Queer Places:
Waldfriedhof Gerresheim
Düsseldorf, Stadtkreis Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Richard
Oswald (5 November 1880 – 11 September 1963) was an Austrian director, producer,
and screenwriter.
Different from the Others is a German film
produced during the Weimar
Republic. It was first released in 1919 and stars Conrad
Veidt and Reinhold
Schünzel.[1] The
story was co-written by Richard
Oswald and Magnus
Hirschfeld,[2] who
also had a small part in the film and partially funded the production through
his Institute
for Sexual Science. The film was intended as a polemic against
the then-current laws under Germany's Paragraph
175, which made homosexuality a
criminal offense.[3] It
is believed to be the first pro-gay film
in the world.[4]
The cinematography was by Max
Fassbender, who two years previously had worked on Das
Bildnis des Dorian Gray, one of the earliest cinematic treatments of Oscar
Wilde's The
Picture of Dorian Gray. Director Richard
Oswald later became a director of more mainstream films, as did his son Gerd.
Veidt became a major film star the year after Anders was released, in The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Anders als die Andern is one of the first
sympathetic portrayals of homosexuals in cinema.[2] The
film's basic plot was used again in the 1961 UK film, Victim,[2] starring Dirk
Bogarde. Censorship laws
enacted in reaction to films like Anders als die Andern eventually restricted
viewing of this movie to doctors and medical researchers, and prints of the
film were among the many "decadent" works burned by the Nazis after
they came to power in 1933.
Richard Oswald, born in Vienna as
Richard W. Ornstein, began his career as an actor on the Viennese stage. He
made his film directorial debut at age 34 with The
Iron Cross (1914) and worked a number of times for Jules
Greenbaum. In 1916, Oswald set up his own production company in Germany,
writing and directing most of his films himself. His pre-1920 efforts include
such literary adaptations as The
Picture of Dorian Gray (1917), Peer
Gynt (1919), the once scandalous Different
from the Others (1919) and Around
the World in Eighty Days (1919). Oswald directed nearly 100 films. Some
critics have suggested that Oswald was more prolific than talented, but such
films as his horror film Unheimliche
Geschichten (1932), produced by no less than Gabriel
Pascal, would seem to refute this claim as it is viewed by some to be a
forgotten classic. He made a significant number of Operetta
films during his career.
Being Jewish, Oswald was
forced to flee Nazi
Germany, first for occupied France and
later emigrating to the United
States. His last production was The
Lovable Cheat (1949), an inexpensive but worthwhile adaptation of a Balzac story
which boasted an impressive cast including Charles
Ruggles, Alan Mowbray,
and Buster Keaton.
Oswald later returned to Germany following the end of the Second
World War and died in Düsseldorf, West
Germany in 1963.
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pares#References