Mephisto 1981 film biography

Revisiting old classics, discovering hidden gems and exploring the contemporary movie scene: every month, Kafkadesk’s CineClub brings you new insights and expert film reviews of the greatest treasures of Central European cinema. This week: Mephisto (1981), by István Szabó.

Hungarian filmmaker István Szabó’s award-winning Mephisto (1981), based on Klaus Mann’s sensational novel of the same title, is a ruthless political drama told through the eyes of a talented German actor who sacrifices his moral scruples to boost his career during the cavalcade of the Nazi dictatorship.

The director’s remorse?

Widely acknowledged as one of István Szabó’s masterpieces, Mephisto is arguably one of the most international well-known and celebrated Hungarian film productions of all time.

With Mephisto, István Szabó directed the first and only Oscar-winning Hungarian film until László Nemes’s Son of Saul (2016), nearly forty years later.

The movie follows the acting career of Hendrik Höfgen (played by Klaus Maria Brandauer), a young, Bolshevik, German theatrical actor, and his self-centered, opportunistic character development to satisfy his appetite for success at the time of the rise of the German National Socialist Party.

One of the main questions surrounding the movie is what motif influenced Szabó to use Klaus Mann’s Mephisto as inspiration, and what led him to adapt a highly-charged political novel in the later years of the communist regime in Hungary.

The path of Höfgen, a puppet in the German political environment, shows some slight similarities with Szabó’s own personal history.

During the early years of the communist regime, Szabó collaborated with the Hungarian secret police as an informant, reporting on the activities of other actors or members of the film industry. In this sense, Mephisto can be understood as the director’s mea culpa and self-criticism about his actions in the shady and controversial communist era which haunted him ceaselessly.

Hungary-West Germany, 1981

Director: István Szabó

Production: Mafilm-Objektiv Studio (Budapest) in cooperation with Manfred Durniok Productions (West Berlin); Eastmancolor, 35mm; running time: 146 minutes, some sources list 144 minutes. Released 1981. Filmed in Germany.

Producer: Manfred Durniok; screenplay: István Szabó and Péter Dobai, from the novel by Klaus Mann; photography: Lajos Koltai; editor: Zsuzsa Zsa Kany; music: Zdenkó Tamássy.

Cast:Klaus Maria Brandauer (Hendrik Höfgen); Krystyna Janda (Barbara Bruckner); Ildikó Bánsági (Nicoletta von Niebuhr); Karin Boyd (Juliette Martens); Rolf Hoppe (The General); Christine Harbort (Lotte Lindenthal); Gyögy Cserhalmi (Hans Miklas); Martin Hellberg (Professor).

Award: Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

Publications

Books:

Spangenberg, Eberhard, Karriere eines Romans: Mephisto, KlausMann, und Gustav Gründgens: Ein dokumentarischer Bericht ausDeutschland und dem Exil 1925–81, Munich, 1982.

Paech, Joachim, editor, Literatur und Film: Mephisto, Frankfurt, 1984.

Articles:

Szabó, István, "Mephistopheles," in Hungarofilm Bulletin (Budapest), no. 5, 1980.

Vrdlovec, Z., in Ekran (Ljubljana), no. 2, 1981.

Fenyves, G., "Leider kann man einen Film nur einmal drehen," in Film und Fernsehen (Berlin), March 1981.

Moskowitz, G., in Variety (New York), 18 March 1981.

New York Times, 29 September 1981.

Györffy, M., in Filmkultura (Budapest), September-October 1981.

Robinson, David, "My Homeland," in Sight and Sound (London), Autumn 1981.

Auty, Martyn, in Monthly Film Bulletin (London), October 1981.

Frey, R., in Filmfaust (Frankfurt), November 1981.

Forbes, Jill, in Films and Filming (London), December 1981.

De Santi, G., and P. Maté, in Cineforum (Bergamo), December 1981.

Bader, K. L., in Filmfaust (Frankfurt), December 1981-January 1982.

Elley, Derek, in International Film Guide 1982, edited by Peter Cowie, London, 1982.

Edel

In “Mephisto,” a movie that takes place in Germany during the rise of Nazism, there are many insults, but the most wounding is simply the word “actor”! It is screamed at the film’s hero by his sponsor, a Nazi general who is in charge of cultural affairs. We stare into the actor’s face, but are unable to determine what he is thinking, or what he is feeling. Maybe that is what makes him a great actor and an ignoble human being.

The actor is played by Klaus Maria Brandauer, in a performance of electrifying power; he makes us intensely fascinated by his character while keeping us on the outside — until we discover there is no inside. He plays an actor named Hendrik Hoefgen, but even that’s not quite right; his real name is “Heinz” until he upgrades it. (“My name is not my name,” he says to himself, “because I am an actor.”) Hoefgen bitterly reveals early on that what he hates most about himself is that he is a “provincial actor.” Eventually he will become Germany’s most famous and admired actor, and the head of its State Theater, but that progression is in fact a descent into hell.

We should begin by noting how particularly “Mephisto” (1981) makes its details vivid: The look and feel of the theater, the rise of the Nazi Party from the 1920s through the 1930s, the Berlin social life that was itself a stage. The film’s Hungarian director, Istvan Szabo, demonstrates that the Nazi uniforms themselves seemed to transform some people into Nazis, just as costumes and makeup can make some actors into other people. The uniforms are deliberately fetishistic; to wear them is to subjugate yourself to the system that designed them. And we sense the sadomasochistic undertones that helped seduce a ruling class into a system of evil.

The film opens in Hamburg, where Hoefgen is involved in a small-time theater scene that is later described as communist, bourgeois

"An actor is a mask."

Mephisto is a 1981 Hungarian-West German-Austrian film directed by István Szabó. It is an adaptation of 1936 novel Mephisto by Klaus Mann.

Hendrik Höfgen (Klaus Maria Brandauer in his Star-Making Role) is an actor in Weimar Germany, specifically Hamburg. He is wholly devoted to the theater, even sometimes saying that he is "married to the theater". He's actually married to wealthy Barbara Bruckner (Krystyna Janda), while keeping a secret mistress, Juliette, his dance teacher.

Hendrik professes left-wing politics and even works in a Communist theatrical troupe, but seemingly only because artists are expected to be left-wing. What he really wants is to be a star, and his career gets a big boost when he's hired to work in Berlin, which is the big-time for German theater. He plays Mephisto in Faust and makes a big impression.

When the Nazis gain power in 1933, many of Hendrik's fellow actors either continue to oppose the regime, or emigrate. Not Hendrik, who likes his life in German theater too much. He makes friendly with the Nazi Party, and rises in the theater world, eventually becoming director of all German theater—only to realize too late that he isn't Mephisto, he's Faust, and he's made his Deal with the Devil.

This film provides examples of:

• Adaptational Heroism: Hendrik is still a hypocritical weasel who makes a Deal with the Devil, but he is not quite as overtly evil as his book counterpart. In the novel, he has his ex-girlfriend imprisoned and his rival murdered. In the film, he gets his ex-girlfriend exiled to Paris, and he tries and fails to save Otto.
  • Juliette is also a much more sympathetic character than the book's version, where she's depicted as sadistically enjoying her treatment of Hendrik and threatening to blackmail him over their relationship. In the movie she seems to have genuine feelings for Hendrik (and he for her) and tries to act as The Conscience rather than baiting and insulting him.
• Ar