Austrian actor Oscar Werner was born in Vienna on November 13, 1922. His real name is Oscar Joseph Bschlissmeier. In the late thirties, he flashed several times on the screen in silent tapes (in episodic roles and as an extra). In 1941, thanks to his mentor, director and actor Lothair Muthel, eighteen-year-old Werner received an engagement in the Vienna “Burgtheater”, in which he worked for many years with short breaks. In 1941, he was drafted into the army, but Werner, who did not want to fight
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Austrian actor Oscar Werner was born in Vienna on November 13, 1922. His real name is Oscar Joseph Bschlissmeier. In the late thirties, he flashed several times on the screen in silent tapes (in episodic roles and as an extra). In 1941, thanks to his mentor, director and actor Lothair Muthel, eighteen-year-old Werner received an engagement in the Vienna “Burgtheater”, in which he worked for many years with short breaks. In 1941, he was drafted into the army, but Werner, who did not want to fight on the German side, did everything possible to avoid being sent to the front. Periodically he managed to get a vacation, and then Werner again went on stage. In 1944, he was sent to study for officer training, however, he was soon found unfit due to wounds received during an American air raid. Shortly before the end of the war, Werner deserted and had to go into hiding for several months. After the war, he played both in his homeland, in Vienna ("Burgtheater", the Vienna People's Theater, "Raimundtheater"), and in theater companies in other cities of Austria and Germany. The first real appearance of Oscar Werner on the screen took place in 1948 in the film “Angel with a trumpet” directed by Carl Hartle. After several more European films, he made his Hollywood debut in 1951, starring in Anatole Litvak’s spy thriller The Solution Before Dawn, where he played a German prisoner of war. The film was a great success both with a wide audience and critics, who appreciated the acting talent of Werner. In 1953, producer David F. Zanuck offered him a seven-year contract. However, the roles that were offered to him did not suit Werner, who considered such work unworthy of a real actor. Having terminated the Hollywood contract, he returned to Europe and settled in Trisen, in the Principality of Liechtenstein.
In the fifties, Werner established himself as the performer of leading roles in plays of the classical repertoire, and at the end of the decade formed his own theater troupe. His best stage role was Shakespeare's Hamlet. Werner's cinematic career was rather uneven - his main vocation he considered work in the theater and agreed to play only in those films that could somehow interest him. In the mid-fifties, he appeared in a small role of a student in the failed film directed by Max Ophuls “Lola Montes”, played a Nazi officer in the military drama “The Last Act” by Georg Wilhelm Pabst and Mozart in the eponymous biographical tape, which was shot by Carl Hartl, who has already repeatedly worked with him.
Recognition came to Werner in 1962 with the film of the French director François Truffaut “Jules and Jim”, in which he played one of his most famous roles in the cinema – the German Jules, a romantic, who turned out to be an extremely confused love triangle. Four years later, the actor was nominated for an Oscar for the role of Dr. Schumann in Stanley Kramer’s drama Ship of Fools (1965), but never received the award. After Martin Ritt's spy film "The Spy Who Came Back from the Cold" (1965, Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor), Werner again starred in Truffaut's fantastic utopia "Fahrenheit 451", based on the novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury (in which he played the main character - the firefighter Monteg).
In the future, the actor rarely appeared on the movie screen - after the films "Fisherman's Boots" (director Michael Anderson) and "Inteledia" (division Kevin Bellington), which were released in 1968. His last film was the drama Journey of the Damned (1976), directed by Stuart Rosenberg. Both the film and the role of Dr. Kreisler, played by Werner, were largely echoed by Kramer’s Ship of Fools. Since the early seventies, he almost never left Liechtenstein, going only on tour, which took place in German-speaking countries and the United States. Unfortunately, most of Werner’s theatrical projects in the last years of his life ended in failure – the failed production of the play “Julius Caesar” in Vienna, the failure of the premiere of the play “Prince of Homburg”, an extremely unsuccessful performance at the Wachau Festival in Krems. The actor also acted as a declamator, reading works of classics of world literature. He died in Marburg on October 23, 1984, shortly before his creative evening.
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