H. K. Breslauer
| Hans Karl Breslauer | |
|---|---|
| Born |
2 June 1888 Vienna, Austria |
| Died | 15 April 1965 (aged 76) Salzburg |
Hans Karl Breslauer, born Johann Karl Breslauer, later often known as H. K. Breslauer (2 June 1888 – 15 April 1965) was an early Austrian film director, also an actor, screenwriter and author.
Hans Karl Breslauer was born in Vienna, the son of the proprietor of a coffee-house, which it was intended he should take over. Instead he became an actor. His first engagements were in Cologne, Wiesbaden and Vienna.
From 1910 Breslauer was active in Berlin as a screenwriter. He produced about 40 filmscripts for the film companies Duskes, Messter, Vitascope, Mutoscope and Biograph.
From 1914 he is supposed to have had his first directing job with Sascha-Film in Vienna, but this has been called into question because of the lack of evidence about directing in these years. He can be shown however to have had an acting role in the Viennese Regent-Film production Zu spät gesühnt (1916).
Breslauer's first demonstrable directorial involvement was in 1918 in the Sascha-Film production Ihre beste Rolle.
After World War I he worked as a director for Leyka-Film and Biehl-Film. In 1919/1920 he was vicepresident of the Film Directors' Club of Austria. From 1921 Breslauer regularly directed for Mondial-Film, under whose roof he set up his own production company, H.K.B.-Film. Its first films were Lieb' mich, und die Welt ist mein (1924) and Strandgut (also 1924), which he shot in 1923 on Corsica and the French Riviera. On some productions, for example Oh, du lieber Augustin (1922), he also claimed responsibility for the screenplay.
At the end of 1923 Breslauer began filming Hugo Bettauer's successful novel, Die Stadt ohne Juden ("City Without Jews"). Today both the book and the film seem like a premonition of what was to happen in Europe from 1933, but at the time were intended as comedy and designed to have a wide popular appeal. Breslauer therefore changed a number of details during filming, as a result of which various allusions to the real world deliberately intended by Bettauer, were lost. A clearly noticeable example of this is the change in the name of the city from Vienna, as it was in the book, to Utopia in the film. The reason for most of the deviations from the original was to reduce the political controversy of the film in order to avoid problems with censorship and alienating public opinion. Nevertheless, in many showings of the film, which was not as successful as the book had been, there were disturbances from National Socialists. The film, which is still extant and available, now provides insight into the "normality" of anti-Semitism in the 1920s.
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