Rolf Zehetbauer

Rolf Zehetbauer

Birth : 1929-02-13, Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Death : 2022-01-23

History

Rolf Zehetbauer is a German production designer, art director and set decorator. He won an Academy Award in the category Best Art Direction for the film Cabaret.

Profile

Rolf Zehetbauer

Movies

Das Boot Revisited: An Underwater Success Story
Self - Das Boot Production Designer
In 1981, a film about the misadventures of a German U-boat crew in 1941 becomes a worldwide hit almost four decades after the end of the World War II. Millions of viewers worldwide make Das Boot the most internationally successful German film of all time. But due to disputes over the script, accidents on the set, and voices accusing the makers of glorifying the war, the project was many times on the verge of being cancelled.
Luther
Production Designer
During the early 16th Century idealistic German monk Martin Luther, disgusted by the materialism in the church, begins the dialogue that will lead to the Protestant Reformation.
Manila
Production Designer
Due to a delayed flight a group of German flight passengers have to wait in the hall of the airport of Manila. The crowd is quite mixed, ranging from an cultivated east German teacher couple up to sleazy sex tourists. As the waiting prolongs, more and more aggressions and long repressed behaviors shed their way to the surface.
Marlene
Production Design
Marlene is a 2000 German biopic film directed by Joseph Vilsmaier and starring Katja Flint, Hans Werner Meyer and Herbert Knaup. It follows the life of the German actress Marlene Dietrich and her success in Hollywood.
Comedian Harmonists
Art Direction
Comedian Harmonists tells the story of a famous, German male sextet, five vocals and piano, the "Comedian Harmonists", from the day they meet first in 1927 to the day in 1934, when they become banned by the upcoming Nazis, because three of them are Jewish.
Brother of Sleep
Production Designer
In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love of music, especially rebuilding and playing the organ at the village church. After experiencing an "acoustic wonder", his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds.
The NeverEnding Story III
Production Designer
A young boy must restore order when a group of bullies steal the magical book that acts as a portal between Earth and the imaginary world of Fantasia.
Cyber Eden
Production Design
Gloria Ruckhauser has a dream: rediscovering the figure and features of herself when she was 20. Convinced that science is getting nowhere in the search for a cure to the aging process, Gloria sets up a foundation whose mission is to find a miracle potion. Various scientists take up the challenge and develop a substance that reverses the biological clock. Now, they face a new challenge. How to stop getting younger before it's too late.
To Kill a Dragon
Production Design
Dragon is a bloody dictator, who kills every opponent. People live hopelessly, until Lancelot comes to save the beautiful Elsa. Lancelot can only win, if all people become free from fear, that is feeding the Dragon's power. Dragon's multiple personalities, ranging from a "dragon" to a "samurai" to a "Nazi", scare the hell out of all people, except Lancelot. Finally Dragon drops all his masks, to become the most dangerous of his incarnations - "himself". And the battle begins
Enemy Mine
Production Design
A soldier from Earth crashlands on an alien world after sustaining battle damage. Eventually he encounters another survivor, but from the enemy species he was fighting; they band together to survive on this hostile world. In the end the human finds himself caring for his enemy in a completely unexpected way.
Enemy Mine
Set Decoration
A soldier from Earth crashlands on an alien world after sustaining battle damage. Eventually he encounters another survivor, but from the enemy species he was fighting; they band together to survive on this hostile world. In the end the human finds himself caring for his enemy in a completely unexpected way.
Die unendliche Geschichte
Production Designer
While hiding from bullies in his school's attic, a young boy discovers the extraordinary land of Fantasia, through a magical book called The Neverending Story. The book tells the tale of Atreyu, a young warrior who, with the help of a luck dragon named Falkor, must save Fantasia from the destruction of The Nothing.
Die unendliche Geschichte
Set Decoration
While hiding from bullies in his school's attic, a young boy discovers the extraordinary land of Fantasia, through a magical book called The Neverending Story. The book tells the tale of Atreyu, a young warrior who, with the help of a luck dragon named Falkor, must save Fantasia from the destruction of The Nothing.
Wunderland
Concept Artist
Gustl Bayrhammer takes audiences big and small on a musical journey to “Wonderland”. There he meets various characters from comic books, fairy tales and legends.
Die wilden Fünfziger
Production Design
Ace of Aces
Production Design
In this action comedy the French boxer Jo Cavalier is charmed on the train to Berlin for the Olympics in Hitler's Germany by the little boy Simon Rosenblum who asks his autograph; when it turns out his adorable young fan is a Jewish orphan in danger of persecution, he risks his one shot at Olympic glory to save Simon and his family, helped only by a German officer-gentleman who became his friend in World War I, by an adventurous escape to Switzerland, Nazi troops on their heals and braving impossible odds in roller coaster-style.
Doctor Faustus
Production Designer
A musician beds down a prostitute he knows is diseased in order to gain inspiration, an act he later believes to have been a tacit pact with Satan
Querelle
Production Designer
A handsome Belgian sailor on shore leave in the port of Brest, who is also a drug-smuggler and murderer, embarks upon a voyage of highly charged and violent homosexual self-discovery that will change him forever from the man he once was.
Veronika Voss
Production Design
In Munich 1955, German film star Veronika Voss becomes a drug addict at the mercy of corrupt Dr. Marianne Katz, who keeps her supplied with morphine. After meeting sports writer Robert Krohn, Veronika begins to dream of a return to stardom. As the couple's relationship escalates in intensity, Veronika begins seriously planning her return to the screen -- only to realize how debilitated she has become through her drug habit.
Das Boot
Production Design
A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.
Lola
Production Design
Germany in the autumn of 1957: Lola, a seductive cabaret singer-prostitute exults in her power as a temptress of men, but she wants out—she wants money, property, and love. Pitting a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building commissioner, Lola launches an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale. Shot in childlike candy colors, Fassbinder’s homage to Josef von Sternberg’s classic The Blue Angel stands as a satiric tribute to capitalism.
Lili Marleen
Production Design
The story of a German singer named Willie who while working in Switzerland falls in love with a Jewish composer named Robert whose family is helping people to flee from the Nazis. Robert’s family is skeptical of Willie, thinking she could be a Nazi as she becomes famous for singing the song “Lili Marleen”.
Lili Marleen
Production Designer
The story of a German singer named Willie who while working in Switzerland falls in love with a Jewish composer named Robert whose family is helping people to flee from the Nazis. Robert’s family is skeptical of Willie, thinking she could be a Nazi as she becomes famous for singing the song “Lili Marleen”.
From the Life of the Marionettes
Production Designer
Made during Bergman's tax-related exile in Germany, the film continues the story of Katarina and Peter Egermann, the feuding, childless, professional couple who appear in one episode of "Scenes From A Marriage." After Peter perpetrates a horrendous crime in its first scene, the rest of the film consists of a non-linear examination of his motivations, incorporating a police psychological investigation, scenes from the Egermanns' married life, and dream sequences.
Die erste Polka
Production Design
The intertwined lives of people of both Polish and German extraction who live on the pre-World War II border between the two countries are explored in this drama. Valeska is the Polish/German matriarch of a family living on the German side of the border. Her son is involved with the Hitler youth, but nonetheless keeps secret the presence on family land of a Jew who is hiding from the authorities. When the son inadvertently kills a soldier to prevent his sister from being raped, he runs away after borrowing money from the Jewish man. When soldiers come to the family's door looking for the missing soldier who had been billeted there, the Jewish man commits suicide. In another episode, one of the family's daughters marries a German soldier in a ceremony presided over by a Polish priest.
Brass Target
Production Designer
General George S. Patton died in a car accident in 1945. However, now speculates that his death was actually a murder carefully prepared by his staff to cover a large theft of gold.
Brass Target
Set Decoration
General George S. Patton died in a car accident in 1945. However, now speculates that his death was actually a murder carefully prepared by his staff to cover a large theft of gold.
Despair
Production Design
Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other businessmen; until he meets Felix, a vagrant, who seems to be physically identical to him; a disconcerting fact that leads Hermann Hermann to plot a particular way out of a fake world he actually hates.
The Serpent's Egg
Production Designer
Berlin, 1923. Following the suicide of his brother, American circus acrobat Abel Rosenberg attempts to survive while facing unemployment, depression, alcoholism and the social decay of Germany during the Weimar Republic.
The Devil's Advocate
Production Designer
A dying priest is commissioned to investigate the deeds of Giacomo Nerone, a dead wartime partisan, and find out if he truly is worthy of being canonized.
Twilight's Last Gleaming
Production Designer
A renegade USAF general, Lawrence Dell, escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo near Montana and threatens to provoke World War 3 unless the President reveals details of a secret meeting held just after the start of the Vietnam War between Dell and the then President's most trusted advisors.
The Swiss Conspiracy
Production Designer
A Swiss bank discovers some of its clients are becoming the victim of a brilliant blackmailer. The bank's president contacts David Christopher, a former agent with the U.S. Treasury, to help discover who the blackmailer is and to foil his plot. As Christopher delves into the mystery, he uncovers a complicated web of intrigue, car chases, and shoot-outs that takes all of his wits to unravel.
The Odessa File
Production Designer
After reading the diary of an elderly Jewish man who committed suicide, freelance journalist Peter Miller begins to investigate the alleged sighting of a former SS-Captain who commanded a concentration camp during World War II. Miller eventually finds himself involved with the powerful organisation of former SS members—called ODESSA—as well as with the Israeli secret service. Miller probes deeper and eventually discovers a link between the SS-Captain, ODESSA and his own family.
Oh Jonathan – oh Jonathan!
Art Direction
Cry of the Black Wolves
Production Designer
Adventure movie based on Jack London's novel "Son of the Wolf".
Cabaret
Production Designer
Inside the Kit Kat Club of 1931 Berlin, starry-eyed singer Sally Bowles and an impish emcee sound the clarion call to decadent fun, while outside a certain political party grows into a brutal force.
Madame Bovary
Art Direction
The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism
Art Direction
In the Olden Tymes, Count Regula is drawn and quartered for killing twelve virgins in his dungeon torture chamber. Thirty-five years later, he comes back to seek revenge on the daughter of his intended thirteenth victim and the son of his prosecutor in order to attain immortal life.
Jerry Cotton: The Trap Snaps Shut at Midnight
Production Designer
Third Jerry Cotton Adaption. A big shipment of Nitroglycerine, enough to make a shambles of New York, mysteriously vanishes! It's a race between agent Jerry Cotton and the underworld to see who can find the deadly explosive first. To complicate things further, the nitro must be found before a torrid heat wave causes it to blow much of the city sky high.
Situation Hopeless -- But Not Serious
Art Direction
A lonely German clerk captures two American flyers and keeps them as prisoners in his basement long after WWII has ended. Director Gottfried Reinhardt's 1965 comedy stars Alec Guinness, Robert Redford and Michael Connors.
The Nutcracker
Production Design
A one-hour version of Tchaikovsky's classic ballet, with a somewhat revised storyline reminiscent of "The Wizard of Oz".
Ein Mann im schönsten Alter
Art Direction
Meine Tochter und ich
Production Designer
Der jähzornige junge Mann
Production Design
Er kanns nicht lassen
Production Designer
Father Brown is only too happy to interfere with the work of the police in solving tricky criminal cases, usually with resounding success. That's why the clergyman is transferred to a sleepy island called Abbott's Rock. At first, nothing happens there, but somehow Father Brown seems to be attracted to crime: Soon a gang of thieves is up to no good on the island. So Brown makes the headlines again, and is punitively transferred once more. This time he finds himself in a quiet Irish millionaire community.
Der Vogelhändler
Art Direction
Town Without Pity
Art Direction
Four American soldiers stationed near a German village face death in the rape of a local girl and are defended by outside counsel Major Steve Grant.
Mein Schulfreund
Art Direction
The Judge and the Sinner
Set Decoration
A drama directed by Paul Verhoeven.
Crook and the Cross
Production Designer
With the help of God, the loveable safecracker Paul Wittkowski – aka “Cracker-Paulie” – manages to escape the clutches of the cops. He dresses up as a priest and ends up in a village, whose pastor is in dispute with an influential businessman. To help the pastor and a young widow, Paulie has to use his own special abilities. This work leads him back to the path of righteousness. He contacts the police and, after serving his time, starts a new life with the widow.
Jons und Erdme
Art Direction
Adaptation of Hermann Sudermann's novel about the troubled relationship between the strong willed Erdme and her irascible husband Jons in the Lithunian moors.
As Long as the Heart Still Beats
Production Designer
Ist Mama nicht fabelhaft?
Production Designer
Immer wenn der Tag beginnt
Art Direction
The Devil Strikes at Night
Production Design
Hamburg, Germany, 1944, during World War II. A serial killer terrorizes the city. When it seems clear that the local police are unable to catch him, forces as dark and terrible as the criminal himself become involved in the case.
Goodbye, Francesca!
Production Design
Königin Luise
Production Design
Johannisnacht
Production Design
Before Sundown
Art Direction
Based on a play by Gerhardt Hauptmann, the film details a bittersweet May-December romance between ageing Mathias Clausen (Albers) and young, beautiful Inken Peters (Annemarie Dueringer).
Das Bad auf der Tenne
Production Design
A comedy directed by Paul Martin.
Alibi
Production Design
An industrialist's wife was killed and now her lover is accused of murder.
Du mein stilles Tal
Production Design
Du mein stilles Tal
Art Direction
Hotel Adlon
Production Design
The Rats
Production Design
After the fall and before the wall.
Liebe ohne Illusion
Art Direction
It Was Always So Nice with You
Production Design
While working as an accountant in his uncle's factory, talented young pianist Peter dreams of becoming a famous composer. When he shows his work to a producer, he manages to convince him to give him a chance. From time to time he gets bigger contracts that keep him more and more away from home and his young wife Elisa. When he "discovers" and supports a pretty ballerina in Munich, a rumor starts that he's having an affair. He fails to realize that his marriage is threatened.
Charming lady
Production Design
Die Alm an der Grenze
Production Design
Ich mach Dich glücklich
Production Design
Die kupferne Hochzeit
Production Design