Thursday, May 18, 2023

Helmut Berger obit

Visconti Icon Helmut Berger Dies: ‘The Damned’ and ‘Ludwig’ Actor Was 78

 

He was not on the list.


Helmut Berger, the Austrian actor and regular Luchino Visconti collaborator who become one of the most recognizable faces of European arthouse cinema in the 1960s, has died at the age of 78. The news was announced by the actor’s agent, who wrote that he died “peacefully but nevertheless unexpectedly” on his management company’s website.

Born in Austria in 1944, Berger moved to Rome and began pursuing an acting career after expressing disinterest in following his parents into the hospitality industry. He initially found work as an extra before meeting Visconti in 1964. The “Rocco and His Brothers” director gave Berger a small part in his 1967 film “The Witches,” an omnibus film also directed by the likes of Vittorio De Sica and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Berger and Visconti began a professional and romantic relationship that would go on to shape the European cinema landscape of the subsequent decade.

Berger’s most significant roles came in two of Visconti’s next projects: “The Damned” and “Ludwig.” In 1969’s “The Damned,” Berger played an unhinged fictional heir to a steel empire in Nazi Germany who was willing to bend his morals and do business with Hitler in order to fulfill his lusts for money and power (among other things). Three years later, “Ludwig” saw him portraying the infamous “swan king,” Ludwig II of Bavaria, in a film that explored the late monarch’s obsession with extravagance and the opulent lifestyle that eventually saw him declared insane. Both films saw him portraying powerful men with ambiguous sexualities, which helped establish Berger as one of his era’s most notable sex symbols.

He re-teamed with Visconti on the 1974 film “Conversation Piece,” which starred Burt Lancaster as an aging professor who develops a close relationship with a younger man (Berger). Many interpreted the project as an allegory for the close relationship that Visconti and Berger developed over their decade of working together. It was Visconti’s penultimate film before his 1976 death and the final project that the two men would work together on.

Berger continued to act until his retirement in 2019, memorably playing the titular role in Massimo Dallamano’s Oscar Wilde adaptation “Dorian Gray” and Frederick Keinszig in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Part III.”

Filmography

 

(director in parentheses; all films except as noted)

 

    1967: Le streghe (The Witches) (Luchino Visconti) as Young man at Hotel (segment "La Strega Bruciata Viva")

    1968: The Young Tigers [it] (Antonio Leonviola) as Dario

    1969: Sai cosa faceva Stalin alle donne? [it] (Maurizio Liverani) as Aldo

    1969: The Damned (Luchino Visconti) as Martin Von Essenbeck

    1970: Dorian Gray (Massimo Dallamano) as Dorian Gray

    1970: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Vittorio De Sica) as Alberto

    1971: Un beau monstre (Sergio Gobbi) as Alain Revent

    1971: The Bloodstained Butterfly (Duccio Tessari) as Giorgio

    1972: La colonna infame (Nelo Risi) as Arconati

    1973: Reigen [de] (Otto Schenk) as Der Junge Herr / The Youngman / Alfred

    1973: Les Voraces [fr] (Sergio Gobbi) as Kosta

    1973: Ludwig (Luchino Visconti) as Ludwig

    1973: Ash Wednesday (Larry Peerce) as Erich

    1974: Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti) as Konrad Huebel

    1975: Order to Kill (José G. Maesso) as Clyde Hart

    1975: The Romantic Englishwoman (Joseph Losey) as Thomas

    1976: Salon Kitty (Tinto Brass) as Helmut Wallenberg

    1976: Victory at Entebbe (Marvin Chomsky) as Wilfried Böse

    1977: Beast with a Gun (Sergio Grieco) as Nanni Vitali

    1977: Paperback

    1978: The Greatest Battle (Umberto Lenzi) as Lt. Kurt Zimmer

    1978: The Fifth Commandment (Duccio Tessari) as Bernhard Redder

    1979: Le rose di Danzica (Alberto Bevilacqua) as Baron Erich von Lehner

    1980: Fantômas [fr] (Claude Chabrol, Juan Luis Buñuel) (TV miniseries) as Fantômas / Nanteuil / Gurn / Valgrand

    1980: Eroina (Massimo Pirri) as Marco

    1981: Mia moglie è una strega (Castellano & Pipolo) as Asmodeo

    1982: Deadly Game [it] (Károly Makk) as Boris

    1983: Femmes (Tana Kaleya) as Helmut

    1983: Veliki Transport (V. Bulajic) as Colonel Glassendorf

    1982: Victoria! La gran aventura de un poble (Antoni Ribas) as Tinent Rodríguez Haro

    1983: Victoria! 2: El frenesì del 17 (Antoni Ribas) as Tinent Rodríguez Haro

    1983–1984: Dynasty (television series) as Peter De Vilbis

    1984: Victoria! 3: La razon y el arrebato (Antoni Ribas) as Tinent Rodríguez Haro

    1985: Code Name: Emerald (Jonathan Sanger) as Ernst Ritter

    1988: Faceless (Jess Franco) as Docteur Flamand

    1988: Act of Revenge (Salvatore Nocita)

    1989: La Puritana (Nini Grassia) as Carlo Martora-Doctor

    1990: The Godfather Part III (Francis Ford Coppola) as Frederick Keinszig

    1992: Adelaide (Lucio Gaudino) as Gilas

    1993: Boomtown (Christoph Schrewe) as Richard Schwarzer

    1993: Ludwig 1881 (F. Dubini / D. Dubini) as King Ludwig II

    1995: L'affaire Dreyfuss (Yves Boisset) as Schwartzkoppen

    1996: L'ombra del faraone (S. Ben Barka)

    1996: Teo (Cinzia TH Torrini) as Signor Mastrovito

    1997: The 120 Days of Bottrop [de] (Christoph Schlingensief) as Himself

    1997: Last Cut (Marcello Avallone)

    1999: Under the Palms (M. Kruishoop) as David

    2004: Honey Baby (Mika Kaurismäki) as Karl / Hades

    2005: Damals warst du still (R. Matsutani) as Fabian Plessen

    2009: Zapping Alien (V. Zeplichal) as Jack / 00Y / Georg II

    2009: Blutsfreundschaft (Peter Kern) as Gustav Tritzinsky

    2009: Iron Cross (Joshua Newton) as Shrager / Vogler

    2011: Mörderschwestern (Peter Kern) as Dr. Schleier

    2013: The Devil's Violinist (Bernard Rose) as Lord Burghersh

    2014: Saint Laurent (Bertrand Bonello) as Yves Saint Laurent en 1989

    2015: Helmut Berger, Actor (Andreas Horvath), documentary film as himself

    2016: Timeless (Alexander Tuschinski) as Professor Martin

    2019: Helmut Berger, meine Mutter und ich (Valesca Peters), documentary film as himself

    2019: Freedom (Albert Serra) as Baron von Walchern

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