1976

104’ (25 fps) / 1.66:1

VIDEO ON DEMAND

BOMBER & PAGANINI

BOMBER & PAGANINI /

DIRECTED BY:

Nikos Perakis

SCRIPT:

Nikos Perakis

The idea for the film came to me from Alexander Kluge, who besides being an intellectual, theoretician, and auteur filmmaker, was ‒ and still is ‒ a lawyer, and one of the authors of the Oberhausener Manifest (1962), considered the founding declaration of the Young German Film, and which was followed in 1966 by the "Working Community Of New German Film Producers" and in 1967 by the "Film Funding Law", which was the beginning of dozens of subsidies and grants from federal, national, municipal, television, and many other organizations.

One evening at the U.L.M. kitchen table, Alexander referred, among other legal curiosities, to an exercise for law students where a paralyzed guy sees a treasure chest in a field and directs his blind friend to the spot, where he picks it up. Who is the owner of the treasure? Of course it is the blind man, who could actually take the chest in his hands. Shortly after, in May of '73, a huge headline ap-peared in a local newspaper: "BLIND MAN AND PARALYTIC steal police car". After that I started writing this script.

PLOT

The film is literally the story of the lame leading the blind. Bomber, the drunkard boxer and former pianist, and Paganini whose nickname comes from his virtuoso skill on the violin, are two of life’s losers, hanging around with a gang of thugs and hookers in a two-bit dive called the Wunder Bar.

In the course of an unbelievably bungled burglary Bomber loses his eyesight and Paganini is crippled. Condemned to make common cause, Bomber finds himself blindly pushing Paganini’s wheelchair through the mean streets, while the lame Paganini acts as navigator. Waiting for a miracle to happen, they are surprised by a golden opportunity: It seems the gang is planning to rob an armored cash transport and Paganini has worked out a risky scheme to take advantage of their getaway.

CAST+CREW

In July 1974, just a few days after the fall of the junta and the return of Karamanlis, I came to Athens to get myself a dose of euphoria after six years in Germany. I had a first draft of the script with the two little invalid gangsters as heroes, and since I wanted to stay here I went down to the port of Piraeus to find shooting locations. The atmosphere of the harbour and the ships was ideal. I wanted to put Bomber and Paganini in a ship packed with pilgrims and to send them to the Virgin Mary’s island Tinos, where after a miracle, the blind one would see, and the paralytic would chase him through the marble quarries of Panormos. Awesome places, but the general atmosphere in the country made me feel alienated. Friends and colleagues were more interested in the civil war (1946-49) than the recent seven-year dictatorship, and I had already witnessed the dispute of the "new" versus the "old" or "Grandpa’s Cinema" in Germany, where I now returned in disappointment. Finally I found the locations, and my "in-between" associate producer von Vietinghoff set up a serious co-production in grey and declining imperial Vienna and its surroundings. Anyway, "The Third Man" is still one of my beloved movies.

Besides the main roles and some collaborators with whom I started pre-production in Munich, the actors and the crew were Viennese.

ΔΙΑΝΟΜΗ

Bomber

.Mario Adorf

Paganini

Tilo Prückner

Mona

Barbara Valentin

Mina

Margot Werner

Mama

Hannelore Schroth

Court Doctor

Fritz Weiss

Prison Guard

Willy Hufnagel

Lip-Stick

Rainer Artenfels

Hooker 4th Floor

Hannelore Elsner

Butscher

Peter Jost

Herr Schorsch

Heinz Winter

Herr Dobermann

Heinrich Schweiger

Malingerer

Otto Tausig

Syndicate Secretary

Hark Bohm

Court Balliff

Otto Amross

Policeman

Kurt Sowinetz

Taffeta Mitzi

Erzsi Szablinski

Pastor

Bruno Thost

Kamikaze

Karl Krittl

Police Officer

Michael Janisch

Piano Player

Ralph Toursel

Fat Hooker

Delia Carsten

Slim Hooker

Holde Naumann

Policeman

Gottfried Blahovski

Toilet Woman

Elisabeth Essel

Farmer

Hans Habietinek

Mover

Karl Zerda

Tramway Band

Wiener Strassenbahner Kapelle

ΣΥΝΕΡΓΑΤΕΣ

Writer+Director

Νίκος Περάκης

Co-writers

Joe Hembus,Uli Greive

Director of Photography

Dietrich Lohmann

Set Designer

Winfried Hennig

Costume Designer

Gera Graf

Executive Producer

Joachim von Vietinghoff

Production Director

Otto Boris Dworak

Music by

Nikos Mamangakis

Song Lyrics by

Nikos Perakis

Sound engineer

Rolf Scmidt Gentner, Karl Schliefelner

Edited by

Siegrum Jäger

Make-up Artist

Alfred Merheim

Props Master

Margarete Graef

Still Photographer

Chotoku Tanaka

Stage Manager

Jussuf Koschier, Elisabeth Szablinski

Assistant Director

Peter Fratscher

Script+Continuity

Babatte Raitmeyer

Assistant Cameraman

Attila Szabo

Gaffer

Erich Kristufek

Key Grip

Walter Knaus

Assistant Editor

Claudia Rienek

Set Dresser

Fritz Hollergschwandtner

Special Effects

Helmut Graef

Production Assistant

Beatrix Waizenauer

Production Secretary

Christine Fall

Production Accountant

Alfred Ebinger

Wardrobe

Waltraud Freitag

Costumers

Lambert Hofer

Lighing+Grip Equipment

Wien Film GmbH

Film Laboratory

Wien Film Grinzing

Music Recording

Wien Film GmbH

Vocals

Margot Werner

„Wunder Geschehen“

Polydor Nr.2041772

ZDF Producer

Christoph Holch

Production

Vietinghof & Perakis Filmproduktion

Co-producers

Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen
in co-operation with Sascha Film GmbH Wien

Distribution

Constantin Film

Duration 104’(25 fps)
EASTMAN Color 35 mm
Frame Aspect 1.66:1

POSTERS+LOBBY CARDS

STILLS+FRAMES

Every time we talked with Lohman about the photography of the film, we came to the conclusion that we had to shoot it in black and white. Unfortunately our co-producer ZDF would never allow that, since they had invested in colour television, nor would our distributor Constantin Film, who didn’t want any kind of an "artistic" film.

That's why I was delighted to meet Chötoku Tanaka, a Japanese art photographer who was shooting pictures of Vienna and wanted to add some movie work to his portfolio. Of course he wanted black and white photographs and we had to insist to get him to shoot some in colour for the dashboard.

I’m glad he is strong and still shooting pictures.

SCENES

In the movie's reference sound track – post-synced – the dialogues are in German. I chose some scenes with little or no dialogue because the German version is not subtitled in Greek or English. In the meantime, Claudio* showed me a program which allows one to lift the Greek subtitles from the English version and put them onto the German original, which I have done, with the risk that the translation of some English idiom may not match the corresponding German dialogue. German speakers must forgive me for this. When the English version was done, in 1976, the English dubbing was considered very good, but the original is still better, especially the "Syndicate Tango" sung by Margot Werner (1937-2012), which is in German and was uploaded by her fans on the Internet. These are the first and last lyrics I was allowed to write in German.

While searching I found a blog that recalls the movie from the BBC2 broadcast in 1977. The most interesting thing is that it extols the actors and does not even mention the screenwriter or the director; it's the same on the most recent German DVD. We mustn't scare the buyer, one thinks, with an unknown director whose name will appear anyway in the head titles. It’s only in Greece that they consider us important and invite us to talk shows and opening nights.

* Claudio Bolivar is the director of photography on my latest films.

MAKING OF

This pseudo-interview* was filmed in 2004, for the extras on the DVD -instead of a "making of". The DVD was released by Arthaus of KINOWELT when it acquired the video rights for all "Filmverlag der Autoren" films. The company – here we might call it "Film Authors Publishing" - was founded in 1971 by a dozen Filmmaker inter alia Kluge, Wenders and Fassbinder, initiated by Hark Bohm, who in the film plays the "Syndicate" lawyer. From that time it was fashionable – and necessary – for friends to contribute by playing small parts. Well-known actors avoided these roles and it would have been a pity to use untalented or bit-part performers. Filmverlag, which was founded to secure for filmmakers better distribution arrangements than they could get with the big commercially oriented companies, went through many crises, mergers and acquisitions before being acquired by KINOWELT, and then both by the French company STUDIOCANAL in 2011.

* At this time it will be understood only by those who have studied German, but when all films are uploaded, and if the site budget is not exhausted, I will try to subtitle all clips, or as many as I can find time for in this vain world.

WORK PHOTOS

It was necessary to scout locations in Vienna during the winter, guided by the production manager Otto-Boris Dvorak. I saw many locations that had been used by Carol Reed, most of which had become tourist attractions - maybe they were already then. We were still talking about a black and white film, and I shot hundreds of B/W photos which I developed and enlarged in the kitchen of my apartment on cheap A4 paper intended for some other, industrial use. Some years later I threw a couple hundred of them away; they had blackened because I hadn't left them long enough in the fixer.(Sodium hyposulphate, I think.)

The shoot was photographed by Chötoku and at the end he sent me some pictures, obviously the ones chosen by Constantin Film for the press, since I seem to be incessantly directing the same two or three actors, apparently the most popular.

More in the captions.

TEASERS+TRAILERS+TV SPOTS

VIDEO CLIPS+MUSIC THEMES

SHOOTING BOARDS+SCRIBBLES

I got a lot of help on the second draft of the script from my friend Joe. Joe Hembus was a historian of the German cinema and the American western, with many books to his credit. In endless conversations he urged me to identify the genre of film that I was going to shoot, since I had been trying to define it with drawings of characters and locations. He made me do a hypothetical casting with Karl Malden as Bomber and Dustin Hoffman as Paganini. So the name Sekulovich came into the story, which was Malden's real name, and fit the remains of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and post-war Vienna. Joe also made the first contact with Mario Adorf, whom I considered an unapproachable star with an impenetrable manager. I myself persuaded Tilo Prückner to play Paganini, first because we had worked together in little theatres in '64 and'65, secondly, we had collaborated recently on films of friends such as Hauff, Gall, Sinkel and Brustellin, and thirdly, we were neighbours living on the same floor.

Uli Greive was hired to improve the dialogues when we had to submit the script with the production folder to the "Film and Television Convention" committee. Uli created a peculiar but undefinable dialect for the German-speaking underworld. Note that most of the members of the committee were philologists; the rest were lawyers...

* Unfortunately it’s the anniversary of the April 21st military take-over that always reminds me of Joe, since we lost him in a ravine in the Alps on 21.04.1985.