Biographical feature about the Jewish-German film-maker Reinhold Schünzel. Schünzel was born in 1888 in Hamburg and died in Munich in 1954. He was a very versatile, brilliant and productive actor, auteur, producer and director of German films. He made his best comedies in the thirties for the UFA. Well- known titles include: Viktor und Viktoria (1933), Die englische Heirat (1934), Amphitryon (1935) and Land der Liebe (1937). The quality of these films is put on the same level by connoisseurs as those of better known colleagues such as Ernst Lubitsch en Billy Wilder. Schünzel was the last Jewish director to close the door of the UFA behind him when he left. He only fled to Hollywood in 1937. The reason he was able to carry on working for so long was that his films were loved by the highest-ranking Nazis. This reputation however followed him to Hollywood and made it difficult for him to find work in America. Blumenberg chose a special form for his evocation of the life of Schünzel. He rejected any attempt towards naturalism and reduced the life of Schünzel to thirty-three stylised scenes. In this way he made a cinematographic Kammerspiel; a series of miniatures that together evoke an era and an unknown chapter from German and American film history. Blumenberg’s choice to tell his story with the minimum of sets and props may result from budgetary necessity, but the result is rich in originality.
