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A true icon of Austrian and international cinema, Oskar Werner was known not only for his great talent, but also for his resolute and sometimes irascible personality. Despite his untimely death, he is still remembered as one of the most interesting personalities of the past decades in the field of the seventh art.
To his friends, Teixl
A face with hard and at the same time friendly features. A character, according to most, particularly irascible. And yet, nowadays, a true icon in the history of Austrian and international cinema. It was not so long ago that people first noticed the talent of this extraordinary Viennese actor. Born on 13 November 1922 in the Viennese district of Gumpendorf, Oskar Werner came from a family of modest economic conditions – his father was an insurance agent, while his mother worked as a factory worker – and, after his parents’ divorce, he spent his childhood with his mother and grandmother. Was it, perhaps, his already troubled childhood that influenced his particular character and future drinking problems? In fact, there is no certainty about this. Yet, in spite of everything, from his earliest years, Oskar Werner’s life was always punctuated by dramatic events: from his mother’s suicide attempt, to the moment in November 1938 when he became an unwilling witness to the terrible Kristallnacht.
It was this particular event that made Werner soon become a convinced pacifist, in spite of what the National Socialist Party demanded. This, however, did not spare him the much hated military service. But who was it, in this unpleasant situation, that saved him? Theatre. Having already taken part in small theatre plays during his school years (a school career that never really came to a conclusion after he failed his final exams), Oskar Werner was engaged at the Burgtheater in Vienna at the age of only eighteen and, as a result of this new job, he could, from time to time, take leave when he had to take part in the staging of a play. This hated military service, however, lasted very little anyway, since Werner deserted in 1945 and fled to Baden – in the Vienna Woods – accompanied by Elisabeth Kallina, to whom he was married at the time, together with their little daughter Eleonore.
Theatre, therefore, was his first great love. Yet soon the world of cinema also noticed his extraordinary and precocious talent. It was not many years, in fact, before his first important role in an international production. We are talking about the film The Angel with the Trumpet, directed by Karl Hartl in 1949, as well as the film adaptation of the successful novel The Vienna Melody, written in 1946 by Ernst Lothar. Success was immediate and Oskar Werner, although he had always preferred the stage to film sets, was immediately engaged for other important feature films: from Eroica (directed by Walter Kolm-Veltée in 1949) to Decision Before Dawn by Anatole Litvak (1952), from The Last Ten Days (made in 1955 by Georg Wilhelm Pabst) to Spionage, by Franz Antel (1955), without forgetting films such as Mozart (directed by Hartl himself, in 1955) and Lola Montès(directed by Max Ophüls in 1955).
A more prolific film career than ever before, therefore, with numerous parallel collaborations always with the Burgtheater and the Theater in der Josefstadt. This all left very little free time for Werner, who, however, had always been fascinated by the quiet life in the countryside, to the point of buying a small plot of land in Triesen, Liechtenstein, where he built his beloved residence nicknamed Teixlburg. What was the reason for this singular name? Simple: Teixl – which means ‘devil’ in Viennese dialect – was the nickname he gave himself and by which he was lovingly called by his closest friends. A nickname that, in fact, well represented his true personality.
Not many years passed until directors and producers abroad also interested in him. And although a contract between him and the American producer Darryl F. Zanuck was dissolved, before any collaboration could take place, by both parties, it was soon director François Truffaut who noticed him and cast him in what was to become a true cult film of the Nouvelle Vague and world cinema: Jules and Jim, made in 1962. Between Oskar Werner and François Truffaut a strong friendship was immediately born, sadly interrupted only four years later, when the two collaborated again on Fahrenheit 451 – the film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s homonymous novel. Considered to be Truffaut’s most problematic film, the two often quarrelled during its shooting, as Werner – who played the role of Montag, in charge of burning the books – had a completely different understanding of his role from Truffaut’s, to the point of not even listening to him when he was given directions on set. From then on, relations between the two were severed forever.
Following the success of his films shot in France, Oskar Werner was finally called to Hollywood. His career in overseas productions, however, was not as lucky as initially hoped, with the exception of films such as Ship of Fools (directed in 1965 by Stanley Kramer), with which he obtained his first Oscar nomination, and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (made in 1965 by Martin Ritt), thanks to which he won the Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actor. A collaboration with Stanley Kubrick was also planned, for a film that was never made, focusing on the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. This, however, never came to fruition.
Back in Austria, Oskar Werner continued to work mainly for the theatre, also organising readings in the former concentration camp at Mauthausen. His last years, however, were not the happiest of his life: having returned to live in Vienna, with a flat in the 8th district, dramatic depressive episodes became more and more frequent, probably also accentuated by his drinking problems. The career of this great artist ended suddenly on 23 October 1984, in his hotel room, while he was on tour in Marburg, Germany. Coincidentally, Werner died just two days after his former friend, François Truffaut (who, in turn, had remembered the actor in the 1978 film The Green Room by including a photo of him along with numerous other photographs of the protagonist’s loved ones who had passed away).
A long and prolific career, then, but a too short life. Yet, in Austria as in the whole world, no one will ever forget a personality like Oskar Werner. Just as the square in Vienna named after him a few blocks away from his birthplace demonstrates.