orig. Max Oppenheimer
born May 6, 1902, Saarbrücken, Ger.
died March 26, 1957, Hamburg, W.Ger.
German film director.
An actor, stage director, and producer in Germany and Austria (192130), he gained renown as a film director with Liebelei (1933). He left Nazi Germany and directed popular but undistinguished films in France, Russia, Italy, and The Netherlands until 1940, when he moved to the U.S. In Hollywood he directed The Exile (1947), Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), and The Reckless Moment (1949). He returned to France to make The Roundabout (1950), House of Pleasure (1952), and The Sins of Lola Montes (1955), considered his masterpiece. His son, Marcel (b. 1927), worked in France principally as a maker of documentary films, most notably The Sorrow and the Pity (1971), which examines French conduct under German occupation.