Raw Cut | Rudi Krausmann | Travel Diary 3/9

After walking once more through the township and looking in vain for Hans I decided to arrange an interview with the actor myself. The owner of the Pension gave me precise instructions where the house of the star was situated. It turned out to be very close. Brandauer lived just around the corner so to speak, a few hundred metres off the centre of the village. It was a stately middle sized villa, impressive but not ostentatious, with a view of the lake in the distance. I rang the bell and a middle-aged lady opened the door.
"What can I do for you?" she asked in a friendly manner.
"Can I speak to Klaus-Maria Brandauer?"
"What for?"
"For an interview for an Australian journal."
"Wait a minute."
When she returned she told me that Herr Brandauer would be ready in half an hour, as he was at present engaged in discussions for his next film. I thanked her and told her that I will be back. Walking around in the snow, I wondered what I was going to ask him. I knew really very little about the actor, except that he had played the leading part in Everyman, a morality play which was staged every year during the Salzburg festival in front of the cathedral. The play was a new version by Hugo von Hoffmansthal of the mediaeval play and produced the first time by Max Reinhardt. The artistic concept of this production was still in use today as Reinhardt was a founding member of the Salzburger Festspiele. In Sydney I had seen three motion pictures, Mephisto, Colonel Redl and Hanussen, in which Brandauer also had played the leading part. In all three films Brandauer, under a Hungarian director, had acted superbly, I thought. The characters Brandauer played were all extraordinary individuals, a famous actor-director in Mephisto, a colonel during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy who had become a traitor, in Colonel Redl and a clairvoyant who had come under disfavour under the Nazis, in Hanussen.
The heroes, or anti heroes in these films were woven well into the historical background and gave acute visual details of the period combined with intelligent dialogue and excellent timing. A fourth film, Georg Essler, subtitled Ein anderer Deutscher (A different German) in which Brandauer not only had the leading part but had also directed the film, I had recently seen in Salzburg.
It showed the unsuccessful attempt of a carpenter who tried to assassinate Hitler and was caught by the Gestapo. Brandauer as a director had used the same technique as the director who had directed him, in other words he did not break new ground and his acting was perhaps not as assured as in the other films. It seemed that he could act better an extraordinary opportunist like Hanussen than an ordinary idealist like Georg Essler, the carpenter.
Apart from that, Brandauer had also played supporting roles in films like Out of Africa with Meryl Streep and Russia House with Sean Connery under the direction of Schepski.
Images of these films I had seen flashed through my mind as I stared at a nude apple tree in the snow. What was I going to ask him? Brandauer was no doubt once obsessed with themes which related to the times the Nazis were in power as he himself had grown up in a village which was still 'a nest of Nazis'. I really did not know what to ask him but put some questions in my notebook nevertheless.
When I had returned to Brandauer's house, I was stopped by two men in winter overalls who seemed to be watching the entrance to the villa. Both of them were equipped with talk back transistors.
"What do you want?" one of them shouted.
"I came here to make an interview."
"With whom, with me?" he laughed.
"Not with you," I replied.
"Why not with me, don't you think I have anything to say?" The other man was talking to someone in the house.
"Let him pass," he said to his companion. The man who had laughed first now grinned at me.
The same middle-aged lady to whom I had talked before opened the door and led me into a living room which was sparsely furnished. The main object was a huge tiled stove in green and white and an empty Christmas tree. She asked me to sit down near the stove.
"Klaus won't be long," she said in the same friendly manner as before.
"Can I get you something?"
"It's not necessary."
"Why don't you try our local Schnapps? An Enzian."
"All right."
She left and returned quickly with a tray and a bottle of Schnapps, the same I had bought in a shop when I had left Altaussee. After she had poured me a glass she started to talk.
"Poor Klaus, the New Year has just started and he is already working so hard.
There are some people here from Los Angeles, they have been discussing a film project the whole morning. I am sorry it is taking much longer than expected. Everyone wants something from Klaus."
"Of course," I said guiltily.
"When Klaus was still a child, he was so happy swimming in the lake in summer and skiing in winter. Now he has hardly time for that. For these Americans time is always money, but not pleasure. Deep down Klaus much prefers the local people than these important people coming from all over the world. I wish he never had become so successful."
"Are you working for him?" I asked.
"For god's sake, no. I am a relative from the other side of the mountain, I only help him out sometimes when things get out of hand. Klaus' wife is also very busy making documentary films, even his son "
At this moment the star entered the room. He was dressed casually yet elegantly in dark brown jeans and a light brown silk shirt but appeared to me smaller and somehow less impressive than on the screen. Yet all that changed in his favour when he started to talk. We shook hands briefly and sat opposite each other. I apologised for taking the interview down by hand but explained that my recorder had been stolen recently.
"You don't have, by chance, a recording machine in the house? I have got a cassette with me," I said. He looked up in surprise.
"No, there is nothing of technical devices in this house, as I come here for recreation but am already invaded in my most private sphere from all sides." Klaus replied coldly. I felt he already regretted giving this interview.
"May I start?"
"Go ahead."
"In the library of the literary museum in Altaussee I was browsing through the memoirs of a well-known Viennese literary critic by the name of Friedrich Torberg. He had written: If one loves life, one becomes a poet, if one loves the theatre one becomes a critic but he forgot to mention what does one love to become an actor?"
"The same, life." The star replied quickly.
"Do you love the metamorphosis?"
"I am not a quick change artist. I love life and in Altaussee I try to live the pleasant side of it. Here I like to read and write. In particular I enjoy the independence I have here and sometimes it helps to create figures in my mind. And when I, later on, act or interpret characters on stage or in films I can only interpret what I have experienced plus my imagination. Utopia or vision is part of it. My profession as such is not the most important part in my life, it is rather a by-product."
"Altaussee has attracted many artists in the past. Some of them came here regularly, like Hugo von Hoffmansthal, others lived here like Jakob Wassermann, others made brief visits like Hermann Broch. The village has a literary museum consisting only of these recollections. Quite a few streets here bear the names of famous people. Along the lake there is a Johannes Brahms Weg and not far from it the Klaus Maria Brandauer Promenade.
Having grown up here, how did and does that affect you?"
"What can I say to the achievements and fame of others," Brandauer replied smiling. "My countryman Mozart, for instance, died with 36 years of age but left a music which is universal. I am already 45 years but I doubt that I will ever be able to catch up with him. There are other examples like Georg Büchner etc. Here in Austria one can hardly become complacent. Yet the influence and the presence of Altaussee is still first class. How the famous affected me is hard to tell. The ones I met I encountered mostly by chance. I admit that I was interested in them or even fascinated by them. Most of them only passed through, having their domicile in London, Paris, Tel Avif etc. For the local population I am Klaus and hope to remain so."
"As you work at present as actor or director for film or the theatre. Which of these activities do you prefer and in which area?"
"They are all variations of the same activity, a chance to express oneself in a playful mode in the realm of literature or entertainment."
"In the last few years you have acted the leading part in Hoffmansthal's play Everyman during the Salzburg Festival. I wonder if this morality play is still effective in our modern world?"
"As the Salzburg Festival has been started with this play in a production by Max Reinhardt its function is more traditional than contemporary. But any play is as good or bad, depending what the director or actors are doing with it. It is not our job to compare Hoffmansthal with Shakespeare."
"In the four films which I saw and in which you played the lead (Mephisto, Colonel Redl, Hanussen, Georg Essler) the hero or anti hero had become a victim of politics. In three out of four of these films, a victim of German fascism.
In our present political climate, as communism is also in decline, the artist now and in future will be confronted with capitalism and its negative component, commercialism. What are the dangers, in particular for a director or actor, under this system?"
"Today like in any other period, the important people, or the ones in power, make the decisions. As the values of the past are more or less no longer in existence, as there is no more common denominator of values in our society, success is all that matters. But sometimes -- and that is what I am interested in -- even quality can be successful. An audience, once it has become a mass audience, can no longer formulate or set a standard. The danger, of course, is that quality plays or serious literature is no longer understood. I notice this even when I go out in the village. Today the locals are much less imaginative and less eager to communicate than in the past."
"How do you react to the medium of television?"
"In itself there is nothing wrong with television or videos. The question again is who is in control of it, who is making it. I think it has more political than artistic potential. In order to utilise it positively one has to be selective. Unfortunately television has too much surface information, does not investigate enough behind the scene, so to speak. And one has to be aware of the 'seemingly' intellectual, the 'seemingly' informed ones, journalists for instance, who are not concerned with anything really, except their interests.
For me general themes do not make much sense, I only want to deal with issues directly or concretely. The truth lies in mastering the detail. In other words, freedom has to be expressed in concrete terms."
"Which ideology or political system do you favour?"
"It is of course desirable to have a democracy all over the world. But we must not be naive. Also under a democracy we have hate, envy, greed, inequalities etc. It contains as many dangers as any other system, and it certainly can be misused. Today we know that there is hardly any difference between fascism and communism. The main task is to maintain the dignity of mankind, anything which endangers it has to be fought against, in particular racism. Just imagine how much injustice is committed daily under the label of progress and democracy, yet until we find a better system we have to support it."
"I have heard that you are interested in poetry and managed to bring the Russian poet Jevtushenko to Altaussee. How did this come about?"
"Jevtushenko is a friend of mine and I am pleased that he gave a reading here. But I am also interested in other Russian poets and writers. In Russia poetry is still read by a large portion of the population, which is hardly the case in Austria. As you may know, Jevtushenko was also very active politically and somehow prepared 'glasnost' from the underground."
"As I see you sitting in your house, which is shadowed by the Loser mountain, and a view to the lake, frozen at the moment, one can hardly think of a more idyllic situation to be in. Yet it is possible that, if you permit me the play of words, you too could have 'frozen' like the lake, if you would be here all the time?"
Klaus Maria Brandauer jumped up angrily and said: "What do you mean by that? In this village there are at least a thousand people with a stronger character than I have. I think by talking to you I am wasting my time!"
"Last question. What do you think of Australia?"
"Nothing, so far, as I have not been there. But I hope to visit this continent some day. Is it really called by the indigenous population the Never Never Country ?"
 

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