Jannings, Emil

Jannings, Emil

▪ German actor
original name  Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz 
born July 23, 1884, Rorschach, Switzerland
died January 2, 1950, Strobl, near Salzburg, Austria

      internationally known German actor famous for his tragic roles in motion pictures.

      Jannings was reared in Görlitz, Austria, where he began his stage career. He joined a traveling stock company and in 1906 began acting for Max Reinhardt (Reinhardt, Max), the leading German theatrical director, in Berlin. He made his film debut in 1914 and had his first major success in the role of Louis XV in Madame Dubarry (1919), directed by Ernst Lubitsch (Lubitsch, Ernst).

      The 1924 film Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh), directed by F.W. Murnau (Murnau, F.W.), featured Janning's best-remembered role as an aging hotel doorman demoted to the position of washroom attendant; in Variete (1925; Variety) he was a married sideshow operator deceived by a female trapeze artist; and in Der blaue Engel (1930; The Blue Angel), which introduced the sultry leading lady Marlene Dietrich (Dietrich, Marlene), he was an aging professor hopelessly in love with a young but worldly-wise nightclub singer. Critics acclaimed Jannings as one of the finest actors in the world on the basis of these three motion pictures.

      Jannings was a versatile actor whose enormous emotional range was well-suited to an array of character roles. Although he occasionally lapsed into the unbridled hamminess that was characteristic of acting styles of the era, he was also capable of great subtlety and nuance, even in such grandiose roles as Mephistopheles in Faust (1926), wherein he projected inner rage and turmoil beneath a cool, cynical exterior. He excelled at portraying once-proud men forced to endure suffering or humiliation, and such roles (The Last Laugh, Variety, The Blue Angel, The Last Command) are the ones for which he is best remembered.

      In 1929, the first year of the Academy Awards, Jannings won a Best Actor award for his performances in the American-made films The Way of All Flesh (1927, now lost), in which he played an embittered family man, and The Last Command (1928), in which he was an exiled Russian general reduced to playing bit parts in war films. (During the early years of the awards, actors could be nominated for multiple performances.) With the advent of sound in American cinema, Jannings was forced because of his thick accent to abandon his career in the United States. He continued to work in German films, but his support of the Nazi regime made him a pariah elsewhere in the world. He continues to be a subject of great controversy, though many of his detractors begrudgingly admit that he was one of the finest actors of his generation.

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать курсовую

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Jannings, Emil — • Я ННИНГС (Jannings) Эмиль (26.7.1884 2.1.1950)    нем. актёр. Работал в т рах Бремена, Лейпцига и др. городов. С 1914 в берлинском Немецком т ре М. Рейнхардта. В кино с 1914 (ф. В окопе ). Известность Я. принесли костюмно историч. ф. реж. Э.… …   Кино: Энциклопедический словарь

  • Jannings, Emil — (1884 1950)    Actor. Jannings was among the most distinctive character actors the German theater ever produced, though he is remembered in the main for his outstanding body of film work. He began acting in small restaurant theaters in Bohemia… …   Historical dictionary of German Theatre

  • Jannings, Emil — born Janenz (1884 1950)    actor, director, and film* pro ducer; Weimar s premier character actor, best remembered as Professor Unrat in Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel). He was born in Rorschach am Bodensee, Switzerland; his parents moved to… …   Historical dictionary of Weimar Republik

  • Jannings, Emil — pseud. di Janenz, Theodor Friedrich Émil …   Sinonimi e Contrari. Terza edizione

  • Jannings, Emil — ► (1884 1950) Actor alemán. Adoptó un estilo muy enfático de raíz expresionista. Películas: El último (1924) y Fausto (1926), entre otras …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Jannings — Jannings, Emil …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Emil Jannings — Données clés Nom de naissance Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz Naissance 23 juillet 1884 Rorschach, Suisse Nationalité  Allemande …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Emil Jannings — Saltar a navegación, búsqueda Emil Jannings Nombre real Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz Nacimiento 23 de julio de 1884 Ror …   Wikipedia Español

  • Emil Jannings — (23. juli 1884 3. januar 1950) var den første vinder af en oscar for bedste skuespiller. Født som Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz i Schweiz. Jannings havde en lovende Hollywood karriere foran sig indtil tonefilmen kom frem. Hans tydelige tyske… …   Danske encyklopædi

  • Emil — ist ein männlicher deutscher Vorname. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Herkunft 2 Andere Sprachen 3 Umgangssprache 4 Weibliche Form …   Deutsch Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”