Quando Ascona era l’ombelico del mondo a comprare i quadri di Luigi Pericle troviamo la coppia Brigitte Helm e il Dr. Kunheim che abitano a Porto Ronco vicino ad Ascona appunto :
Brigitte Helm
in Metropolis, Fritz Lang
Brigitte Helm is the wife of Dr. H. E. Kunheim, Porto Ronco
La coppia certificata storicamente
Brigitte Helm
Brigitte Helm | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Born | Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm | 17 March 1906 Berlin, Germany |
||||||||
Died | 11 June 1996 (aged 90) Ascona, Switzerland |
|||||||||
Occupation | Actress | |||||||||
Years active | 1927–1978 | |||||||||
Spouse(s) | Rudolf Weissbach | Dr. Hugo von Kuenheim (m. 1935–unknown) |
Brigitte Helm (17 March 1906 – 11 June 1996) was a German actress, best remembered for her dual role as Maria and her double, the Maschinenmensch, in Fritz Lang‘s 1927 silent film Metropolis.
Career
Born Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Helm’s first role was that of Maria in Metropolis which she began work on while only 18 years old. After Metropolis, Helm made over thirty other films, including talking pictures, before retiring in 1936. Her other appearances include The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927), Alraune (1928), L’Argent (1928), Gloria (1931), The Blue Danube (1932), L’Atlantide (1932), and Gold (1934).
Though having a 10-year contract with UFA expiring in 1935, Helm incurred the wrath of Nazi Germany for “race defilement” in marrying her second husband Dr. Hugo Kunheim, an industrialist of Jewish background.[1] Helm was also involved in several traffic accidents, and was briefly imprisoned.[2][3] According to Otto Dietrich‘s book The Hitler I Knew, Adolf Hitler himself saw that manslaughter charges against her from an automobile accident were dropped.[4]
Helm retired from films because she was “disgusted with the Nazi takeover of the film industry”.[5] In 1935, she moved to Switzerland where she later had four children with von Kunheim. In her later years, she refused to grant any interviews concerning her film career. Helm was considered for the title role in Bride of Frankensteinbefore Elsa Lanchester was given the role.[6]
Selected filmography
- Metropolis (1927), director: Fritz Lang
- At the Edge of the World, (Am Rande der Welt, 1927), director: Karl Grune
- The Love of Jeanne Ney (Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney , 1927), director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
- The Devious Path also known as Abwege (1928) director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
- L’Argent (1928), director: Marcel L’Herbier
- Alraune (1928), director: Henrik Galeen; title role
- Secrets of the Orient (Geheimnisse des Orients, 1928), director: Alexandre Volkoff
- Yacht of the Seven Sins (1928)
- Scandal in Baden-Baden (1929)
- The Wonderful Lies of Nina Petrovna (Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna, 1929), director: Hanns Schwarz
- Alraune (1930), director: Richard Oswald; title role
- The Singing City (Die singende Stadt, 1930), director Carmine Gallone
- Gloria (1931)
- In the Employ of the Secret Service (1931)
- Three on a Honeymoon (1932)
- The Countess of Monte Cristo (Die Gräfin von Monte-Christo, 1932), director: Karl Hartl
- The Mistress Of Atlantis (Die Herrin von Atlantis, 1932) director: G.W. Pabst
- Happy Days in Aranjuez (1933), director: Johannes Meyer
- The Marathon Runner (Der Läufer von Marathon, 1933), director: Ewald André Dupont
- Honeymoon Trip (1933)
- Spies at Work (1933)
- Inge and the Millions (1933)
- Gold (1934), director: Karl Hartl
- Count Woronzeff (1934), director: Arthur Robison
- An Ideal Husband (Ein idealer Gatte, 1935), director: Herbert Selpin
- Wie im Traum (1978), director: Egon Hasse
References
- Notes
- Jump up^ p.127 Huff, David Stewart Film in the Third Reich University of California Press
- Jump up^ Obituary: Brigitte Helm – Obituaries – News. The Independent (1996-06-18). Retrieved on 2013-11-02.
- Jump up^ Portrait of the actress Brigitte Helm by Thomas Staedeli Archived February 3, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.. Cyranos.ch. Retrieved on 2013-11-02.
- Jump up^ p.218 Dietrich, Otto The Hitler I Knew Methuen, 1957
- Jump up^ https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/14/arts/brigitte-helm-88-cool-star-of-fritz-lang-s-metropolis.html
- Jump up^ Curtis, pp. 243–44
- Bibliography
- Curtis, James (1998). James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters. Boston, Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-19285-8.
- Semler, Daniel (2008). Brigitte Helm: Der Vamp des deutschen Films. Munich, Belleville. ISBN 3-936298-56-4
![]() |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Brigitte Helm. |