Bernhard Wicki

Opening: May 19th, 2014, at 7.00 p.m. with the screening of Bernhard Wicki’s most famous film: “The bridge” from 1959 (German with English subtitles)

Open: Tuesday to Friday from 12 a.m. until 7 p.m.

Bernhard Wicki (1919-2000) was not only an outstanding film-maker and actor: in the 50s, he also created a photographic work which prepared his career as a film-maker, but at the same time carried a very personal, artistic signature. For Wicki, photography was the key- tool to express himself visually.

In 1952, on the World exhibition for photography in Luzern, Wicki discovered the photographs of the Magnum Agency, which had been founded a few years before by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and a few others. He was fascinated by the photograph of a dying soldier taken by Capa in 1936 during the Spanish civil war.” It is the straight, blunt sight of reality… It lays in the nature of photographs that you can interpret them, look deeper into them; and that if they are relatively good pictures, they do not just reflect reality but leave space for imagination”. Wicki recognized the vastness of the possibilities offered by photography:” I had always considered films and photography as secondary art, and only lived for theater and painting. Yet, this exhibition opened my eyes, and from that moment on, I knew that I had found my vocation. I left the exhibition and walked straight to the next camera-shop, bought a Rolleiflex and sent a telegraph to Lippel, the manager of the Munich National Theater at the time, to ask him for half a year of vacation, or else I would quit. He accepted and I went to Paris and started shooting photographs like a maniac.”

Wicki’s photographs were taken during journeys through Germany, France, Italy, Bosnia, Morocco, Africa, Russia Austria, and North America as well as in his home city Munich. He did not limit himself to a specific theme; he shot anything attracting him visually: people in their existential loneliness, blunt portraits, empty, alienated cities but also breathtakingly poetic landscapes. The photographs give a vivid impression of the times after the catastrophic events of the 2nd World War.

Wicki’s photographic work was soon overshadowed by his overwhelming success as a film-maker, demanded even in Hollywood. For Wicki himself, his photographs were just a phase, to which- unlike posterity- he attached little importance.

The touring exhibition of the Goethe Institut comprises 38 new black-and white prints of Bernard Wicki’s heritage. The exhibition goes along with a bilingual Brochure (German- English), with an introduction by Inka Graeve-Ingelmann, and a selection of his works.

As part of the exhibition „Bernhard Wicki – photographs“ the Goethe-Institut Cyprus also presents from 19th – 23rd May 2014 always at 7.00 pm in it’s hall a series of films, which were either directed by Wicki or where he participated as actor.

All films are either in English or in German with English subtitles. The admission is free!

Film Program

Bernhard Wicki as film director

Monday 19th May, at 7:00 p.m.
THE BRIDGE
Germany 1959
Directed by: Bernhard Wicki
Actors: Folker Bohnet, Fritz Wepper, Michael Hinz, Frank Glaubrecht, Karl Michael Balzer, Volker Lechtenbrink, Günther Hoffmann, Cordula Trantow, Wolfgang Stumpf, Günter Pfitzmann
Genre: Drama; Duration: 103 minutes
Language: German with English subtitles
Synopsis: Germany, April 1945. In a small German town a group of high school kids are conscripted into the army during the last mobilization of the war – even though American troops have already broken through the German lines. The school kids are to defend a supposedly „strategic“ bridge. Their teacher tries in vain to convince the commanding officer of its pointlessness. The school kids, however, feel euphoric, and are indeed disappointed that they are not being sent to the front. After waiting wearingly at the bridge, the enemy are finally sighted. In the ensuing battle almost all their friends are killed. With a German commando sent shortly thereafter to blow up the bridge, the survivors realize that all their fallen comrades have died wholly in vain.

Tuesday 20th May, at 7:00 p.m.
THE VISIT
Italy / USA / Germany / France 1964
Directed by: Bernhard Wicki
Actors: Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Quinn, Irina Demick
Genre: Drama; Duration: 100 min
Language: English
Synopsis: Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a multi-millionaire for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Carla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...

Wednesday 21st May, at 7:00 p.m.
THE LONGEST DAY
USA 1962
Directed by Ken Annakin (British & French exteriors), Andrew Marton (American exteriors), Bernhard Wicki (German episodes), Gerd Oswald (parachute drop), Darryl F. Zanuck
Actors: John Wayne, Robert Ryan, Richard Burton…
Genre: Action / Drama / History; Duration: 180 min
Language: English
Synopsis: war film based on the 1959 history book The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan, about D-Day, the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, during World War II.
The Longest Day is filmed in the style of a docudrama. Beginning in the days leading up to D-Day, the film concentrates on events on both sides of the channel such as the Allies waiting for the break in the poor weather and the anticipation of the Axis forces defending northern France. The film pays particular attention to the decision by General Eisenhower, supreme commander of SHAEF, to go after reviewing the initial bad weather reports as well as the divisions within the German High Command on where an invasion might happen or what response to it should be.

Thursday 22nd May, at 7:00 p.m.
MORITURI
USA 1965
Directed by: Bernhard Wicki
Actors: Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner, Janet Margolin…
Genre: War / Drama; Duration: 115 min
Language: English
Synopsis: hard-hitting World War II espionage drama. Robert Crain, a German deserter is coerced by British Intelligence officer Colonel Statter to impersonate a Gestapo officer in order to get aboard a German blockade runner that is conveying a valuable rubber cargo from the Orient. Crain's assignment is to save the rubber by finding a way to deactivate the explosives that the ship's captain would use to destroy the ship if captured by the enemy...

Bernhard Wicki as actor

Friday 23.5., 19:00
THE LAST BRIDGE
Austria / Yugoslavia 1954
Directed by: Helmut Kräutner
Actors: Maria Schell, Bernhard Wicki, Barbara Rütting...
Genre: Drama; Duration: 102 min
Language: German with English ST
Synopsis : The story of Helga, a young German doctor, who is stationed at a field hospital in the Balkan during World War II. One day, she is kidnapped by Yugoslavian partisans, and though to first try to escape but her duty as a doctor makes her stay. Then typhoid breaks out in the partisans’ camp and Helga smuggles the much-needed medicaments out of the German field hospital. The bridge wich separates the enemy camps becomes a poignant symbol for the senselessness of the war...