Press Conference

For 40 minutes, Kirk Douglas held the press spellbound as he fielded questions about a career which stretches well over 80 movies. He even found time to praise his new daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones ("a wonderful girl, not only beautiful but a family girl") and to explain why he changed his name all those years ago. Whether playing washed-up journalists, boxers, gladiators or Hollywood producers, Douglas' best known movie characters possess a ferocious inner drive, a quality the star himself still has in spades.

Profile

"Kirk Douglas unmistakably embodies the quintessence of 'the pioneering spirit and typical American individualism'. By honoring Kirk Douglas, a personality is singled out who, beyond his screen work, has been extremely committed to social issues and America's democratic ideals.”

Douglas has effectively portrayed a broad spectrum of roles ranging from adventurers to cowboys and from military officers to cops and gangsters. “He played the Roman slave Spartacus, the Viking Einar, and Homer's Odysseus. His heroes have been incorruptible and egocentric, his villains merciless and intense – sometimes without scruples, and other times idealistic men who, without relenting or weakening, courageously fight for their right to individual freedom,” de Hadeln added. Since beginning his career in Lewis Milestone's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers with Barbara Stanwyck in 1946, Douglas has performed in over 80 films.

He has worked with legendary directors such as Jacques Tourneur, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Billy Wilder, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, Stanley Kubrick, Otto Preminger, Elia Kazan and Brian de Palma, amongst others. He is a very dedicated actor who prepares his roles with the utmost intensity. For his very first box-office hit, Champion (1949), a Stanley Kramer Production directed by Mark Robson, Douglas trained ‘till he could box like a pro; for Michael Curtiz' jazz film Young Man With A Horn (1950), Douglas took trumpet lessons; and before he made his first Western, Along the Great Divide (1951), directed by Raoul Walsh, he learned how to ride and shoot – an investment which paid off well when Douglas became, along with John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, a top-ranking Hollywood cowboy of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

Douglas has been nominated for three Academy Awards: for his performance as the ruthless and brutal boxer Midge Kelly in Champion, for his poignant portrayal of the painter Van Gogh in Vincente Minnelli's Lust For Life (1956), and for his depiction of the driven producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), also directed by Minnelli. In 1996 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences presented him with an Oscar in recognition of both his outstanding cinematic achievements and his personal integrity.

It is the 12th time in the Festival’s 51-year history that a performer has been so honored. Previous recipients were James Stewart (1982), Sir Alec Guinness (1988), Dustin Hoffman (1989), Gregory Peck (1993), Sophia Loren (1994), Alain Delon (1995), Jack Lemmon (1996), Kim Novak (1997), Catherine Deneuve (1998), Shirley MacLaine (1999) and Jeanne Moreau (2000).

The newly reconstructed film classic Metropolis will be premiered at the Berlinale-Palast as one of the main attractions of the Retrospective. This new version was commissioned by the Murnau-Stiftung and the Bundesarchiv. ARTE/ZDF have become involved in the event: they are sponsoring a new film score by Bernd Schultheis, the world-renowned composer for silent films and electronic music. The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Frank Strobel will perform the new score during the festival.

"With this Retrospective our festival is emphasizing a superb achievement in film history," Festival Director Moritz de Hadeln states, "and honoring a director whose success story began here in Berlin."

Fritz Lang was born in Vienna in 1890 and died in Los Angeles in 1976. Not only was he a great German and American director, but also a man who loved to embellish his legend, molding our image of him and his life. Wanting to keep a low profile privately, he launched his own public image all the more emphatically. During the Weimar Republic, Fritz Lang scored his first great hits, which were seismographic readings of political and social changes. In 1933 he left Nazi Germany, emigrating in 1934 via France to the USA. Many of his American films were also politically inspired, revolving around involvement and guilt. They were marked by an "anti-utopian fatalism", and dealt with the presence of National Socialism and war. After World War II, Fritz Lang attempted a comeback in Germany.