Film and Broadway star, international best-selling author, acclaimed chansonnière – “the greatest singer without a voice,” like Ella Fitzgerald she said: Hildegard Knef was an icon and a diva long before these terms became so inflationary. Her triumphs were just as spectacular as her downfalls: a stand-up woman who didn’t let herself be defeated, with an irrepressible will to succeed, equipped with exuberant talent. Her weapons against the blows of fate were her sparkling mind and her Berlin snout.
She became suddenly famous with her role in the first German post-war film “The Murderers Are Among Us”, was ignored a little later in Hollywood and celebrated on Broadway a few years later in Cole Porter’s musical “Silk Stockings”. In the 1970s she stormed the bestseller lists with her brilliant autobiography “The Gift Horse” and the hit parades with her records.
In her most famous song “It should rain red roses for me” there is a line “I want, want everything or nothing”, which is emblematic of her life and which the director chose Luzia Schmid borrowed as the title for her documentary.
Hildegard Knef’s only daughter has her say in detail Christina „Ink“ Palastanga. At 16 she said quietly: I want to. But at 14 she was running for her life. Fire on the roof, literally: bombs are raining down on Berlin. Hilde falls, has blood and dirt in her mouth, but she gets up and keeps running. Through her war experiences, she learned to survive early on, says her daughter Christina Palastanga.
At drama school, Knef is the only one who doesn’t want to please the teacher – the unpretentious one whose vanity is to want to be the best. Immediately after the war, it rose from the rubble of the city like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes. She plays the main role in the first German post-war film “The Murderers Are Among Us” and is instantly famous.
The call to Hollywood follows. She is obsessed with the idea of making it there too. But in the dream factory it is put on ice. There are no roles for a young woman from the country of the perpetrators. But Willi Forst has one for her: “The Sinner” is the name of the film in which she can be seen naked from a greater distance for six seconds. The people’s soul is boiling over with outrage, this time cinemas are burning. The woman returning home becomes a fallen girl.
And again she gets up. Cole Porter convinces her that she can sing. His musical is called “Silk Stockings,” which is based on Ernst Lubitsch’s film “Ninotschka.” She plays the title role almost 500 times, turning Broadway upside down.
Hildegard Knef described May 8, 1959 as the day of her actual birth. There she meets the British actor, who is six years her junior David Cameron who she affectionately calls Tonio. He manages her recording career and translates her autobiography “The Gift Horse” into English. A world bestseller, translated into 17 languages, followed by another book. In “The Judgment” she discusses her cancer – a breach of a taboo in a society that represses death.
At some point, Hildegard Knef got used to being sick, her daughter says in the film. Illnesses have become part of their lives. When Hildegard Knef died on February 1, 2001, she had already become immortal.
Director Luzia Schmid tells the story of a seemingly fearless woman who had the courage to face her fears and wrest a piece of happiness from life even in seemingly hopeless moments.
