Heike Makatsch: "I'm not as driven as the Knef"
Those involved in this film talk about the production as if they had been away for a long time, not in this world. "I've been in Hilde Land for six months," says screenwriter Maria von Heland. "Partly I did not sleep three nights in a row, I read her books, looked at her performances, read all the interviews, listened to songs, and in a completely reworked moment I was even scared to see my face in the bathroom mirror instead of Hilde's. Then I knew: this movie is amazing. "
Until the role, I was not a fan of the Knef.
Heike Makatsch was in the middle of this madness. When the shoot began, she had already spent a year of singing lessons behind her, like the script writer, devouring everything available, from the war to the death of Knef in 2002. Makatsch talked to eyewitnesses before she realized, "I have to own my own role Find Hilde, not pink-colored by people who loved her. " There were many pictures of Knef: The woman who disguised herself in the war as a soldier so as not to be raped by the Russians. The living economic miracle that, after the war, fought to become a celebrated actress. The first nude in a German movie that was spit on the street after her appearance in "The Sinner". The celebrated actress on New York's Broadway, her drug-withdrawal, the singing world star, her publicly processed cancer, the extroverted old lady on TV appearances. And again and again: their resurrection from ruins.
"Hilde" -Kinotrailer
In talk shows of the 50s and 60s, Makatsch studied the attitude and gestures of Knef. She heard her chants, because it was the lyrics and the feeling that Knef could put in her voice that made her understand the artist better. "Up to the role, I was not a fan of her," says Makatsch. "She was just not relevant to me." She can not even remember an interview she did with Viva in the 90s with Hildegard Knef (cause: "It's supposed to rain red roses for me" with extra spread). So no matter was the old lady with the big sunglasses. The generation Knef loved and hated was that of Makatsch's grandmother. The role of the extroverted woman with the Berlin Kodderschnauze still wanted to play Makatsch necessarily. So she transformed herself: with green contact lenses and plenty of make-up, with artificial eyelashes, which Knef liked to superimpose three times, with six wigs and the fashion of another time. Makatsch turned 14 hours a day, 50 days of shooting. "If you put it in clothes that last for a long time, when you look at a make-up in the mirror that makes you look different, it leaves a trace," says the actress. "You turn your back on what you call 'down-to-earth'."
Unfortunately, I do not see myself as the talented singer.
On the screen is just to see little things how close Makatsch approaching Knef: the posture of the lower jaw, for example, this self-assurance in the expression, or how Makatsch throws after a performance in the Berlin Philharmonic with the upper body forward when the applause in front of her. Who looks at the performances of Knef in comparison, finds no difference. Apart from the voice. What Makatsch sings sounds really good, but it's not really comparable. "Unfortunately, I do not see myself as the talented singer," she says. "I enjoy it, as a job that may come into question when I'm old and get the hang of it." She is almost amused that she was still allowed to sing all the songs in the film and that they also appear as a soundtrack.
Makatsch is not one that indicates. She makes herself smaller than she is. She does not like to sign autographs. "If someone on the way tells me that he liked my last movie, I'm glad, but right after that I do not know what to answer, it unsettles me." She sits remarkably thin during the interview in the large armchair of a hotel room in Berlin, responding in a friendly but always controlled manner. She does not knock out a bunch of phrases like Mrs. Knef, who never had to work hard in interviews - Knef always had something to say, and she even made a set from low blows that her audience could smile on. After a failed plastic surgery operation, for example, she said, "I look like a bulldozer has gone over my face."
Although Knef often suffered under the press, even left the country because of the hostility, but in itself she enjoyed feeding the press. Knef never sought the shadow, she jumped into the spotlight every day. Makatsch does that at most for a new movie, if it necessarily belongs."I decide how much I dissect," she says firmly. "I try to end my public life with my work too, I'm not as driven by Hildegard Knef as I was by this desire to be seen, it spurred her for a lifetime, but she never did I can also be away from the public for a long time without it worrying me. "
Makatsch does not talk about private. For example, unlike the Knef, where every separation filled the newspapers, Heike Makatsch does not know why his relationship with today's Bond cast member Daniel Craig ended after seven years. There was the message and since then not a single word. That's an achievement in itself. Makatsch has its limits, until today: When a magazine after birth printed unauthorized baby photos of her daughter, she complained against the publisher. "This is definitely an attitude that you have to communicate to the outside world, I expect a certain respect."
The real roller coaster happens in the heart.
A similar step has never gone to Knef. She liked to describe herself as the eternal seeker, and everyone should know if she was experiencing a low or danced in happiness. All this ups and downs in Knef's life, which quickly impress a naive observer, leave macaquy untouched. "In a life that takes place in public, the level seems to be stronger, because Hilde appeared in New York or came under lightning storms in Berlin, yet such a life for me has no more quality than that of a man in any village I do not share the idea that a person's life is more exciting because he often flies by plane, the true roller coaster is in the heart, and Hilde does not stand above others. "
Makatsch knows such ups and downs. When the 37-year-old was still living with Daniel Craig in London, she was more of a housewife and often felt identityless. In discussions, she started as a German. And Craig would have complained if she smeared a liver sausage casserole for breakfast, she told them then. It was not easy, but Makatsch renounced love to pursue her career in Germany purposefully.
Today she lives in Berlin together with Max Schröder, the keyboarder of the band Tomte, father of her two-year-old daughter Mieke Ellen. She realized only after her return from London: "Life can be that simple." That's what she says, even though she has not met any of her friends in the past six months and never left. During two heavy shots in a row ("Hilde" and the ZDF two-parter "Hope"), there was only work and child for her. "Since Mieke was happy in the meantime, well cared for and ultimately with me, I never felt like a raven mother," she says. "At first I thought, I never work anymore, I get a few children instead, but it was with this movie that I realized how happy I am to work."
"Hilde", the result of this work, sums up the years 1943 to 1966 episodically, kaleidoscopically, to the climax of Knef's artistic work. Every scene is pompously shot - you can see that the production cost about nine million euros. In order to get as close as possible to the original, producer Judy Tossell and director Kai Wessel talked to Hildegard Knef's three husbands for several hours before the shoot. Shortly before the death of Knef's first husband, the American Kurt Hirsch, the producer flew to America with a film copy, watched the pictures with him. Kurt Hirsch could not say much, but how moved he was, she could look at him. Perhaps such moments are the greatest praise for a movie: If people whose lives are shown in it, just agree.
