Adorf is 95: films with Mario Adorf, which you have to have seen

Mario Adorf already had many roles in his life: small ganove, wildwest villain, show-off, murderer, commissioner, celebrity host, Holocaust-survivor, Patriarch, to name just a few examples. In the theater it was as much as possible as in the cinema.

He is one of the great German film and television stars in post -war history – for example in “Death wears black leather” (1974), “The lost honor of the Katharina Blum” (1975), “Die Blechtrommel” (1979) “Lola” (1981) and “The Schattenmann” (1996).

For his 95th birthday on Monday (September 8th) a selection of important and unusual roles of Adorf:

“At night when the devil came” (1957)

Robert Siodmak’s drama “at night when the devil came” gave the 26 -year -old Adorf the breakthrough as an actor. The film is about a series of murder of women under National Socialism. Investigators Bruno Lüdke (Adorf) make up as perpetrators. The fact that this has a mental disability fits into the inhumane world view of the Nazis and they plan a show process. But then you have doubts: Don’t you give your own failure if the man could kill for years without being caught?

In retrospect, Adorf regretted the role, but when shooting, it was assumed that the film was based on true facts. It later came out that Lüdke was innocent and had been staged by the Nazis as a women’s murdering monster. “I gave a person who really lived a monstrous story that is not true at all,” said Adorf 2020 of “Zeit”. Rather, Lüdke was a victim. “The SS was the devil, not Bruno!”

“Winnetou 1. Part” (1963)

The 1963 film was the second Karl May film after “The Treasure of the Silver Lake” and like the first a huge success. Mario Adorf plays in the film Santer, the murderer of Nscho-Schi (sister of Winnetou).

In a dpa interview, he once remembered: “Again and again I meet people who say:” I haven’t forgiven you that you shot the Nscho-Schi for many years. I hated you for it. “This is a sentence that I heard tens of thousands of times.” Adorf and actress Marie Versini never met during the filming: “I have targeted the air somewhere,” says Adorf. The setting in which Nscho-Schi is fatally sinked to the ground was shot on a completely different day without Adorf.

Mario Adorf participated in many major productions, but there are also off-movies with him. “Deadlock” (1970) by director Roland Klick is such a completely wrongly forgotten jewel, a German forerunner to the films of Quentin Tarantino.

It is about an abandoned mining colony in the middle of nowhere and a suitcase full of banknotes. Adorf plays mining supervisor Charles Dump. Dump sees the money the chance to finally leave the wasteland. It becomes unscrupulous, but others are even more unscrupulous. In one of the strongest scenes, Adorf panically runs through the deserted desert, chased by a truck. Only seven people can be seen in the dark, brutal neo-western, five will not survive the bloody cat-and-mouse game.

“The mafia boss – they kill like jackals” (1972)

Adorf demonstrated his love for action roles in a number of Italian crime novels. His appearance is legendary in the gangster film “The Mafia boss – they kill like Schakale” (“La Mala Ordina”): Criminals have run over and killed the family of the small ganoven Luca (Adorf). On a breakneck ride through the middle of the Road traffic, Adorf clings to the cooler of a van. Again and again he pounds his head against the windshield until it tears. Then he boxes the driver from the seat.

Nothing is doufed on this incredible scene. It was helpful for the actor in these international filming his multilingualism. In addition to German, English and French, he masters Italian. His love for his father’s home was so great that he lived in Rome for a few years.

Star director Billy Wilder got Adorf for a supporting role in the melodrama “Fedora” from 1978 in front of the camera that puts the Hollywood dream factory on the grain. Adorf plays the manager of a hotel on a Greek island in which a film diva stays.

A few years earlier, Wilder wanted to hire the actor for the comedy “One, two, three”. But Adorf waved: Wilder did not offer him the expected part at the time. “I rejected a few roles because I was a bit arrogant or stupid,” he admitted later.

“Kir Royal” – Episode 1: “Whoever comes in is in it” (1986)

“I shit something like that with my money that you don’t have a quiet minute” – the sentence from Helmut Dietl’s cult series “Kir Royal” is legendary. Adorf speaks to him as a stinkericher Rheinischer glue manufacturer Heinrich Haffenloher, who absolutely wants to appear in the gossip column of the reporter Baby Schimmerlos (Franz Xaver Kroetz), it costs what it wanted. Because: “Whoever comes in is in”, in the Munich Schickeria.

Adorf is only there for one episode. But it is big cinema how he plays this large-scale, valid macho man. In the scene by the pool, he only wears a bathrobe, while shimmerless, on the other hand, an elegant suit. Nevertheless, Haffenloher feels like the largest and is firmly convinced that he can buy everything. When his attempts at intimidation do not fruit, he tries it with Rheinischer Joviality that gives Adorf a slightly threatening undertone: “I just want to be your friend, come on! And now say Heini to me!”

“Rossini – or the murderous question of who slept with whom” (1997)

With the social satire “Rossini – or the murderous question of who slept with whom” Adorf returned to Munich Schickeria in 1997, as a host of a noble Italian. No matter whether celebrity or wannabe – if you stick to yourself, you will appear here.

For his film about Munich’s Bussi-Bussi-Gesellschaft, Helmut Dietl Dietlor Hannelore Hoger, Joachim Król, Götz George, Jan Josef Liefers, Armin Rohde, Heiner Lauterbach and Gudrun Landgrebe won the camera. Veronica Ferres mimics the actress Schneewittchen, who dreams of a film career and who is at your feet. Celebrity host Rossini alias Adorf also raves: “She is young, she is tall, she is blonde, she is beautiful, you want five arms!” In the end, not only his tie, which comes too close to a candle.