Michael Verhoeven | |
|---|---|
 Verhoeven in 2009 | |
| Born | (1938-07-13)13 July 1938 |
| Died | 22 April 2024(2024-04-22) (aged 85) Grünwald, Bavaria, Germany |
| Occupation(s) | Film director, screenwriter, producer |
| Years active | 1967–2024 |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Simon Verhoeven Luca Verhoeven |
| Father | Paul Verhoeven |
| Relatives | Lis Verhoeven (sister) |
Michael Alexander Verhoeven (13 July 1938 – 22 April 2024) was a German film director, screenwriter, film and television producer, and actor. He was also a qualifiedDoctor of Medicine. He was considered a political filmmaker.[1]
Michael Verhoeven stemmed from a theatre and film family, the son of the German film directorPaul Verhoeven (1901–1975) and actressDoris Kiesow (1902–1973).
Michael Verhoeven married Austrian actressSenta Berger in 1966 and stayed with her until his death in 2024 – in what is considered one of the longest-running scandal-free marriages in show business. Their sons are screenwriter/director/actorSimon Verhoeven (born 1972) and producer/actor Luca Verhoeven (born 1979). Verhoeven and Berger met at the Berlinale in 1960 and played together in front of the camera in the 1963 filmJack and Jenny, where he was supposed to kiss her in one scene. The two fell in love during filming. The couple had two sons,Simon Vincent (born 1972) and Luca Paul (born 1979). The children followed in their parents' footsteps: Simon Verhoeven is a director and screenwriter, whereas Luca Verhoeven is a producer. Both sons started out as actors and also work in the family business,Sentana Filmproduktion.
Verhoeven died after a short and serious illness in the presence of his family at his home in theMunich suburb ofGrünwald, on 22 April 2024. He was 85.[2]
Michael Verhoeven began his career as an artist as a nine-year-old in plays (including a stage adaptation ofPünktchen und Anton based on the novel byErich Kästner, a friend of the family) and subsequently appeared in films in the 1950s (such as Kästner'sThe Flying Classroom,The Juvenile Judge andThe Crammer withHeinz Rühmann). He directed his first play at theTübingen Zimmertheater in 1962.[3]
As a young adult, however, Verhoeven decided to study medicine against the wishes of his parents, who encouraged him to continue his acting career. He obtained his doctorate in 1969 with a thesis on psychiatric masking ofbrain tumors with special consideration of misleading findings and worked as a doctor for several years – including in the USA, where he had followed his wife Senta Berger, who was acting inHollywood films in the 1960s alongside stars such asCharlton Heston,Dean Martin,Frank Sinatra,Richard Widmark,John Wayne,Kirk Douglas, andYul Brynner.
Back in Munich in 1965, he founded Sentana Filmproduktion together with his wife and began directing films – starting withThe Dance of Death based onAugust Strindberg'splay of the same name.[4] He followed up with two frolicky '60s lifestyle comediesUp the Establishment with Mario Adorf andGila von Weiterhausen in the leading roles (1968),[5] andStudent of the Bedroom (1969), both produced byRob Houwer.
Verhoeven's political and experimental 1970 anti-Vietnam War filmo.k. was entered into the20th Berlin International Film Festival, but led to a scandal[6] that forced the collapse of the festival without the awarding of any prizes:[7] The then-jury presidentGeorge Stevens felt offended and threatened to remove the experimental film from the program because of its supposed anti-American invective.[8] The Berlinale regulations were subsequently reformed. Later that year,o.k. went on to win theGerman Film Award in Gold. For its 50th anniversary,MoMA conducted a special screening in 2021.[9]
In the 1970s, Verhoeven worked increasingly for television, including directing one of the first episodes of Germany's longest-runningcrime procedural seriesTatort (for which he would direct another episode 33 years later in 2005). After becoming a father for the first time in 1972, he wrote and directed the anarchic children's seriesKrempoli in 1975, in which he played a smaller part and also cast his father Paul Verhoeven and his sister Lis Verhoeven alongside Senta Berger. In 1980, he made the television filmDie Ursache withOtto Sander. In the same year, his theatrical releaseSunday Children (Sonntagskinder) got screened at theCannes Film Festival.
In 1982, he wrote, directed, and co-produced the story of the resistance fighters against the Nazi regime, the siblingsHans and Sophie Scholl, inDie weiße Rose (The White Rose). TheGerman Foreign Office banned official screenings abroad when Verhoeven refused to remove a critical commentary from the credits. The film won Silver at the German Film Awards. Based on the true story essay bookA Case of Resistance and Persecution, Passau 1933–39, byAnja Romus, he wrote and directedThe Nasty Girl (Das schreckliche Mädchen) in 1990, which won theSilver Bear for Best Director at the40th Berlinale, theBAFTA forBest Foreign Language Film, Best Foreign Language Film at the56th New York Film Critics Circle Award, and gained anOscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the63rd Academy Awards. These two films cemented his international reputation as an important political voice in European film. Along with his adaptation ofGeorge Tabori'smemoireMy Mother's Courage [de] (with music by his son Simon Verhoeven, who also played a supporting part), and the documentaryDer unbekannte Soldat (The Unknown Soldier), Verhoeven was praised for his relentless examination of theNazi regime in Germany and its aftermath.
PromotingThe Nasty Girl in the US in 1990, Verhoeven explained his interest in remembrance culture or rather the lack thereof: “The danger is that we will really forget. But we are very rich right now, and it could happen that we become not quite so rich. Many social problems will show up with the so-called reunification, and with the social problems it could be that Germans again look for enemies. This is what I am scared of. We know so little about Eastern Germany, and the eastern people also don't know too much about our history. What they were told in school is even more wrong than what we were told.”[10]
In 1992, he became a member of the jury at the42nd Berlin International Film Festival.[11]
Verhoeven became a professor at theFilmakademie Baden-Württemberg inLudwigsburg in the 1990s, passing on his knowledge to the next generation of filmmakers. For decades, Verhoeven also ran movie theaters in Berlin: theToni at Antonplatz and theOlympia Filmtheater inPrenzlauer Berg until he sold the properties in the late 2010s.
In 2000, Verhoeven wrote and directed the controversial television filmEnthüllung einer Ehe (Uncover of a Marriage), which deals with the then still-taboo subject oftransgender identity, for which he won theRobert Geisendörfer Preis, as well as twoFIPA Awards at theInternational Festival of Audiovisual Programmes[12] inBiarritz.
Together with wife Senta Berger, he was awarded theFederal Cross of Merit in 1999 and theBavarian Order of Merit in 2002. In 2005, Verhoeven received theMarion Samuel Prize, which honors particularly effective ways of combating the forgetting, suppression, and relativization of the crimes committed by Germans during the Nazi era.[citation needed] In 2006, he got an Honorary Lifetime Award from theBavarian Film Awards.[13]
In 2000, Verhoeven made his first documentary:Der Fall Liebl–Ein Bayer in Togo, about a late repatriate who was unfamiliar with German bureaucracy and was threatened with deportation. In 2006, after seven years of work, his second documentaryThe Unknown Soldier about reactions to theWehrmacht exhibition was released. In his 2008 documentaryHuman Failure (Menschliches Versagen), Verhoeven dealt with the question of the extent to which the German civil population profited from the confiscation of Jewish assets during the Nazi era. The film was screened at theJerusalem Film Festival.[14] In his 2011 documentaryThe Second Execution of Romell Broom (Die zweite Hinrichtung – Amerika und die Todesstrafe), made in collaboration withBayerischer Rundfunk, Verhoeven took on the subject of capital punishment, following the death sentence forRomell Broom, found guilty for rape and murder, and his execution on 15 September 2009 inLucasville, Ohio, which failed 18 times and was finally aborted.[15]
However, Verhoeven was no stranger to light entertainment, most notably with his 1989 – 2002 television seriesDie schnelle Gerdi (Fast Gerdi) which starred Senta Berger as a smart and self-reliant Munich cab driver.
Verhoeven was one of the founding members of theDeutsche Filmakademie (German Film Academy, an organisation akin to theAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) in 2003.
His last directorial and screenwriting work,Let's go!, was adapted in 2014 from the autobiographical novelVon Zuhause wird nichts erzählt by Laura Waco about her Jewish family in postwar Munich.
In 2015, Verhoeven co-producedWelcome to Germany (Willkommen bei den Hartmanns) written, directed, and co-producted by son Simon Verhoeven, in which Senta Berger played the leading role. This sharp-tongued comedy about the2015 refugee crisis became the most successful German cinema film of the year (3.8 million viewers) and won the German Film Award, the Bavarian Film Award for Best Production, the Audience Award, thePeace Prize of German Film, theGoldene Leinwand, and theBambi Award, among others.
Film
Television
Documentary and short films
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