a heavy boozer for years.  And drunk he became more morose, embittered and contrary.  Luckily, perhaps for their daughter, the couple remained friends.  

Fox was impressed enough with Werner to sign him to a seven-year contract.  The studio seemed to want to ignite his English-language career as much as he did.  The film they wanted him to appear in was Decision Before Dawn (1951).  He plays a German POW who is recruited to spy for the Allies behind enemy lines.  Ironically he would return to Germany to film it.

I saw this film years after I'd seen him in his sixties' films and was surprised at how good it was, even getting an Oscar nomination for best picture.  It stars two under-rated actors, Richard Basehart and Gary Merrill, and it looked like Werner would get some deserved attention as a result of playing a crafty spy.  He got on well with his costars and things seemed promising.

On the set he met Anne Power, natural daughter of French actress Annabella and the adopted daughter of Tyrone Power, and they married in 1954.

After a couple of years, appearing in no other films and with no talk of starting one, Werner got out of his contract and left the U.S. in a huff.  He was soured on the studio's failed promise and on Hollywood in general which treated him, he spat, like a piece of meat.  It's not known what they thought of his drinking issues but they certainly knew.  And perhaps his sour attitude was a little too much in evidence.  He said he wouldn't return again except on his terms.  

He stuck to his guns and his American career never developed as a result, certainly far less than many other male European 

actors.  Overall Werner only made 19 films, not counting voice and uncredited parts.  Among those only seven were English-language.  He did ultimately return to the states to make his best film and to guest star on Columbo a year before his death. 

International fame came to Werner in 1962 with the release of the French New Wave romance-drama, Jules et Jim.  It was the darling of European critics and audiences.  The French had the good fortune of being able to share their passions and fears, independence and sexual freedom.  It was a heady time in French cinema and the world was opening up to it.

Fun with Jeanne Moreau

Set in the years surrounding WWI, it concerns an impulsive, bohemian woman (Jeanne Moreau) and her intimate relationships with two men who are friends, Jules (Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre).  Produced, written and directed by François Truffaut, the story has so many layers (her character is most interesting as she changes with each man) and the threesome angle certainly seemed to touch a nerve.

It certainly did with the crowd I palled around with in L.A.  Of course we were loaded with art houses and seeing a French language film was not a problem.  Everyone was talking about Jules and Jim... and Catherine.  I loved Moreau and Werner had a quiet, sometimes sullen intensity that got me keeping an eye out for his future projects.

In 1965, the first novel of John le Carré, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, reached the screen with Richard Burton, Claire Bloom and Werner in the leads.  Burton is a British spy sent to East Germany, supposedly to defect, but in fact to sow disinformation.  Werner is his interrogator who gets in over his head.  Burton is sensational and Werner won a Golden Globe as best supporting actor.   One senses Werner and Burton weren't good for one another.

A happy experience working with Signoret

We favorably reviewed Ship of Fools (1965) earlier.  Werner was nominated for an Oscar for his intense performance as the ship's doctor who has a drinking and heart problem.  His scenes with Simone Signoret, also Oscar-nominated. were among the film's best.

The Oscar nomination secured him a leading role in Fahrenheit 451 (1966).  His leading lady, Julie Christie, had just won the Oscar the year before.  Hopefully, Werner took a moment to realize his good fortune.  The film is a sci-thriller, a dystopian drama directed again by Truffaut, in his only English-language film.  It is, of course, based on Ray Bradbury's popular novel.

It concerns a future totalitarian government that employs a group called the firemen whose task it is to destroy all literature.  The government is against all independent thinking and has assumed the power to be able to stop and search anyone and burn their books (and their property).  Werner is a married fireman who meets a young woman who resists the government's stance.  He begins hoarding books to read.  His wife agrees more with the government.  Imagine where this could lead.  Christie, by the way, plays both women.

Somewhere in the middle of the production civility broke down between Werner and Truffaut and never improved.  Truffaut had the gall to try to direct Werner who would not accept the direction, would not do what he was told.  Truffaut asks Werner to not play it all so heroically, to tone it down and Werner reacted with an arrogance on the screen and on the set.  He even cut his hair before filming the final scene purposely to create a continuity problem.  Truffaut called it his most difficult filming.

With Julie Christie and François Truffaut

Musically scored most effectively by the supremely-talented Bernard Herrmann, the film was not universally popular (I enjoyed parts of it very much rather than the whole) but in some camps probably considered a bore.

The experience of filming Fahrenheit 451 left Werner embittered for much of the rest of his life.  It certainly increased his alcohol consumption which some in his crowd found almost impossible to contemplate.  The attendant industry knowledge put him in a bad light and his movie career never was quite the same. 

In 1966, still married to Power, he had a son with model Diane Markey, the daughter of actress Joan Bennett.  In 1968, Power would divorce him.

He had one of his most romantic roles in Interlude (1968).  He plays a suave, famous, married conductor who says too much to a reporter and is given a sabbatical from performing.  He begins a romance with the years-younger reporter but complications ensue. 

Later in the year he played a tortured young priest in The Shoes of the Fisherman (1966).  Perhaps because he rubbed elbows with such acting stalwarts as Anthony Quinn, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Vittorio De Sica, Werner kept a low profile.  The film was not the success hoped for.

It seems a bit odd to me that he would want to make a second, star-laden, shipboard movie but in 1976 he would do exactly that with Voyage of the Damned.  While very glad I saw the film, it is so harrowing and it rather clung to me for quite some time.  It's a true story taking place during 30 days in 1939 in which 937 Jewish passengers flee Hamburg for Cuba on a German ship.  While a few were allowed to disembark in Cuba, the majority sailed on to various international ports and no one would accept them.  When they realize they would be returned to Germany and death, it couldn't be more heart-breaking.

Werner commented after he saw the final print... The film makes a statement.  I'm not totally happy with the finished picture because it was cut from four hours to two-and-a-half.  Naturally, some beautiful moments were lost.  But it is an affirmation of human dignity and freedom, a worthwhile preachment against the forces that permitted Hitlerism.

Werner received good notices for playing an alcoholic professor married to Faye Dunaway.  I admit it is the cast that enticed me.  Consider Max von Sydow, James Mason, Lee Grant, Katharine Ross, Malcolm McDowell, Julie Harris, Jose Ferrer, Maria Schell, Wendy Hiller, Helmut (Cabaret) Griem, Sam Wanamaker, Jonathan Pryce, Orson Welles and Ben Gazzara.

With Faye Dunaway

It was probably not planned but Voyage of the Damned became Werner's last film.  His last stage appearance was in 1983 in Germany.  His highly emotional behavior led to a break with those in Viennese theater and he frequently feuded with film directors in Austria and other European countries.  His alcoholism was worse than ever and as a result he became a recluse.  

I wonder how it came about that he agreed to do a reading at a hotel in Marburg, Germany in October 1984.  But at the last minute he begged off saying that he wasn't feeling very well.  The following day he was found dead in his hotel room from a heart attack.  He was 61 years old. 

I also wonder if he had heard that his great enemy Truffaut had died just two days earlier at age 51.  They practically went out arm-in-arm.  I expect he wouldn't have liked that.

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Paul, it's for you