Max Reinhardt ( Baden , 9 of September of 1873 – New York , 31 October of 1943 ). Director Austrian of theater and cinema , whose real name was Maximilian Goldman . The figure of Max Reinhardt represents a true myth within the world of theater due to his crucial contributions to that artistic discipline.
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 Artistic career
- 1.1 Theater projects
- 1.2 Film career
- 2 Death
- 1 Artistic career
- 2 Source
Biographical synthesis
He was one of the main animators of expressionism , with representations that helped integrate the viewer into the work. His versatility allowed him to overcome naturalism through the recovery of the classics, Wedekind’s first expressionism or symbolic realism .
He is considered one of the most prominent renovators of theatrical direction, which he conceived as a free and dynamic interpretation of the dramatic work.
As a result of Nazism , he emigrated to the United States in 1933 , and seven years later he obtained American nationality. His stage creations include The Underworld (by Máximo Gorki ), Oedipus the King (by Sophocles ), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (by William Shakespeare ), which he adapted for film in 1935 , with William Dieterle as director.
Artistic career
Reinhardt’s achievements were characterized by the stylization of the sets, the projection of the scene towards the auditorium and the use of a large number of extras in rhythmic movement, all aimed at identifying the audience with the emotional tone of the work
The promoter and dynamizer of numerous theatrical experiments that were sometimes close to the avant-garde, Max Reinhardt also had a major influence on the configuration of cinematographic expressionism and on the theoretical teaching of future directors and interpreters as emblematic as Ernst Lubitsch , Friedrich W. Murnau , William Dieterle , Emil Jannings .
From 1930 to 1941 he kept open a multipurpose drama school (theater, film and radio ) in Hollywood called The Max Reinhardt Workshop of Stage, Screen and Radio .
Theater projects
The creator of such prestigious performing institutions as the Volksbühne in Berlin or the Theater in der Joseftadt in Vienna also made the leap to practice as a director at times. Thus, in 1913 he signed the diptych formed by Die Insel der Seligen and Eine Venezianische Nacht, in which actors such as Alfred Abel or Erika de Planque took part and which, above all, was intended to be a first approach to film directing. Six years later, the adaptation of a fragment of Richard III, according to the play by William Shakespeare , starring Conrad Veidt , closed these forays behind the cameras of Max during the silent period.
Film career
His true contribution to the world of cinema came with A Midsummer Night’s Dream ( 1935 ), co-directed with his disciple William Dieterle .
After the rise to power of the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler , Max Reinhardt undertook a long exile in England , France and Italy that eventually led to the United States . Hailed as one of the most important creators in the history of the theater, Warner put in his hands the possibility of adapting the famous work of Shakespeare , which Max Reinhardt had just brought to the United States in an open-air show conceived to 25,000 viewers.
The end result was a four-and-a-half-hour feature film that, due to obvious distribution problems, had to be cut in half. That financial failure was not offset by the Oscar nomination in the category of best film, so Max Reinhardt closed his approach to the cinema with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
Death
Died on 31 October as as 1943 in New York (United States).
