Elisabeth Bergner

Acting

Elisabeth Bergner

Born 1897-08-22 · Drohobych, Austro-Hungarian Empire

Elisabeth Bergner (born Ella vel Ettel Bergner; August 22, 1897 – May 12, 1986) was an Austrian and British actress. Primarily a stage actress, her career flourished in Berlin and Paris, before she moved to London to work in films. She is best known for her title role in The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934) and arguably her signature role, Gemma Jones in Margaret Kennedy's play Escape Me Never. She originated it in London and on Broadway, and later reprised it in the 1935 film adaptation, which earned her an Academy Award nomination.

Acting credits

Dreaming Lips poster
8.0

The young Gaby is happily married to the musician Peter but cannot ignore the impression that his friend Michael, a violin virtuoso, makes on her. Even when Peter falls seriously ill, she cannot forget her love for Michael. Torn between the two men, Gaby sees only one way out...

Dreaming Lips

1932

No artwork available
9.0

No synopsis available yet.

Wenn ich dich nicht hätte

1984

Paris Calling poster
6.0

Marianne Jannetier, a well-to-do Parisian, engaged to Andre Benoit, a high-ranking government official, flees the city when the goose-stepping Nazi storm-troopers arrive. When her mother dies on the road to Bordeaux as a result of Nazi bombing, she returns to Paris and joins the underground movement. Nicholas Jordan, an American member of the RAF, stranded in Paris after the evacuation is also working with the Paris underground. Marianne kills her former fiancée, a pro-Nazi informant, for the traitorous state papers he is carrying, and she and Jordan try to flee over a French seaport...

Paris Calling

1941

The Rise of Catherine the Great poster
5.8

The woman who will become Catherine the Great marries into the Russian royal family when she weds Grand Duke Peter, the nephew of Empress Elizabeth. Although the couple has moments of contentment, Peter's cruel and erratic behavior causes a rift between him and Catherine. Mere months after Peter succeeds his aunt as the ruler of Russia, a revolt is brewing, and Catherine is poised to ascend to the throne as the country's new empress.

The Rise of Catherine the Great

1934

Ariane poster
5.7

Ariane was Hungarian director Paul Czinner's first talking picture. Starring in the title role is Czinner's charming wife, Elizabeth Bergner, likewise making her talkie debut. Young, naive Ariane sets herself for an emotional fall when she falls in love with Konstantin (Rudolf Forster), a much older and very married businessman. For his part, Konstantin regards the girl as just another harmless fling -- until he realizes a shade too late that he's really in love with her after all. Filmed in German, Ariane was simultaneously lensed in an English-language version, The Loves of Ariane.

Ariane

1931

Love poster
8.0

Based on Honore de Balzac’s story of Madame de Langeais. Costume drama about the infamous loves of the countess.

Love

1927

Cry of the Banshee poster
5.4

In seventeenth century England Lord Whitman wages unending war on what he sees as the ever-present scourge of witchcraft, and many local villagers have suffered at his hands. But one victim uses her occult powers to curse his family, enlisting unknowing help from one of the household.

Cry of the Banshee

1970

As You Like It poster
5.4

Film version of Shakespeare's comedy of a young woman who disguises herself as a man to win the attention of the one she loves.

As You Like It

1936

Fräulein Else poster
6.9

While staying with her aunt at a fashionable spa, Else receives an unexpected telegram from her mother, begging her to save her father from debtor’s jail. The only way out, it seems, is to approach an elderly acquaintance in order to borrow money from him. Through this telegram, Else is forced into the reality of a world entirely at odds with her romantic imagination – with horrific consequences.

Fräulein Else

1929

Husbands or Lovers poster
5.6

A wife, bored by her overweight slob of a husband, gives in to the temptation of a slickly seductive poet.

Husbands or Lovers

1924

Strogoff poster
6.5

A captain in the Czar's army encounters danger and romance while carrying a secret message across 19th-century Russia.

Strogoff

1970

No artwork available
8.0

No synopsis available yet.

Der Garten

1983

Nachtdienst poster
7.0

A young doctor from Yugoslavia takes care of a rich baroness, who in carefully devised ways, attempts to destroy her dignity. An intimate drama about the search for self-esteem by humiliating others.

Nachtdienst

1975

Escape Me Never poster
6.0

Romantic quadrangle involving two brothers, one a burgeoning ballet composer; a willful heiress; and a waif.

Escape Me Never

1935

Impetuous Youth poster
6.8

Girl dressed up as a boy falls in love with a painter.

Impetuous Youth

1926

The Pedestrian poster
7.0

When a German businessman causes a car accident with deadly consequences, the papers start digging into his past to find scandals. What they find causes him to reevaluate his own past during WW2 when he was in Greece.

The Pedestrian

1973

No artwork available
9.0

The Thorwald family is well-off and contented when a tragedy strikes: the father is killed in an accident. Miss Thorwald takes over the raising of her children, four girls and two boys with the youngest already fifteen years old. She manages to keep them together in spite of the fact that their economic situation deteriorates after World War I. Never one to look too critically upon her brood, the woman undergoes a moving and gradual transformation as the adult activities of her children bring home the fact that none of them are what she had once imagined.

The Happy Years of the Thorwalds

1962

The House on the Hill poster
NR

A court had to decide what to do about Ellen, an elderly lady living on her own in a deteriorating rented property.

The House on the Hill

1975

Dreaming Lips poster
7.0

Dreaming Lips was lovingly assembled by filmmaker Paul Czinner as an "ideal" vehicle for his popular actress wife Elizabeth Bergner. The star plays Gabrielle, the glamorous, spoiled wife of world-famous orchestra leader Peter (Romney Brent). Left alone by her constantly touring husband, she inaugurates a romance with brilliant but reclusive violinist Miguel de Vaye (Raymond Massey).

Dreaming Lips

1937

Memories of Berlin: The Twilight of Weimar Culture poster
NR

The film tells the cultural story of Berlin during the Weimar Republic through interviews with a number of persons who were involved in literature, film, art, and music during the period. It includes interviews with Christopher Isherwood, Louise Brooks, Lotte Eisner, Elisabeth Bergner, Francis Lederer, Carl Zuckmayer, Gregor Piatigorsky, Claudio Arrau, Rudolf Kolisch, Mischa Spoliansky, Herbert Bayer, Mrs. Walter Gropius, and Arthur Koestler.

Memories of Berlin: The Twilight of Weimar Culture

1976

Der große Zauberer - Max Reinhardt poster
9.0

"The Great Magician" - Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) was an Austrian theater and film director, director, theater producer and theater founder. With his Jedermann production on August 22, 1920, he founded the Salzburg Festival.

Der große Zauberer - Max Reinhardt

1973

Stolen Life poster
6.8

Adapted from the best-selling novel by K. J. Benes, A Stolen Life serves as a tour de force for German actress Elizabeth Bergner, whose husband Paul Czinner directed the film. Bergner stars as identical twins Sylvina and Martina, whose mild sibling rivalry intensifies when one of the girls tricks the other's sweetheart Alan McKenzie (Michael Redgrave) into proposing to the wrong twin.

Stolen Life

1939

No artwork available
5.0

When a squatted house in Hamburg is evicted, Else, a well-known vagrant, also has to look for a new place to live. Having separated from her family at a very early age and bequeathed part of her fortune to poor orphans in India, she makes her way to her sister, the owner of the house, and is forced to watch a failed bank robbery. The two gangsters, who fear Else's testimony and therefore take her into their power, devise a plan to accompany her and get their hands on her sister's fortune.

Feine Gesellschaft – Beschränkte Haftung

1982

Der Pfingstausflug poster
8.0

A melancholic enjoyable journey by an old couple who escape the dreary everyday life of a Berlin retirement home for a day: at Pentecost, Margarete and Heinrich come up with the idea of visiting their nephew, whom they believe to have invited them to dinner. So they set off on their own, and although they don't always know where they are or why they have actually set off, they have a wonderful day. Even if the police find them and bring them back before they reach their destination.

Der Pfingstausflug

1978