Her er hvad jeg skrev om ham andetsteds - beklager sproget:
Obviously i have so much respect for Bruno Ganz that i want to write it down to get it at least part out of my system. It's not ordinarily sane to be sad about a person you never met. On the other hand, he has taken up so much of my screen time, that i have to write something - spill my mind about him, you can call it. Read on, if you want.
I never knew his name, although i had seen him in Nosferatu (the Herzog one). Then came The Boys From Brazil. What i did not know then, but know know, is when Werner Herzog and Franklin Schaffner want to hire you, then you have something. And then his name stuck somehow.
I have a gap there until Heaven Over Berlin AKA Wings Of Desire. It was the death breath of the dying Berlin scene and the darkness before dawn for Berlin in itself. Obviously, hands down, it is my favourite of his, but it did not stop there.
In 1995, Theo Angelopoulos made his masterpiece, and got snubbed at Canned - walked out really angry. He went back to Greece and thought "how can i do better? Oh, i will fucking show them - and i need Bruno Ganz for that!". They did the movie, it got the Gold Palms, and well deserved.
And then came Hitler, which is undoubtedly his best character role, but do you want to put it on repeat? Nah - instead, let me tell you about Francis Ford Coppola going out of hiatus and insisting on Bruno Ganz getting into his film based on Tinerete Fara De Tinerete - Youth Without Youth - a little forgotten masterpiece.
When i saw him in Night Train To Lisbon, i knew he wasn't doing okay .. makeup and all, he was not okay. And Kraftidioten - "In Order Of Disappearance" did not make it any better, but that one has a beautiful closing scene that makes you look away from .. how's he actually faring on?
Let me show you a man who spent three fourths of his lifetime trying to act, to entertain, to make you laugh and smile and provoke your thoughts, but always in a laid back anonymous way.
And who else gets to be Faust, Hitler, an Angel, the chief of German crime police, Jonathan Harker, a Romanian doctor and a Greek writer - in the same lifespan?
I'm not a writer, just wanted to spill my words for a person i would always have taken for a drink, but taking onto a screen, that has to be the second best.
PS: I too like The American Friend, but i only got it five-six years ago so it didn't fit into the above.
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