Directed by:
Joachim HessCinematography:
Otto HanischComposer:
Jacques OffenbachCast:
Liselotte Pulver, Fred Düren, Rolf Hoppe, Gerry Wolff, Werner Senftleben, Inge Meysel, Helga Piur, Fred Delmare, Erich Breese, Dorit Gäbler, Gisela Bestehorn, Renate Schubert, Helmut Bez, Achim WichertPlots(1)
In the early 1960s, DEFA, the state-owned film studio of the German Democratic Republic, invited Horst Bonnet, a celebrated musical-theatre director and former assistant to Bertolt Brecht and Walter Felsenstein, to create an operetta film for them. Bonnet was interested, but wanted to get some experience with the medium, which led to his apprentice exercise Salon Pitzelberg (1964), an adaptation of Jacques Offenbach’s eponymous one-act work realised as part of the satirical shorts series, Das Stacheltier. It took until 1968 for DEFA and Bonnet to decide on the piece they’d give the big-screen treatment. Once again an Offenbach, but this time around the operetta, "Orphée aux enfers". During pre-production, Warsaw-pact troops invaded the ČSSR – against which Bonnet protested, landing him in prison for 13 months. DEFA, in an act of quiet solidarity, waited with this extremely prestigious project until his release. It’s difficult not to see shades of this history in the unexpectedly proto-campy, modernist madhouse that Orpheus in der Unterwelt became. The original operetta was already a satire on the Second Empire’s bourgeoisie and reigning elite. Bonnet then drew implicit yet unmistakable parallels with the GDR nomenklatura, understanding that ideologies and creeds might change but the upper echelon as a class phenomenon remains the same: vain and self-serving. A true masterpiece of political entertainment! (International Film Festival Rotterdam)
(more)Cast
Liselotte Pulver
Switzerland
Best movies:
One, Two, Three (1961)
Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull (1957)
A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958)
Fred Düren
German Empire
Best movies:
Der Aufenthalt (1983)
I Survived Certain Death (1960)
Solo Sunny (1980)
Rolf Hoppe
German Empire
Best movies:
Three Wishes for Cinderella (1973)
Mephisto (1981)
Comedian Harmonists (1997)
Gerry Wolff
German Empire
Best movies:
Das Buschgespenst (1986) (TV movie)
Naked Among Wolves (1963)
Jahrgang 21 (1957)
Werner Senftleben
German Empire
Best movies:
Die Wildente (1976)
Polizeiruf 110 (1971) (series)
First Spaceship on Venus (1959)
Inge Meysel
German Empire
Best movies:
Roses for the Prosecutor (1959)
Madame Sans-Gêne (1961)
The Devil's General (1955)
Helga Piur
German Empire
Best movies:
Polizeiruf 110 (1971) (series)
Fred Delmare
German Empire
Best movies:
Das Buschgespenst (1986) (TV movie)
I Survived Certain Death (1960)
Der Lange Ritt zur Schule (1982)
Erich Breese
German Empire
Best movies:
Das unsichtbare Visier (1973) (series)
Polizeiruf 110 (1971) (series)
Dorit Gäbler
German Empire
Best movies:
Automärchen (1983)
Moritz in the Advertising Column (1983)
Polizeiruf 110 (1971) (series)
Gisela Bestehorn
German Empire
Best movies:
Aber Doktor (1979) (TV movie)
Das unsichtbare Visier (1973) (series)
Hauptmann Florian von der Mühle (1968)
Renate Schubert
German Empire
Helmut Bez
German Empire
Achim Wichert
German Empire