|
GEORGE
MOORSE (1936-99): POET/FILMMAKER by Themistocles
Hoetis
|
CUCKOO
CINEMA
On the Death of the
Filmmaker George Moorse
FRITZ
GÖTTLER
For many years, he was the
director of Lindenstraße (a very popular TV
soap-opera). The number two man of the endless German series
- next to Papa Geissendörfer. He directed over a
hundred instalments; a new set was just about to be made:
one week before the commencement of the shooting. George
Moorse died on Friday in Cologne at the age of
63.
His love for the long-term
project Lindenstraße - here is where the
restlessness survived with which George Moorse hurled
himself into German cinematic activity in the sixties and
seventies. A breathlessness which occasionally seemed
unnatural - in its eagerness to expend, squander, even
waste. This led him to forget to nourish the art of
self-presentation that brought his colleagues
Schlöndorff, Herzog, Wenders profile and
fame.
George Moorse was a child of
the Beat Generation, whose like he shared in the fifties (he
was born on May 1, 1936 in New York) between poetry,
painting, and the cinematic underground. He came to Berlin
in 1966, invited by the Literary Colloquium; later on, he
proceeded to Munich. For his debut, he transformed the beat
of German literary outsiders into pictures, filmed Kleist's
Foundling in1967 and Büchner's Lenz in
1971. Between these two came Schwabing comedies: Years of
the Cuckoo in 1967 and The Griller in
1968.
Young German filmmakers were
all corrupted, George Moorse declared at the beginning of
1968:
"Corrupted by the
addiction to being understood."
Indeed, he never coaxed anyone
to understand him; above all, he wished to make films, one
piece after the other, also for TV - in the experimental
studios of the ZDF (the second channel of state-supported
German television), in various series of camera films and
small TV plays, but also with TV showings of popular culture
and theatrical presentations. Bit by bit, a limitless work
was put together, characterized by nervousness, in search of
a "zero point of creativity" ("Nullpunkt des Schaffens").
Moorse liked to stay spontaneous; his taste for
experimenting displaced the compulsion to formulate
everything to the last consequence. A work that still has
many surprise effects to offer, unexpected cuts and
confrontations. A few key words, without a chance of being
complete: He studied with George Grosz; he made his first
fictional film with Tom Stoppard: Inside Out. He
adapted Shakespeare's Tempest and Wedekind's Lulu
- the Zadek production (an historic event in
contemporary German theatre!), which he reworked for TV; a
film version of Zadek's new Hamlet was being
discussed. In between, time and time again, studies of
modern alienation., phantom films in the tradition of Val
Lewton and H P Lovecraft.
His last work, a cinematic
essay on the young Goethe on the Brocken (the summit of the
Harz mountains, where the witches' sabbath is celebrated in
Faust) will be shown by the ZDF (in Germany) at the
end of August 1999 as a contribution to the celebration of
Goethe's 250th birthday.
Obituary from
Süddeutch Zeitung (2nd August
1999)
Translated for fiba
(FilmBAnk) by: Dr. Frederic Kroll
|
