If you’re a movie aficionado surfing the net, you might already have stumbled across the fine blog Fuck Yeah Anton Walbrook. Fellow actor and movie historian Stephen Fry called Walbrook „one of the great forgotten actors of film“. Actually named Adolf Wohlbrück, the half Jewish scion of an Austrian dynasty of circus clowns changed his name for obvious reasons when exiled in England in the 30s; he hated the Nazis so much that he never even played one. Probably the most elegant actor of his generation, his best works were helmed by the most stylish directors of his time, among them Michael Powell, and of course Max Ophüls, for whom he played the raconteur in 1950’s La Ronde, also doing the movie’s unforgettable intro song. The voice of the girl is Simone Signoret’s.

Anton Walbrook – La Ronde

This article has 4 comments

  1. Barbara Kaufman

    One of Mr. Walbrook’s finest films [by the Director, Max Ophuls] is La Ronde [not La Rondine, as I mistakenly typed in the above comment, already printed].

  2. Barbara Kaufman

    A long-time admirer of Anton Walbrook, I believe that The Queen of Spades, The Red Shoes and La Rondine are three of his finest films [in English/French]. However, I have not yet seen Gaslight [1940]. I imagine he is “perfection” in that, as well!

    The photograph above depicts one of the most significant moments, in one of Walbrook’s most memorable and intensely dramatic characterizations — that of the Ballet Impressario — in the elegant and exquisite film [by Powell/Pressburger] — “The Red Shoes.” In the final, shattering scene of this magnificent film, he demonstrates an astonishing range — as one of the greatest actors of the Twentieth Century!

  3. Sky

    Blimp is it. And 49th Parallel, wow performance by AW.

  4. Jan Willem

    Anton Walbrook was pretty unforgettable as the good German Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff in “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” (1943) and as ballet company director Boris Lermontov (shades of Diagilev) in “The Red Shoes” (1948; recently re-released in glorious Technicolor). Both movies are from the Powell & Pressburger stables – check them out.