GFQ 1-2006 - German Cinema

Franz Lustig and Wim Wenders on the set of “Land of Plenty”
(photo courtesy of Film Dienst)
Scorsese. In the meantime, however, Ballhaus has worked for many
other famous directors. And other Germans have also become
similarly well-known in the field of camera work, including Robby
Mueller, the regular colleague of Jim Jarmush and Wim Wenders,
and Karl Walter Lindenlaub, who has put many a Hollywood
film – including several of Roland Emmerich’s – into pictures.
One of the rapidest US careers ever to be experienced by a German
was that of the film composer Hans Zimmer, who began with
nothing more than his own talent. In the meantime, Zimmer has now
been nominated for an OSCAR six times, has won the award on one
occasion, and is one of the most famous and without doubt the most
successful soundtrack composers in the world. By means of his company
“Media Ventures”, he has built up a very influential music empire.
In addition to his often mainstream music, he has also composed less
typical work such as the soundtrack for Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red
Line.
The other two most successful Germans in Hollywood are the directors
Roland Emmerich and Wolfgang Petersen. Emmerich’s
career in particular has been quite astonishing. He even managed to
make the bold move to Hollywood with his early, but nonetheless
lavishly produced student films in 1989. And he has been making
spectacular films ever since then. Expensive and based on special
effects, they bring in many times their original budgets at the box
offices: Independence Day, one of the most successful films of all time,
Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow. Emmerich is regarded as a
particularly economical director. His next film, however, is being
made in England. “I need to put some distance between me and
America” is his current feeling. The film will be a historical ensemble
piece about Shakespeare – so he is also moving away from Hollywood
with respect to content.
As fate and its irony would have it, Emmerich and Petersen have
already competed against one another almost directly on more than
one occasion: for example in 2000 with The Patriot versus The Perfect
Storm. At that time, Petersen decided the duel in his favor. Four years
later, it was the other way around, when The Day After Tomorrow put
Troy into the shade. In the USA, they are both regarded as reliable box
office guarantees. At the same time, US critics also accuse them of
currying political favor with the right-wing conservative Zeitgeist. Films
like Independence Day, Air Force One or The Patriot could only have
been made by immigrants, they maintain.
german films quarterly focus on germans in hollywood
1 · 2006 8