Richard Oswald
Director · 1880 – 1963 · Vienna, Austria
Richard Oswald was an Austrian director, producer, actor and screenwriter. He directed more than 100 feature films from 1914 to 1951. Among them the classics "Nachtgestalten" (1920), "Unheimliche Geschichten" (1919/1932), "Die Prostitution 1-2" (1919) and "Alraune" (1930). Being Jewish, Oswald was forced to flee Nazi Germany, first for occupied France and later emigrating to the United States.
Movies3
Movie5.5FantasyHorrorA demon, a reaper, and the ghost of a prostitute read gothic short stories and act them out.
Movie4.7DocumentaryA Nazi propaganda film made to promote anti-Semitism among the German people. Newly-shot footage of Jewish neighborhoods in recently-conquered Poland is combined with preexisting film clips and stills to defame the religion and advance Hitler's slurs that its adherents were plotting to undermine European civilization.
Movie5.2FantasyDramaThis movie, directed by Richard Oswald, is based on the operetta "Les contes de Hoffmann" by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), which is a genial musical potpourri from various short stories and novels by the Prussian writer, composer, painter, lawyer and judge E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). While Hoffmann's literary work was longtime considered to be merely fantastical, it was finally researched, in the last years, according to its metaphysical background. Characteristic for Hoffmann's work is his life-long fight against rationalism and for the revelation of nature morte, culminating mostly in carnival-like scenes anticipating literary techniques only described in the works of Bachtin and Bachelard.