Rosel Zech in Fassbinder's Veronika Voss.
'I never felt so comfortable with any other director,' she said.
According to the German actor and writer Peter Berling, the most important thing for the director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was "to surround himself with people who needed him for their own survival … from the beginning he wanted to create a 'family', something he himself never had". One devoted member of this family was Rosel Zech, who has died of bone cancer aged 69.
Sadly, Veronika Voss (1982), in which Zech became a Fassbinder star, was the director's penultimate film, released less than four months before his death, aged 37, of a drug overdose. "I never felt so comfortable with any other director," Zech declared. "We were just at the beginning and had many plans together." One of these was a biopic of the writer and activist Rosa Luxemburg, the uncompleted script of which was found beside Fassbinder's dead body.
As Veronika Voss, Zech splendidly followed Hanna Schygulla (The Marriage of Maria Braun, 1979) and Barbara Sukowa (Lola, 1981) in the third of Fassbinder's BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) trilogy, a flamboyant, metaphorical and ironic onslaught on Germany's "economic miracle" of the 1950s. Zech portrays a drug-addicted screen idol of the previous decade, now at the end of her career, who subsists on memories of past grandeur, which includes Nazi Germany.
It took almost 10 years from the time of Zech's first meeting with Fassbinder before he gave her a leading role. They met on the set of Ulli Lommel's Tenderness of the Wolves (1973), in which Zech had a bit part, and on which Fassbinder was producer and co-editor. Much later he cast her as the respectable suburban wife of a corrupt unfaithful building contractor (Mario Adorf) in Lola. There was nothing in the role, however well played, to suggest the range of emotions Zech brought to her nuanced portrayal of Veronika Voss, and her Marlene Dietrich-like rendering in that film of Memories Are Made of This.
Zech recalled that Fassbinder made her feel "loved, cherished and protected" throughout the shoot of Veronika Voss. Harry Baer, who was in the film, claimed that "Zech performed with such selflessness that in the suicide scene, she actually took 30 pills. They were made of sugar to be sure, but the excessive dose was sickening all the same."
Rosalie Helga Lina Zech was born out of wedlock in Berlin. Her father was an inland waterway boatman and her mother was a dressmaker. She started acting in provincial theatre, gradually moving to the Schauspielhaus Bochum, in North Rhine-Westphalia, which was then run by the celebrated stage director Peter Zadek. It was Zadek who gave Zech her first leading roles on stage and television. They worked together throughout her career. "I found a great coach in Peter Zadek," said the football-mad Zech. Among her best roles in the 1970s were Hedda Gabler, Portia (The Merchant of Venice), Nina (The Seagull) and Cordelia (King Lear).
Zech had a long and busy career on German television, where she became known for her parts in several popular mini-series, such as the mother in The Oppermann Family (1983), based on the novel by Lion Feuchtwanger about a German-Jewish family at the start of Hitler's rise to power; The Officer Factory (1989), set in a military academy; and as the severe mother superior in For Heaven's Sake (2002-11), set in a convent.
As television and the stage ("Theatre is the pinnacle for me," she once said) took up most of Zech's time, her films were few and far between. Outstanding among them, however, was Percy Adlon's Salmonberries (1991), an atmospheric Alaska-set drama in which Zech played a reserved librarian from East Germany lured into a love affair with an androgynous half-Inuit orphan played by kd lang. Zech shone as a sexy but repressed woman, who slowly blossoms when loved.
• Rosalie Helga Lina Zech, actor, born 7 July 1942; died 31 August 2011
Sadly, Veronika Voss (1982), in which Zech became a Fassbinder star, was the director's penultimate film, released less than four months before his death, aged 37, of a drug overdose. "I never felt so comfortable with any other director," Zech declared. "We were just at the beginning and had many plans together." One of these was a biopic of the writer and activist Rosa Luxemburg, the uncompleted script of which was found beside Fassbinder's dead body.
As Veronika Voss, Zech splendidly followed Hanna Schygulla (The Marriage of Maria Braun, 1979) and Barbara Sukowa (Lola, 1981) in the third of Fassbinder's BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) trilogy, a flamboyant, metaphorical and ironic onslaught on Germany's "economic miracle" of the 1950s. Zech portrays a drug-addicted screen idol of the previous decade, now at the end of her career, who subsists on memories of past grandeur, which includes Nazi Germany.
It took almost 10 years from the time of Zech's first meeting with Fassbinder before he gave her a leading role. They met on the set of Ulli Lommel's Tenderness of the Wolves (1973), in which Zech had a bit part, and on which Fassbinder was producer and co-editor. Much later he cast her as the respectable suburban wife of a corrupt unfaithful building contractor (Mario Adorf) in Lola. There was nothing in the role, however well played, to suggest the range of emotions Zech brought to her nuanced portrayal of Veronika Voss, and her Marlene Dietrich-like rendering in that film of Memories Are Made of This.
Zech recalled that Fassbinder made her feel "loved, cherished and protected" throughout the shoot of Veronika Voss. Harry Baer, who was in the film, claimed that "Zech performed with such selflessness that in the suicide scene, she actually took 30 pills. They were made of sugar to be sure, but the excessive dose was sickening all the same."
Rosalie Helga Lina Zech was born out of wedlock in Berlin. Her father was an inland waterway boatman and her mother was a dressmaker. She started acting in provincial theatre, gradually moving to the Schauspielhaus Bochum, in North Rhine-Westphalia, which was then run by the celebrated stage director Peter Zadek. It was Zadek who gave Zech her first leading roles on stage and television. They worked together throughout her career. "I found a great coach in Peter Zadek," said the football-mad Zech. Among her best roles in the 1970s were Hedda Gabler, Portia (The Merchant of Venice), Nina (The Seagull) and Cordelia (King Lear).
Zech had a long and busy career on German television, where she became known for her parts in several popular mini-series, such as the mother in The Oppermann Family (1983), based on the novel by Lion Feuchtwanger about a German-Jewish family at the start of Hitler's rise to power; The Officer Factory (1989), set in a military academy; and as the severe mother superior in For Heaven's Sake (2002-11), set in a convent.
As television and the stage ("Theatre is the pinnacle for me," she once said) took up most of Zech's time, her films were few and far between. Outstanding among them, however, was Percy Adlon's Salmonberries (1991), an atmospheric Alaska-set drama in which Zech played a reserved librarian from East Germany lured into a love affair with an androgynous half-Inuit orphan played by kd lang. Zech shone as a sexy but repressed woman, who slowly blossoms when loved.
• Rosalie Helga Lina Zech, actor, born 7 July 1942; died 31 August 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment