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Above: on the set of 49th Parallel. I like that thousand yard stare that Walbrook has in this publicity still for 49th Parallel with Olivier, Eric Portman and Leslie Howard. He seems to be willing himself elsewhere!
This thread is a continuation of a conversation Jezebel38, kingrat and others began to have recently in the Coming Up on TCM thread about Adolf Wohlbrück aka Anton Walbrook, the very interesting Austrian-born actor best known as the choreographer Boris Lermontov in The Red Shoes. My favorite role for him is probably a tie between the Hutterite in 49th Parallel and the "good German" in The Life and Death of Col. Blimp. On the essential resource, The Powell & Pressburger Pages after "Blimp" had been released, Walbrook was confronted by Winston Churchill about the film during the interval of a play in the West End in which Walbrook was performing. Churchill, opposed to the message in the P & P film that the British could not pretend to be fighting "a gentleman's war" if they were to win against the Nazis, confronted Anton. Churchill wanted to know whether Walbrook thought the film good propaganda. Walbrook’s reply?
“No people in the world other than the English would have had the courage, in the midst of war, to tell the people such unvarnished truth”.
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Walbrook's controversial speech to his friend Clive (Roger Livesey) begins at 3:09 minutes.
Below is a monologue that Walbrook has when trying to gain admittance to the UK as a refugee. Quite moving and still relevant to today.
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There are many films I've never seen that he appeared in, such as most of his German movies, though parts of Viktor/Viktoria (1933-Reinhold Schünzel) which was the basis of the 1935 First a Girl English version and later the Blake Edwards American version, have shown up on youtube from time to time without subtitles, which makes things "interesting" but sometimes puzzling. Here are a few minutes of this movie with Anton and Renate Müller visiting a rough tavern. The scene is largely in pantomime so it's easy to understand. This movie was banned when the Nazis came to power later in '33 and Walbrook (who was half Jewish and reportedly gay) left Germany in 1936, going to the UK.
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The transformation of the woman into a man (sort of...I never really believed any of this, did you?). Walbrook is Renate Müller's mentor in being a man.
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I've also seen The Student of Prague (1935), another version of the Conrad Veidt '26 vehicle remade in Oh, Rosalinda, one of the last movies made by Powell and Pressburger (which was not deemed an artistic or commercial success).