Akademik

(1889-1974)

   film* director; best known for mountain films and documentaries. Born in the small Palatinate city of Frankenthal, he was an expert climber and skier before taking his doctorate in geology. After he founded the production firm Berg- und Sportfilm GmbH in Freiburg, he pro-duced Das Wunder des Schneeschuhs (The wonder of skiing), Im Kampf mit den Bergen (The struggle with the mountains), and Fuchsjagd im Engadin (Fox-hunt in the Engadine) between 1920 and 1923. Virtually documentaries in which stories of mortal conflict were secondary to the extraordinary scenery, Fanck's films offered the audience steep precipices and human drama on high-altitude glaciers in place of studio-made scenery. A common thread throughout was the individual's relationship with the forces of nature. Through his genre of moun-tain and sports film he transformed some of Germany's best cameramen into excellent skiers and mountain climbers. His central characters were all experts: the famous mountain climber Luis Trenker made his debut in Der Berg des Schicksals (The mountain of fate, 1924).

   Fanck's most industrious student, Leni Riefenstahl, went on to make the Na-zis' Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the will, 1934) and Olympia (1938). She assisted with several of his films and acted in Der heilige Berg (The holy moun-tain, 1926), Die weisse Holle von Pitz Palu (The white hell of Pitz Palü, 1929), and Der weisse Rausch (The white frenzy, 1931).

   Because Fanck monopolized his genre of filming in the 1920s and 1930s, Universal Pictures hired him in 1932-1933 to film S.O.S. Iceberg. Although he turned to documentaries during the Nazi era, he directed the German-Japanese coproduction Die Tochter des Samurai (The daughter of the samurai) in 1937. Whether the natural grandeur or implicit mysticism of his films were proto-Nazi, as suggested by Siegfried Kracauer,* remains open to debate.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler.