Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Claudia on February 16, 2007 at 07:04:43

In Reply to: "Mephisto:" from the Hungarian master, posted by tinear on February 15, 2007 at 09:49:42:

The most interesting in my opinion is the triangle – relationship between the novel by Klaus Mann from 1936, its real model Gustaf Gründgens, and what Szabo made from both of them. Klaus Mann hated Gustaf Gründgens, not only from political, but from personal reasons too: (mostly homosexual) Gründgens was married for some time with Klaus’ (mostly lesbian) sister Erika, and she felt violated very much by him. Nevertheless, Klaus Mann always was standing on that he had descriped a „typus“ with Hendrik Höfgen, not a single personality.

Gründgens reamained a famous actor in West-Germany after 1945, people loved him. The novel was not published in West-Germany until 1981, in East-Germany it was published in 1956.

Szabo had the distance: to Gustaf Gründgens, who died 1963, to the novel, and to german history, that he knew from its bitter end.

As for me, I read the novel with a kind of discomfort, while I estimated the film very much.